This morning I went to the Town Clerk's office to have the petition placed on the official documents for petitions. I was initially told by Susan Flynn (unsure) that the petition could only be used for changes to line items, that the Clerk's office would reword the petition's text, that the text would have to fit the 2/5 of a page of space allocated for it, and that this needed to be done in the Clerk's office. Needless to say, this was unacceptable. So I took the empty official documents upstairs to Stephen Alfred's, Town Manager's office. There was much concern in the Clerk's office that I should take the empty, unsigned documents upstairs!
I explained my predicament to Colleen Camp, Executive Assistant to the Town Manager, and she spoke with the Clerk's office.
According to the Clerk's office, the petition can only be used to allocate a dollar amount to a line item or to a new line item. The actual use of the money can not be specified and, perhaps, more to the point, restricted. The analogy I used with Colleen was that if you wanted to increase the budget by $500 to cut down a specific tree you could only increase the tree warden's budget and not direct which tree was to be cut. If the is how the new budget processes is to be interpreted then there is no means for effective citizen-lead budgeted initiatives.
Colleen is going to bring this situation to Steve's attention. I expect to hear from his office later today.
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