Swampscott Town Meeting OKs $71M municipal budget for FY2022 wickedlocal.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from wickedlocal.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Warrant claims 22 articles, proposes $72.2M for fiscal year 2022
Wicked Local
Swampscott Town Moderator Michael McClung will virtually gavel the 2021 Town Meeting to order over Zoom on Monday evening, May 17 at 7 p.m.
Elected Town Meeting representatives (of which Town Clerk Susan Duplin says there are 324) will meet on subsequent nights until they vote on the 22 articles outlined in the 2021, 56-page town warrant.
The Swampscott Board of Selectmen closed the warrant on Monday, May 3 - just two weeks before the big meeting convenes.
The warrant constitutes Town Meeting’s official agenda. Articles printed on the warrant represent agenda items, each to be voted on by a show of Town Meeting representatives’ votes over Zoom.
Town Administrator Sean Fitzgerald: The safety of our children is a paramount objective for this project
Leigh Blander / Special to The Swampscott Reporter
The town appears headed for a battle with the Unitarian Universalist Church of Greater Lynn on Forest Avenue, over a plan to take an easement from the church’s property for the proposed district-wide elementary school.
“The impact of the easement will be significant and have a major negative and lasting impact on the church’s ability to use its own property while growing and serving the community,” said Doreen Hodgkin, a 30-year member of the church and chair of its Stanley Task Force.
In Swampscott, civil service resurfaces with a price tag
FinCom plans to discuss collective-bargaining agreements on Monday night
Wicked Local
On Nov. 16, Swampscott Town Meeting members passed Article 7, officially kicking off the legislative process to end local police and firefighters’ participation in the Massachusetts Civil Service.
Now, the financial cost associated with that affirmative vote – cumulatively totaling more than $300,000 to Swampscott police and firefighters – is slated to come before the 2021 Swampscott Town Meeting in mid-May.
Some Town Meeting members have expressed anger and disappointment that town officials did not fully disclose the financial implications (in the hundreds of thousands of dollars) when they voted on Article 7 - even if they agreed with the merits of revoking the town’s civil-service participation.
For municipal election, Swampscott polls open Tuesday
Officials relocate town s six precincts to high school gym for municipal election
Sign up for the Swampscott Reporter’s newsletter.
If they have not already cast ballots, Swampscott voters get to weigh in on candidates running in the Tuesday, April 27 on Election Day.
Election Day will arrive after Swampscott Town Clerk Susan Duplin offered a solid week of in-person voting inside Swampscott Town Hall, 22 Monument Ave. – which wraps up on Friday from 8 a.m. to noon.
Absentee ballots must be dropped off at the town hall before 8 p.m. on Election Day. Early-voting ad absentee ballots can be turned in either to Duplin’s town-hall office or dropped in a secure 24-hour ballot box, checked and emptied frequently throughout the day, outside town hall’s main entrance.