Citizen Petition Articles at the ATM
By Gregory T. Federspiel
April 11, 2025
Three citizen petition articles were submitted on time to be included in the warrant for this year’s Annual Town Meeting. The three articles will be part of the 22 articles slated for action at the April 28th meeting at Memorial School starting at 6:30PM.
For an Annual Town Meeting a minimum of 10 signatures are required to place a citizen’s petition article on the warrant. Petitions are placed on the warrant as presented by the petitioners regardless of their legality. Explanations are provided during the meeting.
Article 19 asks voters to instruct the Board of Health to rescind their approval from this past November of a “Zero-Nicotine Generation” policy that bans the sale of nicotine products to anyone born after January 1, 2004. The ban means that even as adults those born after 2003 would not be allowed to purchase tobacco products in Town. The Board of Health, after holding a public hearing on the proposal, passed this new policy, which went into effect last week on April 1, based on the negative health impacts of using products with nicotine.
The Board of Health has statutory authority to adopt policies and regulations related to public health. While voters can express their preference through the citizen petition article, the vote is advisory only. The Board of Health retains the decision-making authority on this matter. The ATM vote is non-binding.
A second citizen petition article, Article 20, seeks a local ban on the use of second generation anticoagulant rodenticides (SGARs.) These chemicals cause problems beyond the rodents they are intended to kill. For example, the chemicals are ingested by the predators that hunt rodents including many birds of prey and can be fatal for these animals as well.
These chemicals are controlled at the state level, and it will require a special act of the legislature to allow Manchester to institute its own ban. A yes vote will set in motion the process by which a special act will be sought. It will be up to the state legislature whether the requested special act is approved.
Article 21 is the third petition article. This article seeks to amend the Town’s construction noise bylaw by increasing the fines issued for violations. The proposal is to have a first offense be subject to a $500 fine and doubling on each infraction going forward. After 5 infractions a cease and desist order is proposed.
The maximum fines for violations of this type are set by the state at $300. Thus, if voters were to approve the proposed amendment to the Town’s construction bylaw, upon the
required review by the AG’s office, it would be disapproved given that it exceeds the statutory limits. This article will likely be passed over due to this conflict with state law.
These three petition articles are only a portion of the warrant. As explained last week, seven articles deal with proposed amendments to the zoning regulations. A more detailed look at the numerous articles dealing with aspects of town expenditures will be the subject of next week’s article. The complete warrant can be found on the Town’s web site. The Finance Committee report, which contains the full warrant, will be mailed to each household next week.