1996-07-BOS-min - Laserfiche WebLink

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60 -318 ff Selectmen's Meeting - July 1, 1996 - Shall legislation be requested by the Town of Lexington which would require atown -wide referendum vote for the approval of anyfiscal year budget, exclusive o, f line items funded by enterprisefunds, which exceeds the prior year's budget by more than 3 percent? Ms. Eddison asks what trigger would be? Costly? Mr. Cohen stated that if the budget went up more than 3 percent from year to year it would trigger the referendum each year. Then there would have to be an election. If this non- binding referendum were to pass at the election in 1997 then it would be up to Mr. Tripi (if Selectmen did not do) to sponsor a warrant article in which it would be written to authorize the Board of Selectmen to petition the general court for an act to permit this and then it would have to g o to the legislature to pass the act before this could all come into play. An election will cost between $12,000 and $16,000. We either accept the ten signatures or Mr. Tripi goes out and gets 10 percent of registered voters (approximately 2000). The basic question is do we want to put Mr. Tripi through the process of getting 2000 signatures. Mr. Busa asked if this is exclusive of enterprise funding and if.line items would be exempt from this referendum. only interested in Budget; basically article 4. Non - binding means it does not have to be adhered to. This type of question can only be implemented by having a town meeting to give the Selectmen permission to request an act of a legislature, etc. our limited town meeting act, as in almost any town, allows referendums but it specifically says it will not apply to the budget, because of policy reasons. The referendum in question would not affect proposition 2-112. Mr. Dailey suggested that the Board take a vote on the referendum question at the next meeting and in the meantime invite comments from the Appropriations Committee and the Capital Expenditures Committee. Maybe we can take a look and see what the increases have been over the last years and what impact this type of limit would have on the last five years to give us an idea of what would occur if this were in place. Mr. white is to contact the appropriate parties about what is going on and see what the ramifications would be.