SHUTESBURY More than 100 residents descended on Town Hall Monday morning to listen to the Select Board consider a request to hold a second vote on a proposal to build a new library, which was defeated in a townwide referendum last week.
But, in the end, the hearing was put off until Wednesday because it wasnt posted in time to comply with the states Open Meeting Law.
Tempers were flaring and there was a lot of confusion and misinformation flying around, Library Director Mary Anne Antonellis said in an interview afterward. I feel for the Select Board. They were kind of put on the spot.
Supporters of a new $3.5 million library have asked the board to schedule the vote following the narrow defeat of a Proposition 2½ debt exclusion override Nov. 8. Two weeks prior, a special Town Meeting approved the library plan with the exact two-thirds margin needed to proceed to the debt exclusion ballot vote. The debt exclusion failed by a 423-382 vote following a last-minute campaign by opponents of the project.
State law allows a failed ballot question to be reconsidered within 90 days of the special Town Meeting vote. In Shutesburys case that date is Jan. 23.
Mondays gathering drew supporters and opponents of the plan alike.
It was kind of awful this morning, said Bob Groves, one of the lead opponents of the measure. There was a lot of anger in the room.
We had an election, he said. Our side won and they lost. Theyre upset, but thats the way the system works. You move on. If we lost that vote, I dont think we would have had a Select Board meeting coming up.
Town officials said the meeting, scheduled for 7:30 a.m. Monday, was posted the previous Wednesday, but failed to meet the state standard of providing 48 hours of notice prior to a meeting because Friday was Veterans Day, a federal holiday. Weekends and holidays do not count toward the 48-hour requirement.
A second proposal to hold a information session instead failed because the crowd exceeded Town Halls capacity.
The Select Board was to meet Wednesday at 7 p.m. at the Elementary School to consider the request.
At the time we put the date together, no one was thinking about Friday being a holiday, said Town Clerk Leslie Bracebridge. I dont believe that anybody had any intent to mislead the public. It was just an oversight that Friday was a holiday.
We were asked to consider this vote and felt obligated to do so, Select Board Chairwoman Elaine Puleo said in a telephone interview. Were not looking to undermine what has gone on, were not looking to railroad anything and were not looking to undo the process. We just have to have due diligence for thinking this through.
Puleo defended the boards decision to hold a 7:30 a.m. meeting, saying that the Select Board meets at that time about once every other month due to scheduling conflicts.
The Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners awarded Shutesbury a $2.1 million grant to help pay for the new library. The remaining $1.4 million would be paid by the town, although supporters have set a goal of raising $400,000 to offset the cost. They said pledges for the project now exceeded $140,000.
Antonellis said supporters had requested that the Select Board reconsider the plan because of what they say was misinformation distributed by opponents before last weeks vote.
Townwide mailings claimed the library would need $275,000 up front to buy new materials, that interest payments were not included in town calculations presented to the public and that the town is shrinking because the University of Massachusetts is shrinking. Those claims were all false, Antonellis said.
There were just a lot of claims that were inaccurate, and we feel influenced peoples votes, Antonellis said.
Groves said opponents stood by their message. Town projections did not include operating expenses and were unclear about the additional cost of adding to the librarys holdings, he said.
We did our homework and tried to present the facts as we saw them, Groves said. I suppose someone could quibble with our presentation of the facts, but so, too, could you quibble with the official presentation of the facts.
Ben Storrow can be reached at bstorrow@gazettenet.com [1].
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