Town meetings upcoming on Saturday
Westminster votes on budget of $16.9 million, three citizens' petitions
By Caitlyn Kelleher JOURNAL REPORTER

Voters will face more than 40 articles on the town meeting warrant including two articles that were left off the list mailed to residents earlier this month.

A citizens' petition asking voters to repeal the wetlands protection bylaw was submitted to the Town Clerk's Office and the Selectmen after the Advisory Board had sent the booklet to the printer.

Conservation Commission Chairwoman Lois Lunewiez is against the petition as she and the Commission worked hard to pass it in 2004.

"The bylaw protects the resource areas," she said. "We lobbied long and hard to get the bylaw we worked very hard to get something in place. Now we are forced to fight for its existence again. Our bylaw is very, very basic."

A two-thirds vote is needed to repeal a bylaw.

The Annual Town Meeting will start at 1 p.m. in the cafeteria of Westminster Elementary School on Saturday.

The second article left off the mailed-out warrant is a request to allow the town to gain an easement on a State Road East parcel of land to then allow the repair of the Battles Road Bridge. Voters approved a number of these easements in February at a special town meeting.

Voters will also be asked to approved a $16.9 million operating budget for the town, which includes a decrease in library staffing hours but an increase in some clerk hours in various departments, such as the police and personnel departments. The proposed budget has a 4 percent increase over last year's operating budget.

Advisory Board members have tried to keep a tight reign on increases to various departmental budgets this year as they reviewed the budget over the course of the last few months.

In this vain, they are not recommending a number of separate warrant articles, such as a $1 million request by the DPW to fund the first year of a 10-year road view plan, a citizens' petition to appropriate $10,000 for the Anniversary Commission, $9,000 to start a tween (middle-school aged children) recreation program, or $60,000 for the Forest Legacy Program.

Voters will be asked to approve $60,000 to cover "due diligence" costs of preparing 467 acres of agricultural and forest land in Westminster for Conservation Restrictions (CR's). Conservation Restrictions will be placed on the land to protect it from development, according to Janet Morrison, the executive director of the North County Land Trust. The land will remain in private ownership and on the tax rolls.

"This [protected open space] will help the town 'turn down' pressure from residential development and help to preserve the town's rural character," Morrison said.

She has been working with the town's Open Space Committee, the Conservation Commission and the Planning Board.

The land will be protected as part of the Southern Monadnock Plateau Forest Legacy Project, a regional conservation project that has received $2.5 million in federal grant money to protect open space in Westminster and Ashburnham. The federal money will be used to purchase conservation restrictions and $1.1 million of this is allocated to protect the acreage in Westminster.

The voters will also get a look at five zoning articles and an article that will identify seven parcels of land in the Westminster Business Park off Batherick Road as an Economic Opportunity Area.

The Economic Opportunity Areas are part of the state's effort to encourage and support industrial development in the state. The area would include about 254 acres of land.

The one of the other zoning articles would convert two private properties on Main Street from residential to commericial. The owners of these two properties have petitioned the town for this change, and the Planning Board has held the necesary hearings for the changes.

The Selectmen voted aganist recommending this article.

Two other properties were changed at last year's annual town meeting.