With Town Meeting scheduled for October 24, the pressure is on to get all fiscal information and voter guidelines completed in time for the warrant to be printed.

At Tuesday's Board of Selectmen meeting, the 22 articles that make up the warrant were up for discussion and, despite the absence of Selectman Steve Holmes, it was eventually agreed that the Selectmen should vote on the articles as submitted even before the Finance Committee weighed in on the agenda items at its Wednesday, September 21 meeting.

The Selectmen and Finance Committee vote on whether to recommend favorable action on each of the warrant articles. Those votes are then published in the warrant in an effort to help voters decide which way to vote on Town Meeting floor.

The document is due to be delivered to printers by Friday at the latest and there was concern that any delay in review of the articles by the Selectmen could lead to the board's guidelines for voters remaining blank.

Selectmen Cara Winslow and Michael Schneider expressed the view that they would prefer to vote with a full Board of Selectmen after the Finance Committee had given its opinion. But Town Administrator Mark Andrews advised that none of the articles that were being presented to the board in the draft document should come as a surprise.

Town administration has been working on these articles for months, Andrews said, pointing out that many of the items being presented for consideration at Town Meeting could be found in documented committee minutes stretching back months.

Andrews stressed that the warrant contains requests for voter authorization of expected purchases that had already been presented to Town Meeting in April.

Addressing the concerns of Winslow, Andrews said: “This didn’t just fall out of some vacuum. This has been the product of many months of work with all committees.”

Winslow agreed to vote on the articles but made it clear that she was not “inclined to vote in favor of any articles with a fiscal basis” until she had had the chance to review the Finance Committee’s recommendations, especially in the absence of Holmes.

Board of Selectmen Chair Walter Cruz said he understood Winslow's position, but with the print deadline looming, felt that it was best that the Selectmen were “not seen to be indecisive” and asked for a motion for favorable action to be considered in respect of the warrant as presented, with the caveat that objections or abstentions for individual articles would be noted in the submitted document.

Town Meeting begins on October 24 at 7 p.m. in the Wareham High School auditorium.