NAHANT — The Nahant Board of Selectmen met recently to vote on an amendment to the FY27 budget, as well as a change to the date of the annual town election.
Town Administrator Alison Nieto, who presented the budget to the Board three weeks ago, had received a letter from the MWRA with the town’s FY27 assessment. She proposed amending the budget from the originally approved amount of $615,000 to $618,000.
“It was just slightly higher than what I originally put into the budget,” Nieto stated prior to the Board voting to approve the budget, which will be sent to the Advisory and Finance Committee for review.
Nieto then presented an amendment to the town’s bylaws and proposed to change the date of the annual town election, which is scheduled for the last Saturday of April every year, to the second Tuesday in June.
“I’ve spoken with various individuals within town, I’ve spoken with the town clerk, the question has always been asked to me — why do we have the annual town election before Town Meeting?” Nieto said. “…Anything that’s voted on at Town Meeting that has to go to a ballot is not voted on until the following year, so it’s a whole year that we’re waiting,” she said. Neito said Town Clerk Diane Dunfee is “on board” with scheduling the election in the summer.
Nieto also brought up another bylaw change to the amount of time resident’s can speak. After receiving comments from both individual residents and “individuals that are on our Finance Committee” she proposed to revise the time that residents are able to speak at Town Meeting. According to the bylaw, they can speak on a topic twice for 10 minutes each period at any one time.
“We’re looking to maybe revise this amount of time down,” said Nieto, who spoke with Town Moderator Peter Barba about changing it four minutes.
“That’s what I’m proposing here — a resident could come up and speak two times on a topic for four minutes each time, so that’s it,” she added. “If these were voted affirmatively at Town Meeting, they would go on the ballot at the next election.”
Duffy, who was present on the call, shared her perspective and suggested they cut it down to five minutes. “I think 10 minutes is very long to speak on a subject. And as Peter said, if he feels there’s a topic as part of the warrant, he can extend it. But some people speak extra long to make a point, but they do it by repeating themselves…I think you lose a lot of the interest of people at that length of a presentation.”
In response to that, one Nahant resident voiced their concern with doing so, stating “limiting people’s speech in this day and age feels kind of counterproductive for our democracy.”
“I see our numbers going down for Town Meeting and really limiting people, it just doesn’t feel right to me. Also, I think there’s a huge problem with people calling the vote too soon. I know that these meetings can be long and tedious, but honestly, we are here to hear our public and that is the most important thing to me.”
