SHELBURNE — A new town seal could be coming to Shelburne, if approved by voters.
Town Clerk Joe Judd made his pitch to the Selectboard last week for a five-member Town Seal Committee that would spend the next year gathering community input and designing a seal, before ultimately putting the issue up to a vote at next year’s Annual Town Meeting.
Massachusetts General Law Chapter 40, Section 47 requires each town to have an official seal, which must be established at a Town Meeting.
“If we want to put together a committee and study [this] for the next seven to eight months and come back with some recommendations to take to Town Meeting and let the town make a decision,” Judd said, “I would love to be part of that group.”
Judd said he would bring the Selectboard recommendations for people who might like to serve on a Town Seal Committee. The Selectboard voted unanimously in approval of Judd forming the committee and asked him to keep the board updated as the process unfolds.
“I talked to the Secretary of State’s Office again today in regards to their involvement, because there’s a committee under their purview that I thought would be involved, but they really aren’t,” Judd told the Selectboard. “According to them, it’s up to the towns to make a decision [on] what they want to do. [Municipalities] have the sole authority over the town seal.”
The main issue, Judd said, is that the incorporation date on the current town seal is incorrect. It reads that Shelburne was incorporated in 1768. Rather, Judd explained it was initially organized as the district of Shelburne in 1768, after having previously been known as Deerfield Northwest.
“My sole purpose of this whole exercise is not necessarily to change the town seal, but certainly we could if we brought it back to the town,” Judd said. “My sole reason behind this is that our date of incorporation in the town of Shelburne was actually in 1775.”
Judd said Shelburne shares that incorporation date with 35 other towns in Massachusetts. This came about after King George III decreed that the 13 colonies were in open rebellion to the British Empire, and the Third Provincial Congress of Massachusetts wrote to the newly formed Continental Congress, asking for guidance on how to proceed. The Continental Congress decided to bestow township upon all 36 towns, no longer acting as districts.
Selectboard member Andrew Baker said he supports Judd’s general direction, but that one of the great aspects of the current seal is that the date of incorporation is very legible. Baker emphasized his hope that the date continue to be very legible on any updated seal.
Tax title properties
In other business, Shelburne is moving forward with plans to auction off properties that were taken by the town for back taxes.
At its previous meeting, the Selectboard appointed Collector/Treasurer Angel Bragdon to act as a “custodian” for the town-owned tax title properties. This means that she will “have the care, custody, management and control of all property acquired by foreclosure, deed in lieu of foreclosure [or] by treasurer’s deed, or legislative act for unpaid taxes,” according to the meeting minutes from the June 15 Selectboard meeting.
The town currently possesses six properties with an total assessed value of $593,000. Chair Rick LaPierre said Bragdon has moved forward with reaching out to Massachusetts auction houses that specialize in the liquidation of town-owned property.
During this process, the auction company would run the advertising and the auction itself, and take a percentage of the sale proceeds. LaPierre said the next steps include asking questions of the auction houses, gathering information on how both the company and the town should proceed, and interviewing each company.
“The ball is in motion,” LaPierre said. “Nothing further than that to report at this point.”
