SWAMPSCOTT ― The town will hold a special Town Meeting next month to discuss residents’ tax burden for the next year, improvements of pedestrian safety, and innovative strategies to deal with solid waste among other topics.
The town’s administration and the Select Board are looking to discuss 12 articles in total at the meeting, which will take place virtually at 7:00 p.m. on Monday, Dec. 13. Michael McClung, town moderator, will preside over the members of the representative Town Meeting.
Some of the most significant articles on the agenda, said Town Administrator Sean R. Fitzgerald, are the ones related to the use of town’s financial reserves to offset some of the tax burden of the Swampscott residents as the town sets its 2021 rate.
“Every single-family tax has not gone up in four years and that is quite unique given Swampscott’s history,” said Fitzgerald. “Right now we want to strike up a balance ensuring that we are doing the right investments but also coming up with funding strategies that help us deal with short-term and long-term responsibilities of the town.”
The town has kept a tight budget over the last four years, Fitzgerald said, with a balanced increase of less than two percent on average. At the same time, the town has been very carefully building up its financial reserve over the last five years, which gave it the ability to think strategically.
The town administration presented its recommendations on the next year’s tax rate to the Select Board at a meeting on Nov. 17. The calculations assumed that the town would increase its annual residential tax rate by 1.04 percentage points and allocate $1,550,000 of free cash to offset the increase of the tax burden.
As a result, the average single-family tax bill would increase by $80 to $9,078 and the median single-family tax bill would increase by $53 to $7,526. The average condo tax bill would be $5,495, while the median condo tax bill would amount to $4,365.
The tax rate will be discussed again with the Select Board on Dec. 1, Fitzgerald said.
Another important article that will be discussed at the special Town Meeting is pedestrian safety. Since Swampscott is one of the most densely-populated towns in the commonwealth where the roads were designed to move traffic, the town administration would like to strike a balance between mobility and safety and request funding to improve pedestrian safety infrastructure.
Over the last few years, the town has been involved in a number of initiatives and completed a street study that lists several critical infrastructure projects where configuration of the streets and intersections could be changed to ensure better pedestrian safety. For example, the town has put temporary street bumps and concrete berms on Monument Avenue, but permanent changes will require further investments, Fitzgerald said.
Moreover, the town administration is also focused on creating safe routes to schools, especially to elementary schools and the middle school, Fitzgerald said.
Looking into the future of waste management, the town administration would also like to establish an enterprise fund for solid waste and recycling. This money would be then used to help offset solid waste and recycling costs and support efforts to reduce solid waste generation and recycling stream contamination.
Fitzgerald said that this idea has been advanced by the Select Board Chair Polly Titcomb.
“It has been a strategic focus of the town of the last few years to really think critically about how we are generating solid waste, garbage, and how we can really be more innovative with strategies to get more organic matter out of our solid waste stream, get a cleaner level of recycling so that we can really have a more robust aftermarket life for some of that material,” said Fitzgerald. “This is really a best-practice opportunity.”
The fund would come up with the budget and would be used to incentivize and offset some of the costs associated with a rising solid waste and recycling line in the town’s budget.
According to the Massachusetts 2030 Solid Waste Master Plan, the commonwealth plans to reduce waste by 30 percent by 2030 and by 90 percent by 2050. Towns, cities, and residents have an increasing responsibility to pay for the tonnage of garbage that is being thrown away and the recyclables that are being picked up and taken away.
However, the recycling aftermarket is not strong enough to support many of the recyclable commodities.
“We really have to think innovatively about how we manage those responsibilities,” said Fitzgerald. “This sets the table for future conversations that will help Swampscott be a leader when it comes to how we meet the emerging challenge of that environmental stewardship.”
For example, cities and towns could look into creating an aftermarket for recyclable glass that could be crushed and mixed into concrete for roadways or try to compost more organic waste that constitutes a big part of trash.
“That can affect the town’s bottom line because we pay a significant amount of money per ton for organics in our solid waste stream, we pay a significant amount of money for glass in our recycling stream,” said Fitzgerald, noting that these expenses translate into how much town residents are asked to pay annually.
The special Town Meeting will also discuss funding of several collective-bargaining agreements that are being renegotiated between the town of Swampscott and certain town and school unions.
Moreover, the Finance Committee will report on the fiscal year 2022 operating budget and will discuss end-of-year transfers that do not require the vote of the Town Meeting but are part of the regular end-of-the-year housekeeping.
Finally, the Town Meeting will be asked to vote to officially change the name of the Board of Selectmen to Select Board. The new title of the town’s executive body has been in use for a few years, said Fitzgerald, since the time the majority of members of the board was female.
“It is evident to all that this is not simply a board of men and we should have a board of citizens,” said Fitzgerald. “I think this reflects the 21st century mindset.“
Alena Kuzub can be reached at [email protected].