Published in the July 6, 2020 edition.
ByMARK SARDELLA
WAKEFIELD — After the June 20 Annual Town Meeting overwhelmingly approved a $9.6 million plan to expand and rehab the police side of the Public Safety Building, opponents have filed in court an effort to derail the project. A complaint has been filed in Middlesex Superior Court seeking to have the rules changed regarding the collection of signatures required to put a vote of Town Meeting to a town-wide election.
Robert Mitchell of Spaulding Street filed the initial complaint on June 30. He is seeking to have the requirements relaxed for the collection of signatures in order to put the rehab and expansion of the Public Safety Building approved at the June 20 Annual Town Meeting to a town-wide election. He wants the number of required signatures reduced by 50 percent and the deadline extended for collecting signatures. He is also seeking to have electronic signatures accepted due to the difficulty in collecting “wet” signatures in person due to COVID-19.
According to Town Counsel Thomas Mullen, Mitchell subsequently filed a preliminary injunction on July 2 in an effort to expedite court action on his complaint. Mullen has until July 17, 2020 to oppose that motion. The judge will then decide whether to hold a hearing and whether to grant any relief.
Part of the reason Mitchell is seeking such relief is his contention that due to the COVID-19 pandemic, some voters could not attend the 2020 Annual Town Meeting for fear that it could cause them harm or death due to COVID-19. He refers to “written requests for reasonable accommodations under the Americans with Disabilities Act” that he maintains were rejected by the town.
Article 5 on the Town Meeting warrant sought $9.6 million for the rehab and expansion of the police side of the Public Safety Building. After a PowerPoint presentation by Police Chief Steven Skory followed by a lengthy discussion, Town Meeting voted 196-17 in favor of Article 5, easily surpassing the two-thirds majority required.
It was the second time in three years that Town Meeting has approved the PSB upgrade. In May of 2018, Town Meeting approved substantially the same plan by a vote of 168-41. But a group of citizens, led by Mitchell and Bob McLaughlin of Water Street, collected the required 200 signatures to place the Town Meeting article to a townwide ballot. In the Special Election that followed on June 26, voters rejected the plan by 76 votes. The following September, the Town Council voted to create a 17-member Public Safety Building Reassessment Committee.
Mitchell was a member of that committee, which determined that the issues with the building still needed to be addressed and recommended substantially the same plan to expand the footprint of the building out on the Union Street side. The expansion would create an additional 4,192 square feet of operational space, an increase of more than 40 percent, according to Police Chief Steven Skory. He noted that the increase in operational space would meet current needs and would allow the Police Department to grow with the community and create space for additional support personnel. The project would also address a major concern by relocating police dispatch from the second floor to the first-floor lobby.
When the Public Safety Building Reassessment Committee voted on the latest plan to rehab the building, Mitchell abstained while all other members voted in favor. Mitchell was also a member of a subcommittee charged with investigating alternative sites for a new police station. That subcommittee never produced a recommendation, according to Public Safety Building Reassessment Committee Chairman Ed Dombroski.
Since the last time Mitchell et al collected signatures to force a townwide ballot, Town Meeting has increased the number of signatures required from 200 to 2.5 percent of the total number of registered voters in town (approximately 460). Such a petition would have been due by July 2. But on July 30, Mitchell filed a complaint in Middlesex Superior Court seeking emergency relief due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
On June 24, 2020 Mitchell had made available online a Referendum Petition of Article 5 to allow voters to sign using an active digital signature.
On June 26, 2020, Mitchell presented to Town Clerk Betsy Sheeran 44 printed petition forms generated from the online form. Sheeran declined to accept these electronic signatures based on legal guidance she received from Town Counsel Thomas Mullen.
Mitchell then had a phone call with Mullen, and provided a court case and ruling which Mitchell claimed has granted relief for similar petitions.
Mitchell then sent a letter to the Town Council asking that they seek a court judgment that would allow the submission and filing of electronic signatures to be valid, and asking that the deadline for filing the petition be extended to 10 days after the court judgement or July 8, whichever is later. The Town Council should similarly be allowed 20 days from submission to have the signatures validated and call a special election (or defer the vote to the regular election scheduled for Sept.1). Mitchell further requested a reduction of the number of voters required to sign the municipal referendum petition to 50% of the amount designated in the charter. Mitchell requested that Town Counsel seek that an emergency judgement be declared by the Massachusetts Superior Court to ratify this relief no later than July 2, 2020.
On Monday, June 29, the Town Council held an emergency meeting in executive session to discuss the matter and the relief requested in Mitchell’s letter.
But immediately following that meeting, Town Counsel Mullen emailed Mitchell with some bad news.
“The only relaxation of the existing rules which I am authorized to offer or agree to is that voters may download the petition form, sign it and then file the original, “wet” signature (either by themselves or through you or other collectors) with the Town Clerk prior to 4:30 p.m. on Thursday, 7/2/20,” Mullen wrote. “This should accommodate people who do not wish to meet face-to-face with a collector, or touch a pen or paper given them by another person. It also means that petitions will be accepted four hours past the now-usual closing time of Town Hall on the deadline date of7/2/20. Please note that no form of electronic signature will be accepted, nor will a scanned signature, and there can be no change in the deadline or the number of signatures required under our Charter.”
The following day, June 30, Mitchell filed a complaint in Middlesex Superior Court. He cited another court case from earlier this year, where electronic signatures were allowed. In Goldstein v. Secretary of the Commonwealth, Docket No. SJC~ 12931 (4/17/20), the Supreme Judicial Court granted extraordinary relief to candidates seeking to appear on the state primary ballot, which included permitting them to submit electronic signatures on their nomination papers.
But, as Mullen noted in his earlier opinion to the Town Clerk, the court made it clear that “the relief we provide is limited to the primary election in these extraordinary circumstances, which is the sole subject of the case before us.” Furthermore, Mullen said, in none of the various pieces of emergency legislation passed in the wake of COVID-19 has the Legislature said anything about permitting the use of electronic signatures in petitions to put candidates’ names or referendum questions on the ballot.
Mullen has until July 17 to respond on behalf of the town to Mitchell’s July 2 motion for a preliminary injunction. Mullen said that there is no way to know when the judge may issue a decision.
