Hartford
Thursday marked the final deadline for residents to submit petitions to get new items on the warning. Friends of Hartford Track, a nonprofit that has been pushing for an athletic track at the Hartford High School campus for years, collected more than 600 signatures for a pro-track measure, according to Town Clerk Beth Hill.
The three-part measure would direct the School Board to spend up to $50,000 to design the track; to put that money in the hands of a committee of town and school district representatives; and to present a bond for a fully vetted project to general election voters in November.
In a public statement, track supporters F.X. Flinn and Sheila Hastie said testing and analyzing the soil as part of the design process could allow the project to proceed without excavating the heavy clay soil at the site. In 2014, the excavation cost was estimated at $1.7 million, more than half of the total estimated cost of $3.2 million.
The Hartford School Board, which led three previous botched efforts to fund a track in 2013 and 2014, hasn’t weighed in on this latest citizen-led go-round. School Board Chairman Kevin Christie said earlier this month that the community would have to demonstrate an appetite for the track before the project rose to the top of the list of priorities for the school.
Meanwhile, the Hartford Selectboard on Tuesday voted against facilitating a townwide vote on two initiatives, one of which would have urged the state to curb its use of fossil fuels and do more to promote renewable energy.
The other would have swapped Columbus Day for Indigenous Peoples Day, part of a national movement being driven by social justice activists who decry Christopher Columbus for his genocidal atrocities against the Taino people, the original inhabitants of Hispaniola, the island that now includes Haiti and the Dominican Republic.
In voting unanimously not to put the two resolutions on the warning, the Selectboard reversed a 5-1 vote in December on the energy resolution, and a unanimous May vote on Indigenous Peoples Day.
Selectman Simon Dennis said on Friday that his reversal was borne of a desire to achieve the maximum possible impact for the measures, given that November’s general election typically draws more voters than Town Meeting Day.
“It’s really just a move to try to expose the issue to the greatest number of people,” Dennis said.
Dennis said he also was recognizing that the measures had only tepid support from some board members, who had questioned whether it would be appropriate for a town body to weigh in on state and national issues.
During the meeting, Selectboard members who have expressed reservations about the motions said they also were combating a public perception that a vote to place the measure before voters indicated active support of the substance of the measure, which is not the case.
“My concern is that if we’re moving it forward as planned,” Selectwoman Sandy Mariotti said during Tuesday’s meeting, according to CATV video, “then it would look like the Selectboard is supporting it, perception being 99 percent of the law.”
Dennis said that before the meeting, he tried unsuccessfully to get input from Hartford resident Laura Simon, an environmental activist with 350 Vermont who lobbied on behalf of the measure as part of a larger statewide push to advocate for more aggressive action on clean energy.
The vote on Tuesday surprised advocates who thought the climate change measure was guaranteed to be on the warning based on prior Selectboard action.
In December, after the Selectboard voted to put some version of the energy resolution on the ballot, Simon spoke up when members began to express concerns about the wording.
“If people like me don’t know tonight one way or the other which way you’re going to go, then we don’t know whether we should start the petition campaign and we only have until Jan. 18,” Simon said.
Town Manager Leo Pullar and Hartford Selectboard Chairman Dick Grassi had sought to reassure Simon at the December meeting that while the wording might be tinkered with, the decision to put the measure on the ballot already had been finalized.
“The Selectboard did a motion that it would go on the ballot,” Pullar said.
“Yes,” Grassi said. “We did.”
“They’re going to put it on the ballot,” Pullar continued a moment later. “That decision has been made.”
Simon, who was out of the country on Friday, responded to questions by email, and said she didn’t know that the decision had been reversed. She sounded an urgent note when discussing the need to send a message to the state.
“These are times when climate crisis affects us locally, as a state, country and planet,” she wrote. “It seems to me we are at an urgent time to discuss what we are going to do to have a safe, healthy future for our children and for generations to come.”
A short time later, after exchanging emails with others to get a fuller understanding of what had happened, she said she looked forward to bringing the resolution forward for public discussion and inclusion on the November ballot.
Though the Selectboard was united in reversing its decision concerning the March ballot, it was split over whether to include the resolutions on the November ballot, the course of action supported by Dennis and Selectboard members Rebecca White and Alan Johnson.
They were outvoted in a 4-3 decision by Dennis Brown, Mike Morris, Grassi and Mariotti.
Brown said he was not opposed to the issues the resolutions represented, but that they were not within the board’s purview.
“I really feel it’s beyond what we’re doing here or what we should be doing here,” he said.
Morris said he felt the board had “erred” in its previous decision, and expressed concern that supporting the resolutions could set a precedent for a whole host of other resolutions.
Grassi emphasized that those who supported the motions could get them on the November ballot via petition, a process he favored over a Selectboard vote.
“I have a problem with four people deciding what’s going to be on (the ballot),” he said.
A townwide discussion about the budget and candidates is scheduled for Feb. 26. Town Meeting Day is March 6.
Matt Hongoltz-Hetling can be reached at mhonghet@vnews.com or 603-727-3211.