‘Light agenda’ for Lakeville Special Town Meeting receives recommendations from town officials

LAKEVILLE — Town officials gave recommendations Tuesday, on the five articles Special Town Meeting will consider next month.

At the Oct. 21 meeting, a joint discussion with Select Board and Finance Committee members brought recommendations for the ballot that includes standout items on establishing revolving funds for the Conservation Commission, a citizen's petition to strip part-time town officials of health insurance benefits and a building reuse study for Town Hall.

“We have a light agenda for this Special Town Meeting, but we still need people to show up, otherwise we can't get a quorum," Select Board Chair Maureen Candito said. “I'm worried that we don't have enough items that will drive people out.” 

She said the most financially impactful question for voters lies in the fourth warrant article of whether to establish a revolving fund account — with a spending limit of $15,000 — for the Conservation Commission. 

Nancy Yeatts, the chair of the commission, said they need the revolving account to expedite creating bylaws for wetland protection. She said the commission does not have the expertise to write the bylaws themselves, and are in need of third-party assistance. 

The revolving fund would allow them to bypass the process where free cash needs to be certified and approved before it could be spent. The new fund would allow the commission to spend their funding as they see fit. 

Candito said free-flowing expenditures could leave the town in a budget deficit. 

“It could potentially take money away from the general fund in order for us to support our budgets,” Candito said. 

Select Board Member Lorraine Carboni questioned the purpose of the article. She said historically, the town administrator supplies time and resources to help find grants or fund initiatives from town committees and commissions. 

Town Administrator Andrew Sukeforth said there’s multiple ways the commission could get their needed funding, and the best option is to use free cash — funds that are unrestricted and available for appropriation — instead of a revolving account.

“The easiest thing is to ask for free cash, and to do it now and get it done easily,” Sukeforth said.

The board landed on a split vote, so they did not provide a recommendation. The finance committee agreed to recommend the article. 

A citizen's petition to strip part-time elected officials of health insurance benefits, sparked lengthy discussion between Michael White — the petition’s creator — members of the finance committee and other residents present at the meeting. 

The petition will ask voters if part-time officials of the town should receive health insurance benefits. White argued the town needs to save money, and it should cut the costs associated with providing health insurance to the three boards who have part-time elected officials: the Board of Health, Board of Assessors and the Select Board.

The petition calls for the cuts to take effect in March.

Candito said for the few officials who accept the benefits, they help with child care costs and offer insurance that officials might not be able to receive at their full-time employment. She said she is in favor of ending insurance at the end of officials' terms, and any new part-time elected official should not be offered the insurance benefits. 

“I think it would be a difficult decision for me to take someone's healthcare away. I don't think I could feel very good about that,” she said. “I could feel good about saying ‘at the end of your term, that's it, you're not eligible again.’”

Back-and-forth discussion followed. Residents, finance committee members and the petition writer discussed at-length on how many officials receive the benefits, and the specific costs they incur. 

Candito said she will be working with Sukeforth in delivering figures on past and current costs associated with the benefits. She said information regarding the costs of benefits will be provided to voters within the next week.

“The numbers [White] provided were very specific to the way that he was thinking about it — not necessarily things that we could financially tie back to with actual numbers,” Candito said.

The finance board moved to recommend the item, and the Select Board did not recommend support. 

Special Town Meeting will also consider if the town should spend $25,000 on a building design study at Town Hall. The study will explore potential uses for space the Lakeville Fire Department currently occupies. The department will move to their new station that is slated to finish construction in 2027.

Sukeforth said the study would be the first “incremental” step in finding how the empty space will be used. He said although the town doesn’t have the funding to complete large renovations, they aim to complete the project through multiple phases.

“We thought it was small money and smart money to get some sort of realistic design, and to not overbuild,” he said. “We're not going to do a big debt-exclusion type of project. This is just the preliminary design for it.”

Carboni and Candito agreed that it is a good use of resources to find out how the space can be used after the department moves out of the shared building on Bedford Street. 

“The idea is to figure out the highest possible use with the lowest possible dollar impact for that space, and about finding multiple ways in which we can proceed,” Candito said. “And also, seeing if it's even feasible or makes sense to reconfigure and rebuild on that site.”

Both the Select Board and Finance Committee recommended support of the ballot item.

Special Town Meeting will begin at 7 p.m. at the Apponequet High School Auditorium, on Nov. 12. All registered voters are eligible to attend, participate and vote.