[Town Meeting] DOCUMENT: Amendment for Article 24

[Rich Carreiro]

Here is the amendment I plan to offer when Article 24
comes up for discussion.  Mr. Maher has OK'd the language,
and Mr. Tosti has told me he finds it acceptable (we
traded emails to come up with language acceptable to
both of us):

    VOTED:  That the following amendment be made to the
    main motion of the Board of Selectmen:

        Add the word, "substitute" in the text of the
        Selectmen's vote between the words "a" and "member" in
        line 3 of the paragraph at the bottom of page 11
        of the Selectmen's report.

        And add the following after the text of the legislation
        appearing on page 11 of the Selectmen's report:
           "The term of a substitute or at-large member shall
            expire on October 31 of the fiscal year following
            the fiscal year in which the member was appointed.

            No substitute or at-large member shall be appointed
            to fill a vacant position on the Finance Committee
            unless no qualified applicant from the precinct
            applies for appointment before December 15th."

If this amendment succeeds, the text before us would read
(I'm not bothering to reproduce the preamble-y stuff here):

     In the event that the appointing committee is unable to
     secure an appropriate candidate from each precinct of
     the Town, then the committee may appoint a substitute member
     preferably from an adjacent precinct or a member-at-large to
     serve in lieu thereof.  Notwithstanding the foregoing, no
     precinct shall have more than two members nor shall there
     be more than three at-large members at any given time.

     The term of a substitute or at-large member shall
     expire on October 31 of the fiscal year following
     the fiscal year in which the member was appointed.

     No substitute or at-large member shall be appointed
     to fill a vacant position on the Finance Committee
     unless no qualified applicant from the precinct
     applies for appointment before December 15th.

I'm offering the amendment because while I understand FinComm's desire
to be fully-staffed, I found the original vote too loose in its
protections of precincts' right to be represented in FinComm.  I
wanted to keep substitute/at-large members' terms to the minimum that
would provide sufficient continuity during the year and make sure that
it would be hard to make a "quickie" appointment of a
substitute/at-large member before someone from a vacant precinct had a
chance to step up.  As I told Mr. Tosti, this is in no way a dig at
him -- in fact, I'm basically encoding the procedure he plans to use
-- but he's not always going to be FinComm chair and some successor
may not be as fair-minding as he.

-- 
Rich Carreiro                            rlcarr at animato.arlington.ma.us