As a long time Belmont resident and a former Town Meeting member from Precinct 3, I am writing to urge you to join me in voting to re-elect our Town Meeting moderator Mike Crowley, to a second term. The years I spent serving at Town Meeting showed me the importance of having a moderator who is fair, transparent, and who respects the rights and independence of Town Meeting as Belmont’s legislative body. That’s Mike Crowley.
Since being elected moderator last year, Mike has implemented a number of changes to make our Town Moderator’s work more transparent and accountable. Those include the creation of a Moderator’s Committee made up of Belmont residents, which holds regular, open meetings, and provides feedback on matters before the moderator, such as committee appointments and Town Meeting procedures.
Moderator Crowley has also reinstated hybrid Town Meetings to empower Town Meeting members with young children, work conflicts or health or mobility issues to attend and participate in Town Meeting debates. Then there are simple things like the deployment of a digital timer so that it no longer falls exclusively to the moderator to decide when a speaker’s allotted “three minutes” of speaking time is, in fact, two, three, four or five minutes long.
Finally, there’s Mike’s deep sense of fairness and steady temperament. Our recent special Town Meeting had Belmont Town Meeting members sharing passionate and varied opinions on proposed zoning bylaw overlays for Belmont Center and the Belmont Center Gateway.
Throughout the contentious discussion, Mike displayed an impressive degree of control, focus and patience as he moderated the discussion, addressed questions and “points of order” from Town Meeting members and moved Town Meeting toward successive Yes votes on the proposed articles.
Please join me in voting to re-elect Mike Crowley as Belmont’s moderator.
Vera L. Iskandarian, Waverley Street