![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Civic participation
Nov. 7th, 2017 10:39 pmToday I finally had my interview for Global Entry. They've opened a new office in downtown Boston, which I didn't know about (so I went to the airport for my interview), but whose existence caused there to be very few people in the waiting room, and I was taken right away even though I arrived 30 minutes early for my appointment. I've been fingerprinted! Guess now I need to wear gloves if I want to do a misdeed. They don't use ink anymore, they scan your fingers. The "interview" was a joke, she just asked me a couple of questions about where I'd traveled recently. Maybe they have all they need about me from the NSA sniffing my packets or something.
Then I came home, to go to the second night of Sharon Town Meeting.
On the first night we had contentious votes about rezoning a proposed mall, whose developers want to do something different with it now. Of course all the abutters were there in force to complain about it. You'd think they'd like something done with the sinkhole that was left there years ago when the first project failed due to the 2008 crash, though Mother Nature has been doing her best to fill it in with small trees and bushes, so it's looking pretty natural again, so maybe they just want to pretend it's not going to happen. Anyway, after lots of debate, several amendments, standing votes, calling the question, etc., we finally approved it.
There were two other articles that took forever, because they will cost money -- we need a new town hall (we really do, it's a 60 year old building that's too small for the current size of the town, plus it's not ADA compliant so kluges abound like temporary ramps that are so old they're rusting). We also might need a new high school; I'm less convinced of that, but apparently half of it is also 60 years old and not ADA compliant. The other half has been additions at various times, compliant to various rules, but not current ones. Anyway, that's just a feasibility study so we won't have to pay the whole sum for years. Though it still costs $2M for just the study! Evidently there's a lot of bureaucracy.
Tonight we got to talk about The Evil Weed! Sing, "Smoke two joints in the morning..." MA legalized pot last year, but we're still futzing around with writing the regulations for actually opening a headshop. The town wanted to put a moratorium on permits for anything related to recreational pot until July 1; the state is supposed to be producing guidelines as of March 15, and allowing such permitting as of April 1, but the town wanted more time to process the regulations and come up with their own zoning plans. This actually sort of makes sense, but I wanted to go speak in support of pot sooner rather than later, even though I figured it was a lost cause. There were a lot of people opposed to pot at all, and used this forum to whine. There was an amendment to extend the moratorium til Dec 31 2018. People used the amendment time to whine about the main motion, which wasted a lot of time of the moderator saying "No, this is not on the amendment to extend the time. Please confine your remarks to the amendment." and the person would go "This is about the amendment" and continue to talk about the generic evils of weed. Town officials did not think it was necessary to extend the time -- we'll have another Town Meeting in May, and if town officials think they need more time to process the state guidelines (or if the state guidelines don't come out on time) we can extend it then. So we finally had the vote on the amendment -- and it was 79 in favor, 80 opposed! Good thing I went, huh? On the main motion, there were a lot more in favor, like 80%/20% (we didn't do a standing vote for that one, because the voice vote was clear.) But I expect another huge fight in May from the people who wish MA hadn't legalized it at all. We looked it up, Sharon voted approximately the same as the state: 52% to 48%. Town meeting is of course not at all representative -- it's just the people who make the time to go. Yesterday there were like 500 people because they were packing the halls for the school; today it was just people who cared about pot and the people who always go.
Then I came home, to go to the second night of Sharon Town Meeting.
On the first night we had contentious votes about rezoning a proposed mall, whose developers want to do something different with it now. Of course all the abutters were there in force to complain about it. You'd think they'd like something done with the sinkhole that was left there years ago when the first project failed due to the 2008 crash, though Mother Nature has been doing her best to fill it in with small trees and bushes, so it's looking pretty natural again, so maybe they just want to pretend it's not going to happen. Anyway, after lots of debate, several amendments, standing votes, calling the question, etc., we finally approved it.
There were two other articles that took forever, because they will cost money -- we need a new town hall (we really do, it's a 60 year old building that's too small for the current size of the town, plus it's not ADA compliant so kluges abound like temporary ramps that are so old they're rusting). We also might need a new high school; I'm less convinced of that, but apparently half of it is also 60 years old and not ADA compliant. The other half has been additions at various times, compliant to various rules, but not current ones. Anyway, that's just a feasibility study so we won't have to pay the whole sum for years. Though it still costs $2M for just the study! Evidently there's a lot of bureaucracy.
Tonight we got to talk about The Evil Weed! Sing, "Smoke two joints in the morning..." MA legalized pot last year, but we're still futzing around with writing the regulations for actually opening a headshop. The town wanted to put a moratorium on permits for anything related to recreational pot until July 1; the state is supposed to be producing guidelines as of March 15, and allowing such permitting as of April 1, but the town wanted more time to process the regulations and come up with their own zoning plans. This actually sort of makes sense, but I wanted to go speak in support of pot sooner rather than later, even though I figured it was a lost cause. There were a lot of people opposed to pot at all, and used this forum to whine. There was an amendment to extend the moratorium til Dec 31 2018. People used the amendment time to whine about the main motion, which wasted a lot of time of the moderator saying "No, this is not on the amendment to extend the time. Please confine your remarks to the amendment." and the person would go "This is about the amendment" and continue to talk about the generic evils of weed. Town officials did not think it was necessary to extend the time -- we'll have another Town Meeting in May, and if town officials think they need more time to process the state guidelines (or if the state guidelines don't come out on time) we can extend it then. So we finally had the vote on the amendment -- and it was 79 in favor, 80 opposed! Good thing I went, huh? On the main motion, there were a lot more in favor, like 80%/20% (we didn't do a standing vote for that one, because the voice vote was clear.) But I expect another huge fight in May from the people who wish MA hadn't legalized it at all. We looked it up, Sharon voted approximately the same as the state: 52% to 48%. Town meeting is of course not at all representative -- it's just the people who make the time to go. Yesterday there were like 500 people because they were packing the halls for the school; today it was just people who cared about pot and the people who always go.
