The set up is intended to remind residents that they are petitioners, backed into a corner, hat in hand seeking to curry favor with the Board ensconced on their dais. No other town board or committee requires that residents stand during appearances.
The Selectmen have also taken the role of gatekeeper to Town Meeting, with one long serving member repeatedly expressing that their historically no action votes on citizen articles be the final vote. As well, citizens wishing to address Town Meeting are expected to gain approval from the Board’s lawyer and have finalized all discussion months before Town Meeting begins, none of which is required by state law or town bylaw. The analogy would be that members of Congress needed the President’s approval before proposing legislation. If the Board’s intent is to dissuade citizens from addressing Town Meeting then their policy is working. This year a mere six citizen articles are on the warrant and the only one approved by the Board, initiated by another elected official, limits meeting members ability to speak.
The Board requested that I appear to discuss a warrant article that empowers the Arlington Human Rights Commission to end discriminatory policies and practices by town entities. The tension in the room was palpable as the Board administrator scrambled to minimally accommodate my request for a chair and table. I pointed out the Board’s responsibility under the Americans with Disabilities Act to modify their unconscionable procedures that place barriers to mobility impaired residents from fully participating in Board meetings. I was not in front of their naked microphone seeking to curry their favor or beg their endorsement, I was asking that the Board acknowledge the rights of our most vulnerable residents. Needless to say, the Board voted no action. Ironically, one member tried Orwellian doublespeak by suggesting Human Relations be substituted for Human Rights in the commission’s name, as though the inalienable rights of residents were mere relations that one had to come to terms with in the vacuum of established law.
Perhaps the Board’s lack of accommodation for mobility impaired residents was unintentional, we shall see how they respond at the next meeting. An ADA complaint to the US Department of Justice is a simple email. However, it should not be required that individual citizens compel town entities to comply with the law, that is, in part, the charter of the Human Rights Commission. The warrant article so callously dismissed by the Board will be addressed at Town Meeting and perhaps the airing of the Town’s dirty laundry will not require the intervention of federal authorities.
This viewpoint was published Wednesday, Feb. 25, 2015.
