Hanson: Not enough voters show to reconvene Special Town Meeting

The first night of Hanson’s Special Town Meeting ended within about an hour after the required quorum of 100 voters was questioned and Hanson stumbled upon that same roadblock again on the second night except that town meeting was never able to resume.

After waiting an extra 15 minutes for voters to filter in, town meeting was dissolved seeing that only 59 Hanson voters were in the audience.

“We can usually get a quorum with no problem. But hopefully we’ll have a quorum in May,” says Town Administrator Rene Read

Read says that since the time sensitive issues, the money articles, have already been voted on, the 8 articles left can wait, “With the remaining articles, most likely they’ll be advanced to the May town meeting. Unfortunately they weren’t approved tonight because we didn’t have the quorum but the town can certainly readdress them.”

However because the adoption of a Stormwater Management bylaw wasn’t voted on, they’ll have to answer to the Environmental Protection Agency. “That’s one that we’re trying to achieve compliance with the EPA but we’ll reach out to them and explain to them that we’ve made this good faith effort in trying to achieve compliance and I believe they’ll understand and hopefully [they] won’t hit us with any fines [though] I don’t think they will but we just want to make sure they understand that we’re trying to do the best we can,” explains Read

The other lingering articles include the adoption of a Junk Dealer and Collector bylaw and the acceptance of two roads as town ways.