The Temple Select Board’s unanimous vote to postpone Town Meeting and ballot voting until June leaves Temple as the sole ConVal town to defer voting on the school district warrant.
The remainder of the nine towns which make up the ConVal district are scheduled to vote on the school warrant on March 9. On Monday night, Temple’s Select Board voted to reschedule voting on the school warrant and local officials to June 8 and to defer their Town Meeting to June 12. Legal review is ongoing, Select Board member Bill Ezell said, but Temple interpreted the wording of the Governor’s executive order to mean they could postpone voting for their school district’s warrant as well as town-specific items. In the instance that Temple learns the law does, in fact, require the town to vote on the school warrant on March 9, “we are going to protest loudly,” he said.
When asked about the ramifications of a delayed vote, ConVal School Board Chair Rich Cahoon declined to comment. “We are confident this is going to be worked out and there will be an election on March 9,” he said.
Superintendent Kimberly Rizzo Saunders did not respond to a request for comment by press time.
Temple’s Emergency Management Director John Kieley strongly encouraged the Select Board to defer both voting and the Town Meeting in the name of public health, since most residents will not have received the vaccine by the March voting date. “It will be safer, and residents will be more comfortable participating,” in a deferred meeting, Kieley said.
Kieley noted that the school district’s fiscal year renews in July, still in advance of a deferred vote. During the meeting, Ezell asked when ConVal ever gave something to the town on time. “What are they gonna do, kick us out?” resident Gail Cromwell said during a public comment period. “I mean, really.”
Several community members also spoke in support of postponing voting and the town meeting as late as they possibly could, but balked at rescheduling for July, in case meeting times conflicted with election workers and resident’s vacations. “The more people who are vaccinated, the safer we’re all gonna be,” resident Krista Stringer said.
The Board made their decision after Town Moderator Bruce Kullgren told them that every other town was going forward with March voting. Kullgren and Town Clerk Joyce Kullgren, his wife, were in favor of March voting, he said on Tuesday. “I never thought my selectmen were going to do that,” he said, after holding four elections so far during the pandemic, including a record 750 people who chose to vote in person during the general election. “Not a single case of COVID that any of us know about,” resulted from the elections, he said.
When asked on Tuesday why Temple wouldn’t just offer residents the ability to vote via absentee ballot, as in Francestown, Ezell said the law requires polls be open and staffed even if absentee ballots are being used. The Board also didn’t see the point in having a vote so far in advance of the June Town Meeting.
The Select Board received “dozens and dozens” of emails from town residents, all but one requesting to postpone both voting and town meeting, Ezell said. “Nobody wants to go to the polls,” he said, despite the other votes the town held in the past year.
When asked what he’d say to the rest of the school district, in the case that Temple succeeded in delaying their vote on the school warrant and it wound up affecting school district activities, Ezell said initial communications with the town attorney indicated that Temple could pay ConVal the same rate as they did last year prior to voting on the school district’s warrant.