A split Andover Select Board recommended Monday that special town meeting approve $1.3 million for a detailed design of a new, $451.5 million high school and a $500,000 study to look at potential upgrades to the existing building.
The schematic design article was originally proposed for the annual town meeting in May, but ultimately was pulled from the warrant when the town disclosed the project would push Andover over a state-mandated debt cap. The state legislature changed rules to exempt new school debt from the cap this summer.
The interim plan — which supporters of the new high school say won’t help Andover avoid a downgrade — is aimed at making improvements to the school until the Town pays down existing debt and will have a better chance of getting state money from the Massachusetts School Building Authority to offset the cost.
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“The decision before the community is a huge one. We’ve said all along it needs to go to the community for a vote,” select board member Annie Gilbert said. “The best way to get the most complete amount of information, amount of data, amount of granularity around fiscal impacts will be to have the process move forward on both 7A and 7B.”
Read AI-generated transcripts of Monday’s school committee and select board meetings.
Chris Huntress and Alex Vispoli opposed recommending passage of article 7A, the schematic design, while Laura Gregory cast the dissenting vote on recommending Article 7B. Earlier on Monday, the school committee unanimously recommended special town meeting pass both articles.
Huntress, who previously said the Town simply can’t afford a new high school, raised concerns that moving forward with the schematic design would lock the Town into the current, preliminary design, which also calls for demolishing the Collins Center.
“If we continue to move forward as proposed, we lose the ability to consider alternative designs that could in the long run be better and more affordable for our community,” he said.
‘Interim plan’ gains support from both sides
The so-called interim planned was reported at a pair of quad-board meetings in September and October and is aimed at upgrading the existing school until the Town is better positioned to apply for state money to offset the upgrades and when the Town would be in a better financial position. Some backers of the new school proposal have opposed 7A, saying how the $500,000 would be spent.
“There would be no downside on waiting on 7B until annual town meeting, and then voters would know what the parameters are that we’re talking about with the $500,000 that we don’t have now.”
But 7B did gain the endorsement of the Andover High School Building Committee, with members saying the interim study, coupled with the schematic design, would give voters a clearer understanding before making the final decision on whether to build a new AHS. The building committee’s endorsement, however, is contingent on representatives from the school committee, building committee and Andover Public Schools administration were included in the process.
Andover would pay for both articles with free cash. With the recommendation process complete, the finance committee was the only board to recommend the Town not spend $1.3 million for a schematic design.
Other select board recommendations to special town meeting
The board voted to not recommend the other five articles on the Nov. 20 special town meeting, all of which had been submitted by citizen petition.
The board recommended special town meeting not approve article 1, which would put a nonbinding referendum question on the annual election ballot in March asking if Andover should adopt a new form of government to replace its open town meeting. Select board members note the question had already been considered in depth by the Town Governance Study Committee.
“I believe that this warrant article is an unwise measure and should not be approved,” Jon Stumpf, who chaired the study committee, said. “The committee determined that Andover’s open town meeting government serves Andover and also recommended several reforms. A ballot question is not the way to change the form of government.”
Local government activist Mike Myers submitted three of the articles, all of which the select board unanimously opposed. If passed on Nov. 20, article 2 would cap property tax increases for seniors, article 3 would keep healthcare contribution increases by Town retirees equal to those paid by current employees, and article 4 would clarrify rules for speakers and presenters at town meetings.
Article 5, if approved by special town meeting, would reduce the speed limit on several Andover roads to 25 MPH, and article 6 would create an advisory committee to review and recommend traffic safety data and improvements. The board unanimously recommended special town meeting not approve those two traffic safety articles were unanimously voted down on advice from town counsel, saying the Town did not have the authority to make speed limit changes because of state rules and the proposed committee would not be able to direct Andover departments.
The argument for article 1 is that only 1% of Andover voters actually vote at Town Meeting, leaving 99% disenfranchised from the process. The Town Governance Committee speakers and the Select Board did not dispute this fact. They simply argued that voters shouldn’t be consulted about this. The committee report says attendance is fine, but in fact it has no actual meeting participation data. The 1% number comes from official Town Meeting transcripts using the average of all roll call votes. At the 2023 regular Town Meeting this average was 1.1% voting participation, and any Andover citizen can verify this from either the transcripts or the meeting video. As an example, the most contentious vote at the 2023 meeting was on a fireworks amendment. 152 people voted for and 103 against, versus over 26000 eligible Andover voters, that total of only 255 votes is less than 1% participation. Clearly the Select Board and the committee are fine with 1%, but why don’t we ask the voters?
VOTE YES ON ARTICLE 1 AT OUR UPCOMING SPECIAL TOWN MEETING
When over 400 residents sign a Citizens’ Petition to call for a Special Town Meeting to voice the serious concern that Town Meeting, given the minuscule turnout these meetings get for a town as large as Andover now is, is no longer a representative form of local government, a Citizens’ Petition that had more people sign the Petition than attend many of our Town Meetings, it clearly says our current form of Town Meeting (which Town Moderator always refers to as the “Andover legislature”) is broken.
When the “Town Governance Committee” , which was assembled by Town officials, makes de minimis recommendations to the Select Board where the Select Board is the approving authority for what that Committee was doing, it’s textbook “putting the fox in the hen-house.” Is anyone surprised that the status quo was recommended to be preserved by this committee given that the the approval authority for this committee’s “recommendations” were the very town officials who appointed the members of the committee and whose authorities would be most affected by the committee’s recommendations?
Clearly, hundreds of residents, more than the pathetic turnout we get at most Town Meetings, is saying via this Citizens’ Petition that “something is still VERY broken and needs to be reexamined because the Town Governance Committee merely made recommendations that preserve the status quo that large numbers of people in town feel remains broken, that the committee’s recommendations do not fix what is fundamentally broken with our current form of town governance.”
Town Meeting, as now operates, is a relic of the 18th and 19th Centuries when Andover was a small enough community that almost every adult resident could attend meetings of town residents to act on measures that required approval of residents. Not any more.
Town Moderator ALWAYS starts every Town Meeting by stating that Town Meeting is the “town legislature.” This Citizens’ Petition is the Town Legislature in action, saying that we, the Town Legislature, are not satisfied with the the work of the Governance Committee that merely came back with recommendations that maintain the failing status quo.
For example, the Governance Committee could have at least addressed how Town Meeting could be made a LOT MORE representative by recommending that absentee voting or early voting (as we do for state and national elections) on Articles that are up for a vote at Town Meetings be made available for residents who cannot attend a Town Meeting. We have absentee voting for state and national elections and absentee voting on Referendums put up for statewide votes here in Massachusetts, so there is no legitimate reason why, given our current town governance structure, we cannot at least offer absentee voting and early voting on warrant articles for people who will not be able to attend Town Meeting, which will greatly increase the number of people who vote on Town matters without penalizing people who are unable to attend a Town Meeting. The status quo clique will have various reasons to say absentee voting and early voting on Town Meeting Articles won’t work, but their objections will merely reflect their desire to protect the status quo and their lack of creativity in finding a way to offer absentee voting/early voting on warrant articles that will work within the nature of what Town Meeting is designed to accomplish.
When more people are part of a Citizens’ Petition to say to the Town, “the Governance Committee did not provide any recommendations to solve the fundamental problem with our current form of Town governance that they were chartered to solve,” than we get attending many Town Meetings, it confirms that Town Meeting remains broken as the means by which we, Town residents, are able to serve as the Town Legislature.
Please Vote YES on Article 1 at Special Town Meeting on November 20th. Town leaders need to hear our voice loud and clear that work is still needed to make our current form of Town governance far more representative than it currently is given the size of Andover now versus centuries past when a town meeting was able to assemble most of Andover’s residents to deliberate on town matters.
Bob Pokress