Bylaw Review Committee

 

Abington Town Offices, 500 Gliniewicz Way, Abington, Massachusetts 02351

 

 

 

Summary of Proposed Revisions to General Bylaws

For April 2006 Annual Town Meeting

 

 

Our Town Charter requires that a Bylaw Review Committee be formed at least every five years. The current Abington Bylaw Review Committee consists of five volunteer members who have been meeting since October of 2004 to review and draft proposed revisions to our General Bylaws.  The members of the Bylaw Review Committee (BRC) are Michael Franey, Shawn Reilly, Kathy Creighton, Ann Welch and Andy Burbine.  The main purpose and mission of the BRC was to ensure that Abington’s General Bylaws were updated to be in compliance with the recent revisions to the Town Charter approved by the residents of Abington in 2004.  The BRC held numerous public meetings and sent various drafts of proposed bylaw revisions to town departments and officers, and we requested that they review and compare the existing wording of the Bylaws and the proposed revisions to the Bylaws.  We have corresponded with or held meetings with representatives of the Finance Committee, the Town Manager’s Office, the Town Accountant, the Animal Control Department, the Building Inspector’s Office, the Police Department, the Fire Department, Town Counsel, and interested residents.  We received many valuable comments and suggestions from various residents and town employees, and we have now compiled the proposed updates and revisions to our General Bylaws for the review of the general public.  Since January, a copy of the General Bylaws with notations as to which sections were proposed to be revised has been posted on the town’s website for easy access and review by all of our town’s residents.  Paper copies of the General Bylaws and the proposed revisions have also been available and are still available free of charge at the Town Clerk’s office.  The members of the BRC wish to thank all those people who took time to read through the proposed revisions and offered their suggested edits.

 

In an effort to further notify the town’s voters about the proposed changes to our General Bylaws, our Committee also published a public notice in the newspaper regarding the public hearing held before the Board of Selectmen on March 13, 2006, at which time we presented a summary of the more notable revisions being proposed to the General Bylaws.  The bylaw revisions will require a majority vote of approval at the April 3rd Town Meeting to be held at Abington High School.  

 

 

A summary of some of the proposed revisions to our General Bylaws is as follows:

 

1.         The vast majority of the proposed revisions are simple grammatical and spelling corrections throughout the Bylaws.  The wording of some sections was re-written to either update or clarify the purpose of the bylaw.  For example, the bylaw provisions relating to dog kennel licenses, the display of house numbers for emergency responses, the sale of real estate by the town, and the public notice requirements for certain types of hearings held by the Conservation Commission have been updated and improved.

 

 

 

 

2.         In the current edition of our General Bylaws, some sections contain schedules of fees charged by the town for certain permits or services, while other sections do not contain a schedule of fees.  In the past, the printing of fee schedules in the General Bylaws has created unnecessary problems and delays, because the relatively minor desire to change a permit fee (e.g., a dog license) by $5 would require a Town Meeting vote to change the fee schedule contained in a printed bylaw.  We are proposing to revise the General Bylaws to be consistent throughout, and to comply with Massachusetts General Laws Chapter 40, Section 22F.  Under this statute, if a town official is appointed by an elected board and the official would like to change a fee for some service or permit, the change to the fee must be approved by the elected board which is responsible for the service or permit in question.  For example, if the Building Inspector or Animal Control Officer wants to change their fee schedule, the change must first be approved by the Board of Selectmen.  The Library Director needs the approval of the Board of Library Trustees, and the Sewer Superintendent needs the approval of the Board of Sewer Commissioners.   Our proposed revisions to the General Bylaws also requires that a copy of all fee schedules from all town departments be filed with the Town Clerk’s office, so that any resident will be able to have one source of information about any town fee. Currently, a resident has to check the general bylaws, any amendments to the bylaws, and/or contact the office of each individual town department in order to get this information.  Therefore, the proposed revisions to the General Bylaws will provide a uniform method of reviewing and approving any future fee changes, and residents will be able to check any fee schedule by simply visiting the Town Clerk’s Office.

 

3.         After discussions with the Town Clerk, Town Manager, Finance Committee and Town Moderator, we are proposing to revise Section 152-1 of the General Bylaws to require that the Annual Town Elections be moved to the last Saturday in April of each year – starting in 2007.  The Annual Town Meeting shall continue to be held on the first Monday of April in each year.  The current bylaw language requires Town Meeting to be held on the first Monday of April and the Town Elections to be held on the Saturday following town meeting (only five days after Town Meeting).  It was agreed by all parties that creating more time between the Town Meeting and Town Elections could help assure that our Town Meeting business was finished and budgets were set before we directed our attention to the Town Elections.  You may recall that Town Elections were previously held during the first week of May until 2001, so our proposed change to hold Town Elections on the last Saturday in April comes close to reverting back to our original Election schedule.  We confirmed that state law allows us to hold the Annual Town Elections within 35 days of the Annual Town Meeting, and we can still mail the same single Town Warrant to remind all residents of the dates of both events.   We also confirmed that holding the Annual Town Elections on the last Saturday in April will not conflict with any annual holiday weekends, any annual school events, or any other annual community events.

 

4.         Whenever and wherever possible, our elected officials, appointed officials and volunteer members of committees are being directed to utilize the town website to notify residents of upcoming meetings, agenda items, and public notices.  Using our town website, which will be updated before these revised bylaws take effect, is a free and efficient way for residents to keep updated with issues affecting the town.  Some of the proposed bylaw revisions contain references to our town website.  The website address for the official Town of Abington website is www.abingtonmass.com.  As an example, instead of printing  over 70 pages of our General Bylaws to read the proposed revisions, you can go to www.abingtonmass.com and review it online.

 

 

 

5.         Section 67 of the General Bylaws, which is entitled “Finance Committee”, was updated to comply with the wording of the new Town Charter and to address some of the needs and concerns of the Finance Committee itself.  The revisions have been suggested, reviewed and approved by the Finance Committee, Town Accountant and Town Manager.  The updated wording in this section clarifies the role of the Finance Committee, the deadlines expected by all departments and committees during the annual budget process, and the information to be made available to residents so that we can all be more informed about the budgetary and other issues to be decided by the town. 

 

Two new sections to the General Bylaw are being proposed, based on our Committee’s review of the General Bylaws from other towns and the comments received from town departments:  

 

1.         Section 113-6 was added and is titled “Peeping into Windows”.   It specifically prohibits a person from peeping or spying into the windows of any house or building in town.  Currently, the Police Department can normally charge a peeper only with a trespass violation if such a person is caught in the act.  This new Bylaw will also allow a person to be fined up to $300.00 by the town.

 

2.         Section 122-7 entitled “Swimming Pool Fencing” was also added in order to include and expand the minimum requirements that are currently in effect under state law.  The only difference between the proposed Bylaw and the existing provisions of state law is the Bylaw’s requirement that a swimming pool fence be a minimum of 5 feet in height, whereas state law currently only requires a swimming pool fence to be 4 feet in height unless a town bylaw specifies otherwise.  Most towns in Massachusetts require a minimum pool fence height of 5 or 6 feet.  This Bylaw regarding swimming pool fencing will only apply to the new installation or future renovation or reconstruction of an outdoor private swimming pool or spa or hot tub after May 1, 2006.  An existing pool, spa or hot tub that complied with the current state law shall be grandfathered and will not be required to comply to these new regulations, unless the pool is later redesigned or reconstructed.

 

 

The Bylaw Review Committee did not address any proposed revisions under the Water Use Restriction Bylaw (Chapter 167) or the Solid Waste Bylaw (Chapter 138) because they are recently-enacted Bylaws that can be reviewed or updated by a future Bylaw Review Committee.  We also did not review any portions of our Zoning Bylaw, because the Zoning Bylaws are contained in a separate booklet and revisions to Zoning Bylaws require a different procedure for amendments.  The Planning Board, Zoning Board and Town Planner regularly review the need for any updates or amendments to our Zoning Bylaws.

 

We also did not attempt to re-number the various Chapters of the existing General Bylaws, in order to limit any confusion at our upcoming Town Meeting.  When the Bylaws were codified a few years ago, the existing Chapter numbers were assigned to our various bylaw provisions.  The Chapter numbers do not currently run in sequential order; some numbers were skipped between Chapters.  We believe that this may have been done in order to provide room for the insertion of new Chapters in the years to come.  In any event, the numbering sequence of the Chapters was intentionally not edited or amended by our Committee.

 

 

 

The Bylaw Review Committee has retyped the entire set of General Bylaws and has highlighted all of those sections which contain proposed new language. All language that is proposed to be deleted has been crossed out, so residents who review a copy of the General Bylaws on the town‘s website will be able to easily note which sections will be affected by the proposed revisions to the General Bylaws.  We have also included notes in the margin of each of the proposed revisions which explain the reasons for each revision, which we hope will help interested residents better understand the purpose of the revision.  Again, we invite all residents to take the time to review the proposed revisions before the April 3rd Town Meeting by visiting the town website at www.abingtonmass.com, and to also feel free to contact any Bylaw Review Committee member prior to Town Meeting to ask any questions or offer any suggestions. 

 

It should be noted that there are other areas in the Bylaws that are very deserving of additional updates and proposed revisions, but the current Bylaw Review Committee made a concerted effort to try to focus this set of revisions on:

 

(1) those Bylaw revisions that were necessary to achieve compliance and coordination with the recent 2004 updates to the Town Charter, 

 

(2)  those obvious revisions that were needed to correct spelling or grammatical errors, or which would allow a Bylaw revision to read more clearly,  and

 

(3) those Bylaw revisions which received the unanimous support and approval of the affected town departments or agencies and which did not appear to involve any controversial issues. 

 

It is our hope and desire that the residents who take time to read these revisions will agree that this clean-up of our General Bylaws is necessary and timely, and that the approval of the proposed Bylaw revisions will help our town run more efficiently.  Our Town Charter, our General Bylaws, our Zoning Bylaws, and our other town regulations are works in progress and are always in need of constant review and updating.  As members of the current Bylaw Review Committee, it was a pleasure for each of us to volunteer our time on this committee and we hope that residents will take the time to review the proposed bylaw revisions prior to Town Meeting.  We also ask residents to take the time to attend our Annual Town Meeting on Monday, April 3, 2006 at 7pm in the Abington High School gymnasium. 

 

 

 

The Bylaw Review Committee

 

Michael Franey, Chair

Shawn Reilly

Kathy Creighton

Ann Welch

Andy Burbine