Fifth time's a charm? Moultonborough reschedules Town Meeting, again

MOULTONBOROUGH — On Friday afternoon, less than 24 hours before the Town Meeting was scheduled to begin, an alert was posted on the town’s website that the meeting was being postponed – for a fourth time. The meeting is now scheduled for the evening of June 29.

The sudden decision to reschedule capped off a week of conflict for the town. Twice the selectboard voted 4-1 to urge the moderator to reschedule the meeting, and on Thursday night, the chair of the board, Joel Mudgett, resigned.

It wasn’t because of the selectmen’s vote that Paul Punturieri, moderator, pushed the meeting back. Instead, it was because he heard that there were some residents who were seeking legal action in order to block the meeting from happening. Punturieri said he wanted to avoid a legal entanglement, so he announced a new time and place for the meeting.

That turned out to be a good idea, because Judge Amy Ignatius, at Carroll County Superior Court, agreed with the petition filed by residents Eric and Marlene Taussig. Ignatius signed a temporary restraining order, preventing Punturieri from holding the meeting on Saturday.

Opposition to the meeting was due to the unusual plan combined with the forecast. The town meeting, expected to draw several hundred voters, was originally scheduled for March. The first three times it was delayed due to fears over coronavirus transmission, and Punturieri thought he had found a safe alternative plan by holding the meeting drive-in style, with voters staying in their vehicles in a large field at the Sandwich Fairgrounds.

The town of Jaffrey had successfully held such a meeting earlier this month, and Punturieri thought it would work for Moultonborough, which was operating without an approved budget. In fact, he still thinks it would have worked had he been able to run the meeting. The school district meeting was held on Saturday morning, drive-in style, and he said it went “absolutely perfect. We had 116 people sign in, we had no issues, no complaints,” he said.

The school district meeting began at 9 a.m. and lasted about 20 minutes. But the town meeting, with 27 warrant articles, was not expected to be so expeditious. There were two articles proposing to issue bonds to pay for a new community center – a proposal which has been a point of controversy in town for years – and another divisive article that asked voters to raze a historic building. The meeting was expected to last for hours.

Meanwhile, the forecast called for summery temperatures. In their petition, the Taussigs raised several issues with the plan, including the selection of a site in a neighboring town and the use of portable toilets, which voters would be expected to sanitize after they use them. But it was the possibility for high temperatures, combined with a state regulation that prohibits the idling of car engines for more than five minutes for every hour, that Judge Ignatius found most compelling.

“Hundreds of vehicles in violation of environmental regulation or hundreds of Moultonborough residents, many of whom are elderly, sitting for hours in high heat and humidity, are both poor prospects. The court finds there is immediate threat of irreparable harm…,” Ignatius wrote in her order granting the petition.

Punturieri said he disagreed with that position, which was the same argument selectmen had made earlier in the week.

“We had made a lot of preparations, my personal feeling was that the concerns were not as valid as people were making (them) out to be,” Punturieri said. “I believed that it could have gone on,” he said, adding that there would have been the “failsafe” measure of adjourning the meeting if conditions became intolerable.

Punturieri won’t get to test that theory, since the latest plan to dispose of the town's business is to meet at Moultonborough Academy on June 29. Though his recent announcement was for the meeting to start at 4 p.m., Punturieri said on Monday that he is changing the meeting time to 6:30 p.m. so that voters will be able to get there after work.

“It’s going to be indoors, but we’re going to separate people throughout the Academy,” Punturieri said. Voters will be stationed in the auditorium, cafeteria, gymnasium and even in classrooms, if necessary. Proceedings will be broadcast on closed-circuit television, and he said he’s trying to figure out a way for people to vote if they don’t want to enter the building.

“We’re hoping to get a good number of people,” Punturieri said. “I’m hoping we can go forward on the 29th and finally get this done.”