All meetings in Truro are remote only. Go to truro-ma.gov and click on the meeting you want to watch. The agenda includes instructions on how to join.
Tuesday, Oct. 12
- Select Board, 5 p.m.
- Truro School Committee, 5:15 p.m.
Wednesday, Oct. 13
- Commission on Disabilities, 4 p.m.
- Planning Board work session, 5 p.m.
Conversation Starters
Walsh Committee to Shrink
On Sept. 28, the select board unanimously voted to decrease the size of the Walsh Property Community Planning Committee from 17 members to 15. Town Manager Darrin Tangeman brought this matter before the board after a recent resignation from the planning committee, bringing the current membership to 15. There were two vacancies, the other being an unfilled seat designated for a high-school student. Vacant seats would otherwise prompt the committee to search for additional members, but this is no longer necessary, given the select board’s action to shrink its size.
Should more vacancies occur, the planning committee can now bring further membership decrease requests to the select board. In order to maintain an odd number of members, as required by the town charter, vacancies must occur in pairs for the board to approve these requests. (Thus, the next time the committee size is officially decreased it would need to go from 15 to 13).
Tangeman discussed the possibility of further reducing the committee to a “more manageable size,” seeing that it operates by consensus — a model that comes with the difficulty of arranging meeting times that all members can attend, let alone the logistical challenge of achieving unanimous votes for a motion. The “unwieldiness” of a large committee, as Tangeman put it, can slow action.
Stephanie Rein, a select board member, was in favor of reducing the membership to 15, but she voiced concerns about making the committee too small. “We have a really diverse group of people,” she said. Members came from “different walks of life” and had “different passions,” she added.
The planning committee is charged with making suggestions, which will go to town meeting, for uses of a 70-acre town-owned parcel behind Truro Central School. Town meeting voters purchased it for $5.1 million in 2019. —Jasmine Lu
