2015 Eastham Town Meeting - Monday May 4th

The Annual Eastham Town Meeting will be held on May 4th this year in the Nauset Regional High School auditorium. This year the warrant has several articles that you should find interesting. They are...

• Article 7 - Rooms Tax - to impose a tax on summer rental homes. This will require the state legislature to approve it prior to any collection of taxes. This could affect 2016 rentals, not 2015. We've seen (and turned down) this article before. The tax would be 4%. 
• Article 8 - Municipal Water - this article will fund the remainder of the municipal water system. So-called Phase 1 was funded last year. The article appropriates $85M for the remainder of the system. Needs a 2/3 vote.
• Article 16 - Private Road Plowing - approves the plowing of some private roads in Town. Roads will need to 'qualify' to be eligible for plowing.
• Article 17 - Hay Rd - this article accepts a portion of Hay Rd as a Town road, the segment from Gov. Prence to Deacon Paine. 
• Article 18 - Vehicles on Beaches - the article is needed to make progress on the crazy discussions about driving 4-wheel vehicles on the Eastham portion of Nauset Spit. This has been an on-going dispute between Eastham and Orleans concerning a section of beach north of Orleans' Nauset Beach and south of Coast Guard Beach. It's not clear that this article, if passed, will resolve the dispute, but it should help.
• Article 30 - Marijuana - this article bans the public consumption of marijuana in Eastham and establishes first offense and multiple offence fines.

The warrant, all 36 pages, is online on the Eastham Town website,.. Here.  I'll try to provide an update on the 'results' of the meeting on my Blog and in next month's newsletter.