The gathering at Wahconah Regional High School that started Monday had to continue for a second night after four emotional and at times tense hours of debate and voting only managed to address 19 of 31 warrant articles.
On night two, a smaller assemblage of residents approved measures including a proposal to create a five-year capital planning committee, as well as a plan to petition the Commonwealth for Dalton to establish a recall mechanism for elected officials.
“For people to believe in their government, they must believe that their government hears them, is responsive, and has their best interests at heart," read resident Rachel Branch. "They need and want and deserve to feel they have some control over outcomes that have a significant impact on their lives. The inspiration for this bylaw arose from several Dalton residents coming independently with a range of concerns to the town manager's office looking for recourse when the town manager informed them that a recall election might be an option, but there was currently no bylaw.”
Branch presented the citizens petition prepared by Kira Smith.
“A recall election by law is rooted in the three key principles of effective town governance- Accountability, transparency and trust," she continued. "Although providing some sense of balance, a recall election is not a tool that can be implemented without substantial public sentiment and will not disrupt effective governance. There are 140 towns so far in Massachusetts that at some point had similar concerns, and for their solution, chose to pass recall election bylaws.”
The move comes as considerable strains in Dalton’s community are on display. On Monday, meeting attendees took the rare move of rebuking town leadership by outright rejecting the proposed police department budget. In both the days leading up to town meeting and at the gathering itself, members of the Dalton community expressed concerns about power structures in the town, particularly between the police department and select board.
“This is a way for residents of Dalton or any city or town to have more control over accountability of their elected officials," said Branch. "And obviously, it also puts into an elected official’s head that this is also a possibility if they are not adhering to the laws and regulations and what they were elected for."
Select board chair Robert Bishop opposed the measure.
“There's already procedure for initiating recall in Massachusetts working through the Secretary of the Commonwealth’s office," he said. "I fail to see the reason for the town to have its own bylaw at this time, especially one that is as flawed as this article. There's a select board election every year for two seats, and then there's one for one year. I encourage more voters to participate in a regular election, exercise their constitutional rights, and use their vote to change the composition of local government bodies to less contentious means.”
He went on to suggest it was a retaliatory effort against the town’s elected officials.
“I do believe this is politically motivated," said Bishop. "For the reason is, I compared the signatures when we did a discipline hearing and the people that signed these petitions- There's an awful lot of same signatures. And at that discipline hearing you people threatened us, you called us names. You told us you were going to vote us out of office. You called us assholes. We had to be walked through a side door with the police to get to our cars for doing our job.”
Robert Collins, who won a seat on the select board in a special election earlier this year, was the only member of the body to back the petition.
During Collins’ remarks in support of the recall bylaw, Chair Bishop could not contain himself and interrupted his colleague with the remark “too bad,” prompting an admonishment from Town Moderator Anthony Doyle.
“I am the selectman that signed this petition and the only selectman that signed this petition," said Collins. "I want everybody to know that. More, I'd like to apologize for the language Mr. Bishop, our chair just used. It was uncalled for. And I'd also-”
"Too bad," Bishop interjected.
“All right, all right," said Doyle. "Stay focused.”
“And I'd also like everybody to know that this isn't just directed, this can't cannot only be used on the select board," Collins continued. "This can be used on any elected official in town. This has no direct contact with the select board. It's the entire government process of any elected official in town.”
Resident Peter Hodges didn’t buy Bishop’s attempt to write off the recall provision.
“To me, this seems like a cut and dry case, like a basic democratic tool," he said. "There's like nine things in the language here to protect the elected official- You can't use this process within six months of the election in either direction, you need 80% of the people in the count of the vote to overturn this, it can't be used twice in the same term. There's a lot of protections in here. This seems like a basic tool. It's not easy to implement. It doesn't seem like you can use it frivolously.”
An amendment was made to increase the number of signatures required to trigger the recall of an elected official in Dalton from 50 as originally proposed to 200.
With a simple majority, Daltonians approved the new bylaw.
Among other business, voters rejected another citizens petition aimed at removing energy efficiency requirements from town building codes.
