Citizen’s petition submitted to name – or rename – new school

Feb 5, 2020

A citizen’s petition to name the new elementary school being built on Minot Avenue the Wareham Elementary School has been submitted for the April Town Meeting. 

The petition follows months of debate over what the school should be named -- and who has the authority to name it.  

At the January 28 Board of Selectmen meeting, the board (with Jim Munise abstaining) voted against allowing an article proposing the Wareham Elementary School name that was brought by the School Committee, and said that the school had already been named.

The board’s position is that when Town Meeting approved a debt exclusion to fund the school, it simultaneously named it the Decas School at Minot Forest. 

School Committee member Joyce Bacchiocchi said that the School Committee wanted to give the town a chance to name the school. 

The citizens petition article cannot be blocked by the Selectmen.

At the Feb. 4 Selectmen’s meeting, Selectman Alan Slavin advised the authors of the citizen’s petition to take a look at the wording of the proposed warrant article and the signatures, saying that there may be technical issues with the article. Citizen’s petitions must be signed by ten registered voters.

Selectman Patrick Tropeano and Town Administrator Derek Sullivan said that the town is typically hands-off in regards to citizen’s petitions, while Munise said that he thinks that alerting petitioners to potential technical issues is the “nice thing to do,” because most citizens are inexperienced when it comes to writing warrant articles.

Tropeano disagreed, and noted that most citizen’s petitions are an attempt to “go around” or “evade” the Selectmen.

“We’re here for a reason. I think we get elected in order to make these decisions […] and it gets pretty bad when only ten people can go around us,” Tropeano said. “That’s absurd. It should be hundreds of people coming together [...] It should be a real coalition coming together saying ‘okay, you guys are wrong, and this is what we want to do,’ not just ten people. Because you can get ten people to sign saying anything you want.”