Millville Town Meeting Recap

Well I'm not sure exactly how many people attended...I think it was close to 70...

It was pretty uneventful until the article about the new (used) fire truck came up...apparently there has been much debate over the past few months, and it was decided 265K would be allocated to buy the fire truck, transport it back to Millville from Indiana, perform some necessary repairs and give it a paint job...

I thought Chief Mullaly did a real good job explaining what the thought process was for picking this fire truck and explained what we are getting for our money...

Then the Deacon got up and asked to amend the article to add 25K just in case we needed it for some unforeseen need...which I think everyone understood his point...but the problem was it had already been debated publicly and it was understood 265K was the number per the FINCOM and Capital folks...so his amendment was not allowed after the moderator talked with the town counsel...and then the flood gates opened and we went round and round to the point where the Deacon wanted to debate what the ambulatory fund could be used for...he just couldn't let it go...finally somebody made some motion to cease the debate and thankfully it ended...the firetruck vote was unanimous...and nobody stuck needles in their eye waiting for the debate to be over I'm happy to report...it was close though :-)

And then we got to the Board of Assesors article.... which proposed to change the position from an appointed position to an elected position...come to find out it used to be an elected position but was put on the town ballot in 1986 to make it an appointed position... and the towns citizens voted to change it...of course nobody knew any of the history of why that was put on the ballot back in 1986 (maybe MJB can weigh in here)...must have been a good reason and I'm thinking they needed the Selectmen to keep an eye on them...it was debated..the selectmen weighed in...some tried to make the case that it should be the towns citizens who should be the ones keeping an eye on the Board of Assessors...not exactly sure how that would work and I think everybody figured out it was a real bad idea...and how do you campaign for something like this ? "Heh vote for me and I'll take care of ya on assessment day"...good news is it was shot down via a secret ballot 38 to 29 I believe...I think they tried to stack the meeting but my guess is some of the people they thought were in their corner voted the other way...the whole thing seemed "fishy"...and thank God the Moderator stepped in to help count the votes with the town clerk...many eyes were watching that exercise I'll tell ya...

Our Moderator announced he is not running for re-election...I thought he did a great job and he will be missed...thanks for everything Joe.

One last thing....the over/under on how many times John Dean would get up and speak was 7...if you bet the under, you lost :-)...but it wouldn't be a town meeting if he didn't speak !!

A safe, Happy Thanksgiving to everyone...
The Management