Barre Select Board signs annual Town Meeting warrant after reworking marijuana articles

BARRE -- May 21, 2018, Barre Select Board signs Town Meeting warrant after stripping and rewriting recreational marijuana articles. The board voted unanimously Monday to remove three Planning Board-drafted marijuana bylaw amendments from its 44-article warrant, finding the language premature because a required second Town Meeting affirmation of the April ballot vote has not yet occurred; the board later rescinded that removal and substituted the three ballot questions verbatim. Among other actions, the board approved placing a retroactive $12,000 police union contract appropriation on the warrant, covering cost-of-living adjustments frozen during more than a year of negotiations on a new three-year deal running through June 2020. A $50,000 police cruiser and $60,000 dump body were approved for the warrant, while requests for a 10-wheel dump truck estimated at $210,000, a hydraulic excavator, roadside mower, street sweeper, and skid steer were all struck for lack of funding sources. Article 42, which would have petitioned the state legislature to amend Barre's 1979 recall election special act, was struck after the board concluded the legal preparation required could not be completed before the posting deadline.