Reporter’s Notebook: SGES playground funding passes; Happy birthday Evan

Town Meeting missed the opportunity to sing an off-key rendition of “Happy Birthday” to Town Administrator Evan Brassard.

You may think that Town Meeting is the last place Brassard would want to celebrate his birthday. Clearly, you do not know Brassard. Forget the candles, the balloons, the birthday candles, the card passed around for signatures (one inevitably upside down).

Give the man a copy of “Town Meeting Time: A Handbook of Parliamentary Law” from the Massachusetts Moderators Association. Wrap a warrant in a big red bow. It’s Town Meeting time again, and Brassard is not only a fan of dad jokes, he kinda geeks out at Town Meeting time.

Who doesn’t? Let’s get down to it.

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While the defeat of Article 37, the Affordable Housing Trust’s attempt to gain access to the Community Preservation Committee, took up most of the oxygen at Town Meeting, there were other CPC items of note:

• $135,000 for the South Grafton Elementary School Playground Accessibility Project;
• $64,500 for the 14th of 20 payments on the $1.2 million bond for the Pell Farm property;
• $74,100 for the 8th of 20 payments on the $1.1 million bond issued for the restoration of the Grafton Town House.

Article 32, which appointed $15,000 for the Unitarian Universalist Society of Grafton & Upton’s accessibility project, drew some criticism.

Resident Scott Rossiter questioned why the CPC was funding a project for the church for a second time (the first was the restoration of the bell tower last fall). Acknowledging that it is an historic building, he questioned whether that opens up CPC funding to any of the buildings and businesses in the Grafton Common Historic District.

“I think this is a very dangerous place to go,” he said. “That building, just a few years ago, was under consideration to be sold.”

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If the Town Meeting audience was looking a little on the young side Monday, it wasn’t your imagination. Social studies students from Grafton Middle School were invited by Town Moderator Dawn Anderson to experience Grafton’s legislative body for themselves.

The middle school is resuming its annual trip to Washington, D.C. for the first time since 2019. The students played a round of Town Meeting Bingo, watched adults parade to the microphone, and even earned an A for showing up.

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