Mattapoisett Select Board expansion moves ahead

MATTAPOISETT — The Mattapoisett Select Board is now one step closer to expanding from three to five members.

On Tuesday, June 10, the Mattapoisett Select Board voted to move along the expansion request to state officials — continuing the process started by voters who approved the measure at the Monday, May 12 Town Meeting. 

The expansion request came in the form of a home rule petition, which is a request made by towns, cities or voters to the state legislature to alter a town’s form of government to better suit the needs of a community. 

The board’s decision to allow the petition to move forward comes two weeks after it initially tabled the vote on Tuesday, May 27, citing the fact that the Town Meeting results hadn’t been certified at the time.

“By passing the article to expand the Select Board, Town Meeting was telling the Select Board, ‘We want to change our form of government,’” said Nicki Demakis, who wrote and proposed the original citizen’s petition to expand the board.

Demakis said there is still “a ways to go,” explaining that once State Rep. Mark Sylvia and Senator Mark Montigny pass the legislation in both chambers, it must then be signed by Governor Maura Healey. The process could take up to 18 months, said Select Board member Jordan Collyer. 

However Demakis added that she doesn’t think it would take more than 12 months, noting, “I think this is a pretty easy petition for them to enact the legislation on.”

She pointed out that when Fairhaven sent a home rule petition to expand its board to five members in 2021 it took less than a year.

“I’m hoping that by the end of the year we’ll have this done, the law will be in place and by May we’ll have elections for three new Select Board members,” Demakis said.

At the June 10 meeting, Collyer said, “There is no legal reason for the board to intervene, whether it’s to support or vote against anything.”

He added, “It is in the petitioner’s hand to move it forward to the legislative delegation so it can be filed for legislation with the legislature.”

Demakis said she was surprised by how quickly board members decided not to intervene and allow the petition to move forward and had been expecting there to be a longer discussion.

“The position we were going to take is [that] the discussion time was at Town Meeting [where there was] plenty of time to raise all these other issues that the opponents to this article could have raised,” she said.

Demakis and proponents of board expansion who attended the Tuesday, June 10 Select Board meeting were prepared to argue that time for amending the petition had passed.

She explained that the time to do so would have been at Town Meeting and questioned what the extent of discussing already passed and certified articles would be.

“Are we going to reopen the budget? Are we going to reopen the decision to eliminate two classrooms at Center School? We’re not going to relitigate the entire warrant,” she said.

Demakis said that the Select Board’s vote to move along with the petition was encouraging.

“We have some really good, qualified people who have skill sets that can help this town, and that’s all I wanted,” she said. “That was the whole reason why I think it’s a really good thing for the town to expand. I think it opens it up to so many more people to provide this service to the town.”