Town meeting and referendum set for Saturday June 29th with Referendum Tuesday July 9th

This afternoon the Board of Selectmen met and were joined by the town attorney to review our possibilities for the call of the town meeting and the subsequent petition that was submitted. As explained in a prior news and announcement, we needed to review the petition to see its legality before sending it forward.

Upon examination by the town attorney the petition wording and its request were invalid and thus the Selectmen could not legally send this to a referendum as written. The Selectmen however did want to be sure we were listening to the petitioners concerns and instead of just sending the 1 question we originally recommended to town meeting, we have decided to split the question into three as the petitioners requested. Though the wording cannot be exactly as it was written in the petition it will be very similar and captures the intent of those who signed the petition by splitting the question into 3 separate questions (general government and debt, school, & capital) rather than the single question. As a reminder prior to 2007 we voted on the budget as 1 question and for the past decade with the exception of 2018 we voted on the budget as two questions.

The Board of Selectmen does its best to represent all people and we hope this will help people with the clarity needed to be informed at the polls. We have now scheduled a town meeting for Saturday June 29th at 9am at the Wheeler Library and a referendum for Tuesday July 9th from the hours of 6am-8pm. Copies of the budget are available online and at town hall or please visit www.northstoningtonct.gov and the opengov portal to look at the budget specifics.