TWO key civic meetings are taking place in Walpole this week. You may well wish to attend and participate.
1. Tomorrow night--Thursday, May 3 at 7:00 p.m.--two landowner entities in the North Meadows Plaza area will make their pitch to the Selectmen to overturn the March 13 vote of the town to change the zoning ordinance clarifying its intent to limit future commercial buildings to a maximum of 40,000 square feet. You may wish to hear their arguments and to observe the selectmen's response. The meeting is at Town Hall. The regular weekly selectmen's meeting follows and, if you have not recently attended one of those meetings, you might consider staying for it too.
2. Saturday morning at 10:00 a.m. in the Town Hall the selectmen reconvene the town meeting for the purpose of voting on the proposed Ballam Farm bond issue to fund the placement of a conservation easement on 52 acres and to purchase for the town 8 acres around the wellhead on the property north of Rite Aid and between Rt. 12 and the river. Because it involves town borrowing, approval requires at least a two-thirds vote. (While there are rational arguments on both sides of this one, in my opinion they have been clouded a bit this week by some inaccurate and specious nonsense being circulated by opponents.)
