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Town Meeting tonight!
Posted on October 6, 2008 by Michael Ballway
Filed Under Lancaster, Mike's posts, Town Hall | Leave a Comment
Clock’s ticking down in Lancaster. Where will you be at 7 p.m.? If you answered “AUC’s Machlan Auditorium, 338 Main St., participating in my town’s semi-annual exercise in direct democracy,” give yourself a gold star.
See you there!
Quorum nightmare almost returns
Posted on October 1, 2008 by Michael Ballway
Filed Under Clinton, Mike's posts, Town Hall | Leave a Comment
Voters acted on all 19 articles at Town Meeting tonight. Everything passed except the first two, which would have given the town administrator the authority to hire and fire employees; and would have allowed selectmen to print their own budget recommendations in the annual warrant; we’ll have a story online shortly. Here’s the story.
This meeting almost didn’t happen, though.
Twenty-three minutes after the meeting was supposed to begin, at 7:23 p.m., tellers counted only 181 voters in the room — 19 below the 200-person quorum for a Special Town Meeting. Things only got started about 7:40 p.m., after several impassioned pleas to the television audience to show up, when a razor-thin quorum — 203 people — was established.
Recall that the chief impetus for calling this meeting was to act on several articles that weren’t taken up at the Annual Town Meeting in June, when a quorum call forced the adjournment of that meeting with the warrant only half complete. Tonight it looked like history might repeat itself when, after observing an intermittent trickle of voters leaving the hall, one Clintonian called quorum again — during discussion on Article 8, not yet halfway through the warrant. He was roundly booed for trying to end the meeting, but we can’t begrudge him his right — Clinton bylaws, enacted by Town Meeting, set the standard at 250 participants for an annual, 200 for a special.
Somehow, this Town Meeting made quorum, with 202 voters now. But let’s pretend just two more couples had decided, after Article 7 passed with no discussion, to head home — relieve the babysitter, turn in early, watch TV, whatever reason. Tellers would have counted 198 voters and the meeting would be over. There’d be no expedited permitting or bioscience overlay district; no liqueuers licenses or additional liquor licenses; no money to finish the Parks and Recreation Center; no money for emergency management radios; no money for a Little League field. Not tonight, anyway.
Granted, the meeting might have been adjourned to another date, and the remaining 11 articles would eventually be voted. That is, if 200 people could be convinced to show up on Thursday night — or Friday night — or next Monday night — or. …
Ten signatures on a petition and one vote at next year’s Annual Town Meeting can prevent last June’s farce — an ever-present threat, as tonight showed — from reocurring. That’s what it will take to reduce or eliminate the unreasonably high quorum requirement; that’s the recipe for letting democracy run its course.
Update (10/2): Link to news story.
Town Meeting tonight!
Posted on October 1, 2008 by Michael Ballway
Filed Under Clinton, Mike's posts, Town Hall | Leave a Comment
Be there — 7 p.m. in Town Hall, 242 Church St. Need to know what’s being decided? Read these:
Selectmen Split on CEMA Warrant Articles
Voters to Consider $65K in Borrowing
Strong Administrator Back on Oct. 1 Meeting Warrant
OK, now you’re informed. See you at 7!
(And don’t forget to check back at WickedLocalClinton.com tonight for results).
Data with density
Posted on September 26, 2008 by Michael Ballway
Filed Under Clinton, Mike's posts | 3 Comments
Have you ever, in the course of explaining what makes Clinton different from every other small town, said something along the lines of: “It’s like a little city … but it’s so compact … if it had more land area (maybe if the reservoir weren’t there?), it probably would be a city.”
I’ve said it. But is it true?
One thing’s for certain: some Clintonians think their town is too densely populated already. Consider this reader comment on a WickedLocalClinton.com story about turning Lancaster Mills into condos:
I think the last thing we need in Clinton is more apartments! How many people can you cram into 5.3 square miles before you start to implode?
My first reaction was: Yeah, whaddya think this is, a city? … but then I used the magic of Wikipedia to compare Clinton’s population density to that of nearby and similarly sized Massachusetts cities. I was surprised; it’s not even close.
Some basics: Clinton is actually 7.3 square miles, of which 5.7 (not 5.3) is land. Now, that 5.7 includes the Wachusett Reservation, Rauscher Farm and other land off-limits to development, but so do the “land area” figures for other towns. According to the 2000 Census, Clinton has 13,435 residents, for a density of 2,357 per square mile.
Close to home, Clinton does turn out to be denser than several cities: Worcester is about twice as dense (4,631/sq. mi.), but Fitchburg, Gardner and Leominster — each with at least twice the population, but also taking up a lot more space — are actually sparser: 1,407, 936 (!), and 1,429, respectively.
But none of this answers the question of how many people one could cram into 5.3 miles. So here’s some other densities of Massachusetts cities and urbanized towns with less than six square miles:
| City or town | Size (sq. mi.) | Population (2000) | Density (pop./sq.mi.) |
| Chelsea | 2.2 | 35,080 | 15,946 |
| Somerville | 4.1 | 77,478 | 15,763 |
| Everett | 3.4 | 38,037 | 11,187 |
| Malden | 5.1 | 56,340 | 11,047 |
| Winthrop | 2.0 | 18,303 | 9,151 |
| Arlington | 5.2 | 42,389 | 8,152 |
| Watertown | 4.1 | 32,986 | 8,045 |
| Revere | 5.9 | 47,283 | 8,014 |
| Melrose | 4.7 | 27,134 | 5,773 |
| Belmont | 4.7 | 24,194 | 5,148 |
| Swampscott | 3.1 | 14,412 | 4,649 |
| Marblehead | 4.5 | 20,377 | 4,528 |
| Hull | 3.0 | 11,050 | 3,683 |
| Winchester | 6.0 | 20,810 | 3,468 |
| Nahant | 1.2 | 3,632 | 3,026 |
| Clinton | 5.7 | 13,435 | 2,357 |
| Maynard | 5.2 | 10,433 | 2,006 |
OK, throw out the first four — nobody would seriously compare Clinton with suburban cities close enough to have stops on the subway. But closer to the bottom of the list, look who’s denser than Clinton: Leafy Winchester. Seaside Hull. Tony Belmont.
Granted, all of those examples are still inside Route 128. Many of the places on this list are almost exclusively residential, unlike Clinton, which dedicates a lot of its land to manufacturing. Yet we cannot deny that none of them seems to have imploded … yet.
Middlesex money race
Posted on September 22, 2008 by Michael Ballway
Filed Under Elections, Lancaster, Mike's posts | Leave a Comment
With the primary election behind us, we turn now to the general election, and its only contested local race, the 37th Middlesex House District. This is the contest, in northern and eastern Lancaster (and five other towns), that pits Democrat Jennifer Benson against Republican Kurt Hayes for the seat being vacated by Democrat James Eldridge.
As I did with Lancaster’s two contested primary races, I took a look recently at the fundraising side of the Benson-Hayes race. No surprise: the Democrat is way ahead in donations. All the figures in this post come from reports at the state Office of Campaign and Political Finance online, which cover campaign donations between Jan. 1 and Aug. 29 of this year.
Here’s how the supporters stack up geographically:
| Candidate | Jennifer Benson | Kurt Hayes |
| Total raised | $29,869 | $12,350 |
| From Mass. | (86%) $25,817 | (98%) $12,120 |
| From C. Mass.* | (77%) $22,988 | (42%) $5,125 |
| From district** | (77%) $22,888 | (27%) $3,325 |
| Acton** | $2,250 | $1,425 |
| Boxborough | $3,800 | $600 |
| Harvard | $3,000 | $250 |
| Lancaster** | $575 | $100 |
| Lunenburg | ***$13,263 | $0 |
| Shirley | $0 | $950 |
(* Any address with a ZIP Code beginning 014, 015, 016 or 017 … ** Figures include all donations from district towns, even if part of the town is outside the district. … *** Includes $5,000 from the candidate herself.)
What’s most striking, from that top column, is that Benson has twice the fundraising of Hayes. Also, comparing the two candidates’ receipts by region, Hayes is 98% Massachusetts money — but only 27% in-district. Benson has taken more out-of-state contributions, but she’s also gotten far more, by percentage, in in-district cash. The majority of Hayes’ support (over $8,000) has come not from his voter base but from individuals in towns east of Acton, especially northeastern Middlesex County and the North Shore.
Hayes took only three contributions from out of state, two of them from Peoria, Ill., where he was born. Benson accepted donations from seven different states and Washington, D.C.
Looking at the local picture town-by-town, Benson appears to have sucked every available penny out of Lunenburg. Even after tossing out the $5,000 she gave herself, she’s still at $8,263 from her hometown alone, and Hayes has the big fat goose-egg.
Somehow Benson got shut out of Shirley, which returned Hayes’ second-best take, $950. For a Republican, he did pretty well in Acton, keeping the Democrat-Republican ratio down to 3:2.
In another apparently odd quirk, Benson raised more money in Boxborough than she did in Acton, and far more than Hayes did — in Hayes’ own hometown. She also shellacked him in Harvard.
Now let’s look at how these two stack up on other fundraising issues:
| Candidate | Jennifer Benson | Kurt Hayes |
| Total raised | $29,869 | $12,350 |
| From unions | (2%) $700 | (0%) $0 |
| From committees | (7%) $1,930 | (14%) $1,750 |
| Balance as of 8/29 | $3,077 | $8,284 |
$1,250 of Benson’s “committee” money comes from groups identifying themselves as PACs; $500 for Hayes came from one PAC (political action committee). The balance of Hayes’ committee fundraising, and much of Benson’s, was from town party committees.
(After I wrote these observations but before I posted them, state Rep. James Eldridge — the Democrat these two are fighting to succeed — zeroed in on that one PAC, calling it a “divisive special interest group … whose singular goal is to see discriminatory language written into the Massachusetts state Constitution,” and labeled Hayes one of the “New Gang of Three,” a trio of Republican candidates who have taken money from this PAC and from several of the PAC’s supporters individually. I’d link to the press release, which goes into great detail and names donors individually, but I can’t find it on Eldridge’s site.)
Unsurprisingly given the parties involved, Benson was the only candidate to take union money; she got two donations from the Service Employees International Union, which represents healthcare, government and property care workers.
One last thing: heading into the general election season, Hayes is carrying more cash in reserve than Benson, which is a bit curious given that she has out-earned him by a 2:1 margin. Hayes hasn’t exactly been invisible with his parsimonious ways, as he’s been getting a lot of free press out of public appearances and press releases, but the cash stockpile suggests the big spree is yet to come.
Higgins loss is an uncontested debacle
Posted on September 18, 2008 by Michael Ballway
Filed Under Clinton, Elections, Lancaster, Mike's posts | Leave a Comment
The biggest story locally from Tuesday’s election? Not anything on the Democratic side. The only detectable uncertainty as the sun rose Sept. 16, outside the campaign staffs themselves, was pinning down the precise margins by which Jennifer Flanagan would beat Brian Knuuttila for state senator, and (especially) by how much Harold Naughton Jr., the 14-year incumbent, would beat challenger Stephen Kerrigan.
No, the biggest surprise as I see it is the candidate who lost to “blanks” — write-in state rep. challenger William Higgins of Northborough, who failed to poll even 150 votes in the five-town district. His story is the kind that makes you wonder about the viability of the opposition party in Massachusetts.
True, running against the popular and effective Harold Naughton looks like a fool’s errand, but I agree with Higgins: uncontested elections are bad. Even the best candidate deserves to have a November challenger. How the local Republican Party could fail to provide this choice, when they had a willing candidate, I don’t understand.
(While we’re at it — local Republicans also failed to find a challenger to the Democratic state senator candidates, incumbent Harriette Chandler and open-seat newcomer Flanagan.)
There are roughly 40,000 residents in a state representative district. Yes, a much smaller number vote. Yes, a much smaller number than that vote Republican in primaries. Yes, you might expect an even smaller number to have voted in this Republican primary, as there were no races at all on it — just a couple of uncontested candidates and several blank lines, only one of which had a write-in candidate.
But 150, spread out across five towns, is a small number. It’s even a small number compared to the number of Republicans who actually did vote Tuesday. We asked the town clerks how many Republican ballots were pulled, and got a total number of 562. That means Higgins needed only 27 percent of those die-hard voters — GOP stalwarts who show up to vote in an election where there’s nothing else, really, to be decided — to write “William J. Higgins, Northborough.” It’s not even a difficult name to spell.
What he got was 97 votes, or 17 percent. Is it possible that 83 percent of the reddest of the red Republicans would rather have no candidate at all than have William Higgins? Of course not. The problem here was a lack of communication. People can’t vote for a candidate they’ve never heard of, and I’ll wager most Clintonians and Lancastrians never heard of William Higgins — except for the obligatory coverage in the local press, but it was overshadowed by the Democratic primary contestants with active campaigns.
Higgins, who chairs the Northborough Republican Town Committee, got himself halfway to the ballot in that town alone — 79 votes. If he had gotten that level of support outside his hometown, he’d have been a shoo-in for the nomination. But elsewhere in the district, he got almost no support at all. In Clinton, he had six votes, and in Lancaster, one. These are the same Clinton and Lancaster where we didn’t see anyone holding “Higgins” signs or passing out stickers on Election Day; the same Clinton and Lancaster where we didn’t see any letters to the editor or press releases touting the write-in campaign in the weeks before the election; the same Clinton and Lancaster where there weren’t any publicly announced campaign stops or stump speeches.
Higgins says he’s done with write-ins, but plans to circulate a petition and get on the 2010 primary ballot “the easy way.” Good luck with that; and thanks, if you make it, for providing a little competition in the Nov. 2, 2010, general election. But there’s a more immediate issue here, a Republican Party failing to support its candidate and failing to provide choice to the electorate. That’s a problem that won’t be solved with one petition, 18 months from now.
Higgins is Higg-out
Posted on September 17, 2008 by Michael Ballway
Filed Under Clinton, Elections, Lancaster, Mike's posts | Leave a Comment
Update (9/17): Our reporter Jason Crotty just spoke with William Higgins on the phone, and he’s conceding, after getting only 97 votes total. This means Clinton’s Harold Naughton will be unopposed on the ballot in November, and barring the unforeseen will begin his 15th year as state representative in January. More on this story in a few minutes at WickedLocalClinton.com.
Original post (slightly modified): … After all this, our attention now turns to November, and Harold Naughton’s next hurdle: his Republican challenger from Northborough — if he ends up on the ballot.
Initially the Republicans didn’t put up anyone to challenge Naughton, which is why GOP ballots in Clinton were blank under the title “Representative in General Court.” But then, after the slate had been set, William Higgins decided he didn’t like watching a state rep. waltz back to Boston unopposed, and threw his hat in the ring as a write-in.
To qualify for the November ballot as a September write-in, however, you need 150 write-in votes — i.e., as many votes as it would take petition signatures to get on the primary ballot. But Higgins, who is the chairman of the Republican Town Committee in Northborough, only polled 72 write-in votes in that town, the second-largest of the district.
He probably wasn’t helped in his quest by the fact that there, as here, there were no contests on the Republican primary ballot to bring out the party faithful. But whatever the reason, his Northborough neighbors only got him halfway to the nomination, and the voters of Boylston, Lancaster and Sterling only provided a few additional votes. By our rough count Tuesday night, it’s going to take it would have taken at least 55 Clinton write-in votes to put Higgins on the November ballot. We still don’t have official numbers from the town clerk, but Higgins told us he got only six votes here.
So it’s up to Clinton, which won’t announce its write-in results until Wednesday morning. It may be time to strike up that waltz after all. We’ll let you know when we do. …
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