A few acres here or there. Like 100 and we get 5000 new friends. Come on.

Ugh, don't invite the Boston people over. They'll never leave. There's also a lot of protected land out here we probably shouldn't clearcut.

Great idea. Social media already controls free speech and the Justice Dept is already trying to criminalise parents who criticise school boards so why not?

Life, Liberty and Censorship.

This state isn’t perfect but it’s pretty well run compared to the majority of the other states.

I can point to one area where money can be saved. Most states control traffic with construction laborers doing flagging duty. We open up the OT chest for the Staties to do the same thing essentially.

We also import a lot of our food from Canada too

Really though, you should keep your heart rate as low as possible and cover the bite with a clean bandage. It takes a lot of antivenin for a timber rattlesnake bites and many hospitals don't have it because it's expensive and expires. Realistically if you're far from help and also far from a hospital, you could end up in a very bad situation.

Fortunately, timber rattlesnakes are not very aggressive and prefer to leave. They're ambush predators so be careful around bush and fallen logs you have to step over. Make noise while hiking,they'll likely leave and you will never know they were there. Copperheads prefer to hang out on sunny rocky areas, be careful climbing rocks.

Dude gets his post removed for misinformation then posts the exact same misinformation again, this time with a hysterical 1984 reference.

Sure. If you find they’re not warm to it because of the paranoia you’ve referenced, depending on your town’s specific requirements, you can type something up, get the required # of voters to sign it, and it has to go into town meeting for a vote. Bylaws by the people!

Shocking. It’s like a highly educated bunch of people make money and are highly capable. Go figure.

The Board of Health is not required to allow a general public commen at the end of their agenda. But specific public hearings for septic permits, and other regulatory things, do require the ability to speak publicly at the public hearing. So, you are allowed to speak under state regulation about your neighbors variance request to build their leachfield closer than allowed by your town bylaw to a wetland, but you are not allowed to speak to a general concern about actions the Board of Health should take at the end of a meeting or whenever, unless the chair decides to recognize you.

I really think the state should make it required to allow some form of public comment with a reasonable time limits and reasonable topic limits at every public meeting. And I’m a public official… Take up an extra 30 minutes of my time in a meeting, please! If that means we have active invested residents, who care about what’s happening in the municipality, fuck yeah. Bring it on!

Marlborough finally repaved two roads I use pretty often and it feels like a luxury.

But hey if you want to feel better about our roads take a quick trip over the border to RI, you'll feel much better after that.

It sounds like our system has been individual bylaws; so it's Board of Health bylaws that Citizen's Time go under, not city-wide bylaws. And so, Board of Health can just vote to repeal those for themselves. (They have not done that yet; one member tried to hold a vote, and the compromise agreed upon was that Citizen's Time would be pulled for next month's meeting, and a vote will be held then.)

I'll be bringing this up with my town reps, as I'd feel a lot more comfortable if it took a city-wide debate to remove public forum options. Or even state wide; I might also contact my state reps.

I thought we were all unemployed protestors... hmmm...

Not race ,the black color on the map is places without population

My Board of Health is one of the boards considering the removal of Citizen Time. It sounded from their meeting like they'd reviewed this with legal already; however, now that I go and look at MA regulations for boards of health, I see there are a lot of references to public comments, and it certainly sounds like they're required for several specific things. It seems like it'd get very complicated trying to not provide this at each meeting, and still provide it where required.

I guess I'm not sure though; does "public comment" legally mean "time to speak in public"? Would letters etc count, or is this requiring an opportunity at an open forum?

I think I'll start with outlining my concerns and sending them to my Board of Health members. I'd like to give them the opportunity to respond. (I really do think they are generally pretty reasonable folks who are just panicking right now.) I agree though that at a state level, it would be really great to have this codified into law.... I had assumed it was!

The Board of Health also talked about how other boards would be yanking their Citizen's Time in response, but they didn't say which boards, and the BOH and Ways and Means are the only ones that've had meetings since the ruling (W&M didn't bring it up). My point being; it sounds like this could be a big problem across town, but I don't know for sure if it is yet.

What waste.... punchline of the story..

Only in MA are people so proud of being rude

Wouldn't be the first time politicians didn't like a law and tried to ignore it and got smacked with more lawsuits.

Insert "taxes are so high, of course we don't need extra from the feds" joke here?

>It sounds like their read on this case is that someone could abuse this time to, say, read Mein Kampf during Citizen’s Time, and they wouldn’t be able to do anything to stop them. The court case left measures like time limiting/mic cutting/etc open; however, my town doesn’t want to be the one sued over it, and I kinda don’t blame them.

Have you ever been to a town hall meeting? Citizens say absolutely bat shit crazy stuff all of the time. The consequence of someone reading Mein Kampf in their 2 minutes of time is... absolutely nothing. Nothing happens. Everyone is just bored and annoyed.

>My municipality is reacting to the court case by considering pulling Citizen’s Time from meeting agendas. (So much for a win for free speech, huh?)

Any town that gets rid of basic citizen engagement because someone might say something annoying or rude is doing a disservice to democracy for absolutely no conceivable benefit of the citizens they supposedly serve, besides sparing the dozen people at a town hall meeting from being slightly annoyed for 2 minutes. They should feel shame at their failure to uphold basic democratic principles because of their fear of a brief moment of mild discomfort and annoyance.

>I think some of the boards are kind of panicking; they can picture someone coming into the meeting and being horrific and then if they time-limit them or adjourn the meeting, they end up being sued.

Run a camera. Time limits to speaking time are legal. You can cute someone off after their unhinged rant once the time limit is over, just like you can cut off the little old lady who wants to talk about about the kids next door playing too loudly for 10 minutes. This isn't even hypothetical. You can watch Town Hall footage all over the internet of people's unhinged or hilarious rants, and after the time is up, no gives a shit and just moves onto the next person.

>Are there any better suggestions I could suggest? I understand why they’re worried, but I want to make sure I keep my ability to make a fuss over the font size choices for the new town center sign.

I don't understand why they are worried and I give them no such charitability. The absolute worst case scenario is that the dozen people at a town hall meeting listen to an unhinged 2 minute long rant, feel mildly annoyed, and then move onto the next person. That's it.

Angry and rude words won't hurt you. You don't need to be afraid. You certainly don't need to start ejecting basic democratic principles and participatory government over this incredibly stupid and completely irrational "fear" of hearing annoying and rude words from a random citizen.

Not enough to feed the whole country. And it's mainly fruit, vegetables and nuts. If you think we can all just survive off of Californias food you're delusional.

It's also not great for the environment shipping it all the way across the nation.

But yes the red states only produce corn syrup nothing else.

"Where do you think the food we buy comes from?"

"The grocery store."

Comment time is enshrined in bylaw where I live, and town meeting would never agree to repeal it.

Not sure where you live, but look into a citizens petition for town meeting to pass a similar bylaw to ours where every committee meeting must have comments as the first item. Not optional.

This was my first thought lol