ORANGE — All 11 articles were approved as motioned at a drive-in Special Town Meeting on Saturday, including an article approving a district rezoning proposal.
Residents in attendance also agreed to postpone voting on two related articles.
Those articles — Article 8 and Article 9 — asked voters to approved transferring and appropriating a sum of money from the Transfer Station window sticker revenue account to the landfill monitoring/maintenance account, and to the sanitation wages account, respectively.
Robert Smith, sanitation superintendent, explained that including them on the warrant for Special Town Meeting was an “honest mistake,” as they actually pertain to the fiscal year 2022 budget. The articles are expected to appear instead on the warrant for Annual Town Meeting.
The drive-in style meeting, which kicked off at 9:30 a.m. at Ralph C. Mahar Regional School, began with some technical difficulties. Not all residents could initially hear the audio of the meeting, which was provided through a local FM radio transmitter.
After the first article passed and the second article was read, neither of which generated discussion, resident Denise Andrews argued the meeting was against Massachusetts General Law in that it wasn’t accessible to those who were unable to approach the microphone for comment. She made a motion to adjourn the meeting until it could be held in a setting “accessible to all citizens.”
Moderator Chris Woodcock clarified that for anyone who preferred not to approach the microphone, a volunteer would bring the microphone to that person’s vehicle.
“I’m not following how the combination of people coming forward to speak, or if people are not able to come forward, we bring a microphone to them, would be different than what we would do in a normal Town Meeting setting,” he said. “To me, that’s an accommodation so everyone can participate.”
Andrews’ motion received a second, but ultimately failed by a majority vote.
From there, Articles 2 through 7 passed without discussion, including Article 3, which asked voters to approve the first payment on the fire station roof repair — a sum of $29,560. Article 4 asked for voter approval to transfer and appropriate from the ambulance receipts reserved for appropriation account a total of $50,000 toward the first payment on the Fire Department ambulance.
The only article to generate discussion on Saturday morning was Article 10, which asked voters to approve a zoning redistrict proposal.
Mercedes Clingerman, chair of the Planning Board, explained the change would extend an area of the residential/commercial zone out to Exit 14 and makes those parcels more open to discussion for how they’re used. The article was the first step in identifying areas that need to be brought current in terms of zoning, she said.
If approved, the article wouldn’t change the rules under which current residents live.
“Over the years,” Clingerman said, “you’ve asked us to work on economic development and zoning in the town to improve our tax base and get our town more amenable to development to offset the cost of running the town, but also to encourage business and development.”
Town Counsel Donna MacNicol addressed concerns some had previously raised about one of the buildings that would be in the new district.
“Under zoning law, lots of times when you have a building that’s been used previously, it’s called a legal non-conforming use,” she said. “That use can be extended with a special permit. The problem is, this very specific law says if the building had a special permit and then zoning bylaws were changed to no longer allow the use, then you can’t consider it a non-conforming use and you can’t just change it to special permit.”
Previously, the building in question was used for manufacturing, she said. Later, it contained medical offices. The zoning then changed, and didn’t permit 10,000-square-foot buildings, nor manufacturing.
“There’s no way that building can be used for any real purposes, unless we correct the zoning,” MacNicol said.
Todd Soucy, a member of both the Planning Board and the Zoning Board of Appeals, said he was speaking as a resident on Saturday.
“We have a company that’s interested in moving in here and would have to go through the special permitting process, but it’s a great company that would be bringing 50 jobs to the area,” he said. “I, for one, am looking forward to that additional income in tax revenue for the town, as well as good, profitable jobs.”
Because the article dealt with a zoning bylaw change, a two-thirds majority vote was required. Volunteers were asked to count the number of orange cards held outside vehicle windows to indicate either a yay or nay vote.
Ultimately, the bylaw was approved with 45 yays and 11 nays.
The final article, which passed without discussion, asked voters to approve transferring $39,000 from free cash to buy “radio equipment, accessories, programming and installation to facilitate the migration of emergency radio communications” to CoMIRS, a statewide radio system that provides communications for public safety and transportation agencies, on or around July 1. The vote comes in the same week the Greenfield City Council approved the $163,000 needed for the city to transition to the CoMIRS system.
Mary Byrne can be reached at mbyrne@recorder.com or 413-930-4429. Twitter: @MaryEByrne