Somerville-specific referendum questions?

[rmd.livejournal.com]

I haven't seen anything about it except for a couple of yard signs, but I gather there's a question on the ballot about construction of a new High School. I didn't see a link to it on the city elections department page, and I haven't seen it discussed here. Anyone have info or opinions?

we don't have a tag for 'elections' or 'politics'? I'm surprised.

Comments

[dmaze]

From the City's Web site, the Elections Department has a list of ballot questions (they have statewide Question 1 wrong), saying:

Question 5 (Specific to Somerville)

Shall the City of Somerville be allowed to exempt from the provisions of proposition two and one-half, so-called, the amounts required to pay for the bond(s) issued in order to design, engineer, construct, and equip the new Somerville High School?

I can't tell if that's the entire thing we're voting on, or if there's more detail behind it.

[rmd.livejournal.com]

Aha! Thank you!

[ron_newman]

I scattered four or five emails to various addresses at SomervilleMA.gov, telling them that they need to fix the Question 1 summary. I hope someone acts on this tomorrow.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_meej_/]

Glad you found that - my recollection was that the entirety of the ballot question had to do with the Proposition 2-1/2 Override, but I wasn't sure, so I didn't want to post and be wrong.

For those not sure what that means:
Wikipedia has a good summary (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proposition_2%C2%BD) and if you really want the nitty-gritty then the D.O.R. has a primer for officials to understand it (http://www.mass.gov/dor/docs/dls/publ/misc/levylimits.pdf).

[ron_newman]

One of my e-mails hit the desired target, and the Question 1 summary is now fixed.

[ron_newman]

And now, Dan Moore from the City of Somerville has emailed me that "I’ve just confirmed with our Election Commissioner that this is the full text of the question [5] that is on the actual ballot."