WHATELY — The 17 residents who attended Wednesday’s special Town Meeting were gone almost as quickly as they arrived.
All five articles were swiftly approved with almost no discussion in a seven-minute meeting. Chiefly, residents endorsed using $116,928 to pay off the rest of the money borrowed for a Town Hall restoration project in 2017.
Article 3 approved the transfer of $60,323 from the Community Preservation Fund for accessibility improvements at Herlihy Park, including driveway and parking lot paving and a renovation of the bathrooms.
Voters had appropriated $107,911 from free cash for the accessibility improvement project in November, which will be rescinded at annual Town Meeting because the town received a Parkland Acquisitions and Renovations for Communities grant for $62,588. A condition of the grant requires the town to appropriate the full amount before receiving the money.
The other three articles involved an appropriation of $13,530 to maintain and make repairs in cemeteries around town; $5,000 for accessibility improvements at the S. White Dickinson Library; and a reallocation of $16,836.51 approved at Town Meeting in 2019 for additional library work.
Select Board member Joyce Palmer-Fortune said this special Town Meeting mostly involved financial housekeeping as the town needs to go through the proper process to transfer money from one fund to another.
“It’s the things you have to do,” she said, “to stay within the law.”