Charter & Bylaw Review

Last night I attended the meeting of the Charter & Bylaw Review Committee, called because the committee had just gotten back from its publisher/consultant, General Code, the draft codification of the items that were submitted for codification, namely

• the town charter,
• the town bylaws, and
• the zoning bylaws.

Hard copies of the draft were distributed to committee members for their review and the committee will meet again on 8/27/13 to discuss General Code’s apparent suggestions for edits.

Next the committee will collect all the rest of the town regulations from each department (e.g. – the schools, the Medfield Police Department, the Medfield Fire Department, the Board of Health, and all other departments), so that copies of those can be added as appendices, thereby putting all the town rules and regulations in one place.  A conscious decision was made at General Code’s suggestion, to codify only the three major items (charter, bylaws, and zoning), and to have the rest as attached appendices.  Once the result is worked through, the materials will be on-line for the public.

The committee appeared to refer to the Medfield State Hospital Advisory Committee the task of reviewing what new bylaws the town needs in light of the possible development of the Medfield State Hospital site.  Such rules and regulations could also assure that the town is properly positioned for other large developments, such as The Parc on West Street.

Examples of such possible new rules and regulations might include the following –

• does the town want to be notified before hazardous materials are transported through town,
• does the town want to be able to specify the routes that hazardous materials transported through town must use,
• does the town want to be able to control the hours during which any work may take place
• does the town want to be able to control the amount of noise created by construction work
• does the town want to be able to control the amount of dust created by construction work

Someone needs to be looking into whether the Town of Medfield should have any such controls going forward, and if we want any, to recommend just which ones to have.  The annual town meeting (ATM) will then ultimately decide whether any such new proposed rules and regulations are actually adopted.

If any individual resident is interested in assisting the town by undertaking the needed review of what new bylaws the town should perhaps enact in light of the possible Medfield State Hospital site development and other developments in town, please contact me.  I think there is an opportunity for a motivated resident to do such a review for the town

• by reviewing what other towns have done (much of that is already in hand),
• by polling all the departments about what each sees as being needed, and
• by brainstorming what would be best.

It could be an interesting time limited project, and one that will be extremely useful and important to the future of the town.