Terry Cowgill

Transfer This - The Movie

May 2, 2008 on 1:28 pm | In Local |

The town of Salisbury is buzzing about tonight’s BIG town meeting on a $2 million proposal to buy land for a new transfer station. I haven’t seen this much anticipation since the 2004 meeting about letting a cell tower into town.

The meeting starts promptly at 7:30 p.m. in the Congregational Church, but I’m told officials are expecting a packed house of possibly several hundred voters, so I would advise getting there by 7.

Two big questions for me:

#1 (and most obvious): Will it pass? Notwithstanding the relatively late effort by the (mostly) Belgo Road residents to derail the project, I do not sense enough of a groundswell to defeat it. But hey, I’ve been wrong before.

#2: How long will the discussion last before the vote is taken? In the town meeting form of government, citizens act as the legislature and so they are permitted to engage in deliberations before voting, just as elected legislators would. I’d say you can expect a motion to vote if the deliberations take more than 45 minutes. If the motion passes, then we fill out our ballots and let the chips fall where they may.

There has been a flurry of emails making the rounds just since the LJ came out yesterday. One in particular between Selectman Jim Dresser and Elaine Laroche is most interesting. Click here to read the exchange. And click here for two more emails from Betty Mitchell and Maureen Jerome.

Meanwhile, if the wireless network is working in the church, I will live blog the event right here and perhaps even upload a brief video report. If not, I will simply get the results up as quickly as possible.