Town Meeting Results

The topic of Eurasian water milfoil in Lake Garfield has been a constant presence at town meetings for many years. Article 39, which was a citizen petition, asked the town to appropriate $30,000 for non-chemical control of the invasive weed. Steve Weisz immediately asked to amend the article to read “appropriate from free cash,” explaining that free cash is money that has already been raised through taxes. There was a question about why the warrant indicated that the select board and finance committee did not support the article. This resulted in comments from Jon Sylbert, Don Coburn, and Michael Germain that veered into a discussion of the formation of a possible lake district rather than the topic at hand. Bonner McAllester stated with the formation of a lake district and that discussion of this should stop. Greg Carnese noted that our taxes pay for a lot of things that may or may not be used by every citizen. He said that the lake is important to everybody and we should not undo the work that has been done for the past six years. Steve Weisz stated that if we don’t want to use chemicals in the lake, the only other option is diver assisted suction harvesting (DASH). He gave the example of Stockbridge as a cautionary tale, saying that Stockbridge did nothing about the milfoil in Stockbridge Bowl for many years and is now facing $3 million worth of work to clear the weed-choked water. Weisz said this appropriation of already taxed funds was a worthy investment. That’s when Michael Johnson made a motion to call the question, which was passed. The amendment to the article was passed as was the amended article.