Countdown Till Town Meeting

Editor’s Note: The 2024 Annual Town Meeting convenes next Monday, May 6. As a special service to our readers and the registered voters of Saugus, we have reached out to all 50 Town Meeting members over the past 10 weeks, focusing on one precinct each week, asking members about their expectations for the upcoming Town Meeting. This week, we received responses from one of the five Town Meeting Members in Precinct 10.

  Q: What do you consider the top priority for the town as you prepare for the opening of the 2024 Town Meeting session?

Peter Manoogian: The top priority for the town has been, and will continue to be, to strengthen and sustain our financial standing. Without question the town is in the best fiscal condition it has been in since the inception of Proposition 2.5 in the early 1980s, a measure that limited the ability of Massachusetts communities to tax property owners. With both reserves and bond rating at an all-time high, Saugus is well positioned to embark on a municipal Renaissance that will include top quality public services and amenities for the public. A second top priority is less tangible but perhaps most important of all. Will Saugus Town Meeting again return to that once unwritten, yet implicitly understood rule we once had that said, “I will never vote to place in your neighborhood or precinct what I wouldn’t want in mine?”

Q: What do you consider the top priority for residents in your precinct as you prepare for the opening of the 2024 Town Meeting session?

Peter Manoogian: There are several top priorities for Precinct 10. One is to see the Saugus River Floodgate Project begun. This important initiative is the only solution that will protect properties not only in East Saugus but throughout Saugus where storm surge combined with high tides result in flooding, impassable roadways and threats to property values. In fact, all of Saugus taxpayers become affected when a group of properties, for whatever reason, decline in value thus requiring the unaffected properties to accept a higher fiscal burden to maintain the levy set under Proposition 2.5. While the Town Meeting has nothing before it, the Town Manager and the Board of Selectmen have communicated to state and federal officials that Saugus is ready to commit its fair share of funding to a necessary study required by the Army Corps of Engineers prior to construction. This project must now be guided forward by Representatives Gianino, Wong and Senator Creighton.

The second top priority is to see the WIN ash landfill closed and the upgrading of the incinerator itself so that it can meet, and ideally exceed, emission standards without buying “credits” from other facilities that can meet standards. This environmental abomination is in design and scope unparalleled in any Massachusetts community or throughout the United States. Recently the US EPA has reported that the Saugus incinerator is the only incinerator in the United States that is technologically incapable of meeting emission levels for NOx emission. NOx is a pollutant that exacerbates asthma and respiratory ailments in both children and adults. Those that advocate the sustainment of this facility in its current state along with doubling the vertical height of the unlined, lead-laden ash landfill for a mere million dollars per year are literally advocating for Saugus to accept risk burdens to the public health and the environment that no other community in the country would even consider.

Q: Are you working independently or in collaboration with other members on articles to be introduced for this year’s Town Meeting? Could you please elaborate? Summarize your article and what you hope to accomplish.

Peter Manoogian: Four of the five Precinct 10 Town Meeting Members have stood in unison on the two aforementioned priorities. In the past we have met collectively to identify immediate, short-term and long-term issues for Precinct 10.

I have three articles that will be before the annual meeting that I am confident will have support from my colleagues. The first is to form a closure committee for the ash landfill that will, hopefully, include a representative from WIN Waste. This committee will be much like the Aggregate Quarry closure committee which I was a member of that had a constructive and productive outcome that will ultimately benefit Saugus, the owners and the environment.

My second article is to form a study committee to establish a process for inspecting apartments each time they are leased. As apartments proliferate on Route 1 due to generous permitting by past Planning Boards and Boards of Selectmen, Saugus is one of the few communities that does not inspect apartments for health and safety compliance. Such a process would protect new tenants from health and safety threats and well as landlords who may sometimes face frivolous claims about apartment conditions.

I also have a third article that would amend the town charter to prevent a sitting selectman or school committee member from seeking a paid position appointed by the board they serve on for a period of 18 months after they leave office.

Q: Please feel free to share any other views about the upcoming Town Meeting. Thank you for your time.

Peter Manoogian: I was delighted to see so many new as well as veteran Town Meeting Members attend the recent mini seminars that myself, Carla Scuzzarella and Steve Doherty sponsored. At those seminars I sensed curiosity, motivation and a willingness to listen to other points of view. So often we read and hear about the dysfunction and ineffectiveness of legislative bodies.

I am also looking forward to a Town Meeting where no longer a resident can be prevented from speaking by a majority vote of the members thanks to the approval by the attorney general of the bylaw I proposed and saw passed last year that will now require a 9/10 vote of the membership to prevent a resident from being heard.