Board of Selectmen Meeting
February 8, 2010
By Jay Shenk
This meeting was shorter than expected, non controversial, with a good idea from Laila Michaud at the end.
The first major item on the agenda was a visit from two people connected to the Johnny Appleseed Visitors’ Center. A representative from the Visitors’ Center, as well as Suzanne Farias, General Manager of the Four Points by Sheraton Hotel in Leominster, attended this Selectmen’s meeting. They were on the agenda for two reasons. First, they wanted to thank Westminster for its continuing support of the Visitors’ Center, and secondly they were seeking the Selectmen’s support for continued funding. The Selectmen pointed out that the decision to fund the Johnny Appleseed Visitors’ Center was decided at Town Meeting, but in the past this had never been a problem and the Selectmen made it clear they appreciated the work the Visitors’ Center was doing.
A few interesting facts about the Visitors’ Center are that it apparently does direct a lot of business our direction, and also, thanks to state budget cuts, only two Visitors’ Centers remain in operation in Massachusetts—seven have been shut down, and only the two which get support from local towns and businesses, such as the Johnny Appleseed Center, are still in operation.
The Selectmen, out of curiosity, asked the two representatives what they thought of the local option to raise revenue by imposing an additional 4-6% tax on top of the already in existence 6% state excise tax on hotel rooms. Background: the state now allows communities to charge this additional tax on rooms, and keep the proceeds, but few communities have adopted this revenue enhancing mechanism.
Both representatives, as well as a representative from the local Chamber of Commerce, thought this would be a bad idea because it would simply drive tourists and business people to stay elsewhere. They used the recently imposed sales tax on alcoholic beverages as an example (MA now charges sales tax on liquor and beer, despite the fact that there is already a hefty state excise tax built into the retail price, meaning that we now are actually paying a state sales tax on the state excise tax). This tax increase has had the unintended consequence of greatly increasing liquor store sales in New Hampshire, a fact used to illustrate how consumers can easily change their buying habits in the face of taxes that are not uniform across a region.
Next on the agenda was an update to/from the Memorial Committee, which has been tasked with developing uniform guidelines for using town property to memorialize people—i.e. naming a bridge or tree in someone’s honor, or donating something to the town in someone’s name. In a prior meeting it turned out that the Board of Selectmen had ceded some of the power to “memorialize” to the DPW, but in this meeting we learned that the DPW will abide by the same guidelines, no problem.
However, in the meantime the Library Board of Trustees has not yet come back with their response to the suggested guidelines, and it’s possible they also have ‘memorializing’ rights within the library building. Since the next meeting of the Library Board of Trustees isn’t until March, finalizing the process for memorializing might continue to hang fire for awhile.
Next, out came a huge loose leaf binder which contained all the town department budgets, except for a few, such as that from the Conservation Commission, which does not yet have a completed budget. The Selectmen then went through the budget page by page, asking questions and making suggestions, but all in all, what looked to be an endless process went remarkably fast.
At the end, Selectman Laila Michaud brought up the idea of having a ‘Meet and Greet’ between town residents and the Selectmen, since it seems that some residents are either reluctant or intimidated to go in front of the Selectmen, and she thought this would be a good way to break the ice. Both John Fairbanks and Nick Hay thought this sounded good, but there was some discussion surrounding how this meeting would work in the context of the ‘Open Meeting Law’. Apparently we can have such a meeting, but there needs to be an agenda, which will simply specify that we are having a discussion to get to know each other, or something like that—the Open Meeting Law, when operating with just three Selectmen, can be quite cumbersome, as any two getting together constitutes a quorum, so no Selectman can talk about town business with any other Selectman except at formal meetings, in front of TV cameras and with an audience; Funny how our state legislature, which passed this law, exempted themselves from it.
The time and place for the “Meet and Greet” with the Selectmen will be announced.