WILMINGTON — Annual Town Meeting will have a new home this year — a tent on the high school softball field.
Annual Town Meeting will be held Saturday. The new location is part of the town’s solution to addressing COVID-19 concerns. Other changes include Town Meeting’s start time and seating arrangement.
According to Town Manager Jeff Hull, a lot of time has gone into making Town Meeting as safe as possible. Seating under the Town Meeting tent will be spaced 6 feet apart, though there will be some seats together for spouses who want to sit together, and participants are strongly advised to wear face coverings.
With Town Meeting outside, officials have had to also account for the weather. The town was able to fit about 300 seats under the tent with the goal of having space for everybody. As heat is a concern, Town Meeting will start at 9 a.m. instead of the usual 10:30 a.m., in an effort to get the bulk of articles addressed before the heat of the day.
The town will also be providing water and will have emergency personnel onsite.
“Our intent is to keep people out of the sun if it is a sunny hot day,” Hull said.
The town will also be providing designated parking and golf cart transport for individuals with mobility challenges.
Although some nearby communities like Billerica and Tewksbury reduced their annual warrant to just the essentials, Wilmington is moving forward with its entire original warrant.
“There are some measures that we’re proposing in the interest of reducing the number of actual motions so that the time could be potentially reduced,” Hull said.
One of those measures is a consent agenda.
The consent agenda would allow Town Meeting to vote on one motion that contains several articles traditionally not considered controversial. Hull described them as housekeeping articles.
“It still would allow people to discuss one or more of the individual articles under the umbrella so to speak,” Hull said.
This year’s warrant includes a proposed fiscal 2021 operating budget of $110.5 million.
Residents will also be asked to vote on articles ranging from building project studies to changes to Town Meeting itself.
In light of the town’s need for more space to address aging buildings and accommodate growing departments, article 24 looks to raise or appropriate funding for a school facilities and building planning study.
Throughout the town’s ongoing debate over how best to address needs, there has been a persistent call for a larger, updated senior center. Article 61 looks to appropriate $12.6 million for the Board of Selectmen to fund a feasibility study, engineering, financial design, permitting, construction and construction administration of a new senior center.
A series of articles also tackle the structure and timing of Town Meeting itself.
Low attendance at Town Meeting has been a point of concern and earlier this year prompted officials to discuss ways to increase attendance. Articles 45 through 48 deal with the scheduling of Town Meeting, the order of articles and the presentation of the omnibus budget.
Under article 47, the Town Manager would present the omnibus budget for Town Meeting to then vote on as a whole, instead of piece by piece.
Article 45 would establish that annual Town Meeting be held on the last Saturday in April with the annual town election being held the prior Saturday. Articles 46 and 48 look to change annual Town Meeting’s start time from 10:30 a.m. to 9 a.m., and to eliminate random selection of the warrant articles and instead present them in order.
Articles 51, 59 and 65 look to establish a construction noise bylaw, transfer land parcels to the conservation commission for conservation purposes and prohibit certain animals from participating in traveling animal acts for public entertainment.
The full warrant, a map of Saturday’s seating arrangement and further information can be found on the town’s website under Annual Town Meeting. Hull encouraged anyone planning to attend Town Meeting to first visit the website.
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