A citizen's petition that sought to censure five town officials for making "false and/or misleading statements" at various Town Meetings and public meetings was not included on Warrant for the Fall Town Meeting, after several petitioners withdrew their signatures Tuesday, according to the Board of Selectmen at their meeting on Tuesday night.

A petition must have at least ten authorized signatures to be placed on the Warrant. With the signatures withdrawn, the petition did not meet this criteria, and the Warrant was closed by the Selectmen at their meeting.

The petition, which was provided to Wareham Week by a proponent,  was prepared and submitted by Peter Baum, a citizen who has repeatedly argued in favor of retaining Town Meeting rather than shifting to a mayoral form of government. Baum insisted that the motive for the article was not political, and acknowledged that it was often difficult to distinguish between lies and honest mistakes, but the article was necessary to "defend the integrity of Town Meeting."

The explanatory article, the first of the seven proposed, argued that censure is a necessary tool for "the truth" and "saving our legislative process from those who would render it dysfunctional."

However, opponents suggested that the articles would limit the willingness of individuals to speak at Town Meeting and thus exacerbate any dysfunction at Town Meeting.

The second of the seven articles would have added a censure provision to Town Meeting bylaws.  This stipulated that individuals censured by town meeting within 750 days of the current date could only speak at Town Meeting if they first said they had been censured and provided the date and reason for the censure.  The remaining five each proposed censure of a specific individual including Alan Slavin, the chair of the Charter Review Committee; John Donahue, former Town Moderator; his wife and Chair of the Board of Selectmen Jane Donahue, Selectmen Brenda Eckstrom, and Community Preservation Committee Chair Nancy Miller.

Most of the charges to support the censure concern statements about the Charter Review process and the town-owned Swifts Beach property.

The Selectmen, meeting in a workshop on Saturday morning, said they were checking with town counsel and the district attorney's office to be sure that the articles' inclusion on the Warrant, the agenda for Town Meeting that they must sign, would not make them potentially liable for civil rights' violations.

We will update this story as more information becomes available.