Town Meeting Petitions Ruled Illegal

 CHATHAM – A town meeting petition article seeking to have the town pay $65,000 in back taxes for a Cedar Street homeowner violates the Massachusetts Constitution, according to the town’s legal counsel.

 Town Counsel Jason Talerman said the petition runs afoul of the Anti-Aid Amendment of the state constitution, which prohibits the expenditure of public funds for private purposes.

 “It is a good idea, but it is outside legality as imposed by the Massachusetts Constitution,” Talerman said at the March 4 select board meeting.

 Seth Taylor, the petition’s sponsor, disagreed with Talerman. The Anti-Aid Amendment targets religious and other institutions that are not publicly owned, he said, not individuals. He asserted that the town has violated that provision in the past, appropriating money for private institutions, including churches, through the Community Preservation Act.

 The subject of the petition article is a life-long resident who has fallen behind on property taxes, and at the current rate she can afford to pay will never be able to discharge the debt, Taylor said.

The property has been in tax title since 2011. The 77-year-old Cedar Street resident wants to stay in her home, Taylor said, and has been paying $600 a month toward the back taxes as well as participating in the town’s tax work-off program, which reduced property taxes by $500 annually in exchange for a certain number of hours of volunteer work in a town department. 

But with the state-mandated 16 percent interest applied to the daily balance as well as additional property taxes that add to the principal annually, in five years the current $65,000 that is owed will grow to $100,000, even with the monthly payments, he said.

The homeowner is “the calendar pinup” for the town’s efforts to help low-income year-round residents remain in their homes, Taylor said. “There is no greater public good than to maintain a community of people who have invested generations in this community,” he said.

Select board members were reluctant to include the petition on the warrant for the May 10 annual meeting. In his opinion, Talerman cited a court decision that found that a select board did not have to include a petition article on a warrant if it is for an illegal purpose. Taylor said he will insist that the article be included on the warrant, since the town clerk certified that it had the proper number of signatures as required under state law.

If voters approve the article, it will be up to the state attorney general’s office to determine if it is legal, he said in a followup interview Monday. 

Taylor, a former selectman, submitted two additional town meeting petition articles Monday that sought to address the same goal as the initial petition. 

One asks voters to adopt Chapter 60, Section 3D of Massachusetts General Laws, which establishes “a fund to aid the elderly and disabled of the town whose income is at or below low-income thresholds established or accepted by the town to meet their property tax liabilities.”

 If the measure is approved, taxpayers would be able to donate money through their property tax bills which would go into a fund to defray property taxes for low-income elderly and disabled residents. A taxation aid committee would be established to carry out the provisions of the law and determine how to distribute the money. Members would include the chair of the board of assessors, the town treasurer and three residents appointed by the select board.

 A second petition filed by Taylor Monday would create a town bylaw requiring that the treasurer report to the annual town meeting the properties in tax title, how much each owes, the balance of the town’s free cash account and the activity of the taxation aid committee. Voters could then appropriate free cash to cover the estimated demand on the fund for low-income elderly and disabled residents.

 Both petitions were certified by the town clerk’s office Monday and will be on the select board’s March 18 agenda for discussion.

 A second petition article was also determined to not be legal. South Chatham resident Carol Gordon’s article sought to remove members of the select board from the list of those to be appointed to the affordable housing trust fund board. However, the state statute governing membership on the trust fund board requires at least one member be from the town’s executive office, which in Chatham’s case is the select board, Talerman said. Removing select board members completely from the board would not “pass muster with the attorney general and it would constitute essentially an illegal action,” he said.

 Gordon said she planned to file another petition article that would limit the select board to one member on the affordable housing trust fund board.

 Two of three articles submitted by the community housing partnership won the backing of the select board March 4. One accepts the seasonal communities designation under the state Affordable Homes Act, the other is a home-rule petition that adds commercial fishermen to the groups under the act that can be targeted for affordable and attainable housing. It would require approval by the legislature. 

 The third article proposed by the partnership authorizes the select board to dedicate funds from the short-term rental tax to housing projects on Stepping Stones and Old Harbor roads. One percent of the short-term rental tax goes into a special revenue fund for housing; expenditures from the fund require a town meeting vote.

 Select board members thought the measure was premature because both projects are still in preliminary stages. Partnership Chair Karolyn McClelland said if the funds aren’t appropriated at the May annual town meeting, it could be another year before there is another opportunity to vote on the matter.

 “I think you’re tying our hands,” she said.

 Town meeting will have to vote on both projects eventually, and asking for money now, when the costs are not known, risks a vote failing, said Schell. 

 “The time to do that is when we have a project,” he said. “It is a setback if we happen to get a no.”

 Nonetheless, the board asked the staff to draft an article for it to review prior to the closing of the warrant on March 18.