Published in the April 20, 2016 edition

By DAN TOMASELLO

LYNNFIELD — The April session of Town Meeting will take place on Monday, April 25 in the Lynnfield Middle School auditorium, beginning at 7:30 p.m.

There are 32 articles appearing on the Town Meeting warrant this year, including several notable warrant articles as well as routine housekeeping matters. A quorum of 175 voters is required in order for Town Meeting to conduct the town’s business.

Article 7 will request voters to approve the recommended operating budget for fiscal year 2017, totaling $50,405,205. The proposed FY‘17 budget includes changes to the Fire Department. The proposal, made by Fire Chief Mark Tetreault and supported by the Board of Selectmen, Town Administrator Jim Boudreau and the Finance Committee, seeks to increase coverage at the town’s two stations from the current 8.5 hours per day, five days per week, to 12 hours per day seven days per week.

Tetreault said recently the proposed overhaul would preserve the town’s hybrid system of permanent and call firefighters while adapting the schedule to reflect the realities of today’s two-parent working families.

The budget for FY‘17 also includes the School Department’s recommended school budget totaling $22,865,421. The amount is inclusive of the proposed tuition-free full day kindergarten program.

In addition to the town’s operating budget for FY‘17, voters will be asked to approve Article 8, which is a capital budget totaling $2,528,908. This includes an additional $140,000 to correct a street drainage problem affecting a homeowner on Longbow Circle.

Library design

Article 20 pertains to the library building project. Passage of this article will “authorize the Board of Library Trustees to apply for, accept and expend without further appropriation, any state funds which may be available to defray all or part of the cost of the design, construction and equipping of a new library building.”

Additionally, Article 20 will ask voters to approve the library project’s schematic design.

Article 21 will ask voters to transfer Centre Farm, 567 Main St., to the Board of Selectmen “for the purpose of sale or lease.”

Voters at a special Town Meeting in June 2014 voted 534-27 to purchase the seven-acre Centre Farm for $1.55 million, which included $1.4M to purchase the property as well as an additional $825,000 for repairs.

The Board of Selectmen voted unanimously last year to recommend a similar warrant article that would have transferred control of the property to the selectmen “for the purpose of the sale of the real property.” However, Town Meeting voted to indefinitely postpone the warrant article.

In a public hearing before the Special Town Meeting took place in June 2014, the selectmen amended the purchase of Centre Farm that attached a time certain for the selectmen to take action by requiring the board to submit a plan on the proposed re-use of the buildings and seven acres of land “not later than the annual Town Meeting of April 2016.”

Article 23 will request residents vote to “raise and appropriate, or appropriate by transfer of funds or by borrowing, or from any or all such resources, a sum of money for the design, construction, furnishing and equipping of a clubhouse at the King Rail Reserve Golf Course.”

Article 24, which was submitted by citizens’ petition initiated by the Lynnfield Moms Group, will request voters to appropriate “a sum of money for the construction of municipal outdoor recreational facilities, including the development of land and the construction and reconstruction of facilities at Glen Meadow Park and to determine whether to raise this appropriation by borrowing or otherwise, or take any action related thereto.”

The Lynnfield Moms Group has spent the past few years raising funds for the Glen Meadow Park restoration project and has held a number of fundraisers, including a 1980s themed party recently, to restore the town park.

The Planning Board submitted warrant articles 26-31, all of which seek to update the town’s zoning bylaws. The Planning Board will hold a public hearing on these warrant articles on Friday, April 22 at 7 p.m. at the Al Merritt meeting room, 600 Market St. This public hearing was rescheduled from April 13.

The Conversation Commission submitted Article 32, which will request voters to designate Chestnut Street, Essex Street, Lowell Street, Main Street and Summer Street as “scenic roads.”