Although Article 23, which would allow for the Town’s zoning bylaw to be amended to allow 3A multi-family overlay districts, passed at Town Meeting, it may be heading to the ballot box this summer.
John DiPiano, a community member who has been vocally against 3A, gathered and submitted roughly 1,200 signatures to the town clerk’s office Monday in accordance to a 1954 article which allows for referendum petitions to be submitted within five days of Town Meeting. This article, according to DiPiano, has never been utilized.
Only 300 signatures are needed to be verified in order to move forward and allow community members to vote on 3A this summer in a special election. According to the town clerk’s office, the signatures are yet to be verified. Town Clerk Robin Michaud was unable to comment prior to Marblehead Weekly News’ Wednesday deadline.
Assuming that there will be at least 300 signatures verified among the roughly 1,200 submitted, DiPiano said the next step in this process is for the Select Board to hold a special meeting with this issue as the sole agenda item in order to discuss the intricacies of how to move forward, such as figuring out where the polling location would be, when the special election would be held, how the votes will be tallied, etc.
According to DiPiano, the special election may be in early July, and at least 20% of Marblehead’s registered voters must vote against 3A this summer to have this referendum petition be successful. That equates to about 3,200 votes. DiPiano said Michaud has confirmed that mail in ballots and absentee ballots will be available.
There are two reasons DiPiano pursued gathering these signatures and bringing this topic to a special election.
“No. 1, I believe that the Select Board had its thumb on the scale in favor of 3A through the Chairperson Erin Noonan and in great measure Selectman Dan Fox. They acted as lobbyists for 3A,” DiPiano said.
He said “the other reason is because many people have indicated that they couldn’t get to Town Meeting, either because of logistics or child care or I guess there were some people who were elderly and can’t sit for six or eight hours in Town Meeting, or however many hours those nights were.”
DiPiano added that, “It was extremely important to me to get it onto the ballot, and arguably, the Select Board should have done that from day one.”
