HAVERHILL — Citizens arriving for Saturday’s Town Meeting were greeted with an orange sign affixed to a fence outside Haverhill Middle School. It read, “Stop the Beacon.”
They heeded the message emphatically, voting against installation of a rotating light beacon at Dean Memorial Airport by the steep margin of 144-20 in the morning’s only ballot vote.
Though the measure was only advisory, installation of the beacon, which the airport purchased for $4,200, was already put on hold during a Selectboard meeting on March 4. The board voted, 3-2, to table the project due to local concerns over light pollution. Saturday’s vote affirmed that decision, perhaps putting the controversial issue to rest.
One resident who spoke during floor debate held up a cardboard cutout of the number zero in reference to how many planes took off from or landed at Dean Memorial Airport in the month of February.
Interim Town Manager Glenn English said during a break in the meeting that the beacon holds resale value.
Also on the agenda, the question of whether or not to sell a controversial Powder House Hill property generated significant discussion toward the end of the morning session. Last year, Haverhill voted to separate the historical property from a group of other local properties being put up for auction. It was suggested that the site of a former granite powder magazine used during the War of 1812 held value that was not fully known.
Voters then agreed to commission a survey designed to do more research into the property’s history including its contested property lines and right of way easement.
On Saturday, outgoing Selectman Christopher Luurtsema conveyed the results of the survey, which was priced at $8,000. He said surveyors discovered that the town doesn’t have an official claim to the parcel. The land once belonged to the Haverhill Cemetery Corp., which was disbanded in 1850. It’s been widely assumed that the town subsequently took over ownership, but there’s no paper trail to prove it.
The surveyors also deemed the original easement void due to the closing of a cemetery once located on the property. The contested property lines still were not resolved, however, according to Luurtsema.
Rather than spend more money on further investigation, voters chose to put the land up for sale in what was described as a potential quitclaim deed. This would involve Haverhill acknowledging to potential buyers that it doesn’t actually hold the property’s deed. More research — the results of which could further clarify the property’s value — would therefore fall on the buyer.
An article discontinuing a $10-per-person “resident tax” levied by the town also was defeated. Proponents had argued that many people have successfully evaded the annual $10 fee, thus making it inequitable.
A petitioned article proposing provisions to the taxation of farm structures and land under farm structures was tabled in the interest of gaining more information on the article’s financial ramifications.
All of the other meeting’s articles passed, including an operating budget of just over $4 million for general municipal operations, reflecting a 21 percent decrease from last year.
The school district budget of $14.8 million passed during the afternoon school meeting. None of the afternoon articles were defeated, though one was amended. It originally proposed shrinking the number of School Board seats from seven to five and making each of the seats at-large rather than having some elected by precinct.
The amended article that passed kept the number of seats at seven and made each one at-large. The vote of 96-6 was more than enough for the necessary two-thirds majority.
The oldest military veteran in attendance — 86-year-old John Cobb — led the Pledge of Allegiance to open Saturday’s proceedings.
Adam Boffey can be reached at boffeyadam@gmail.com.