LONGMEADOW – The Longmeadow High School auditorium had plenty of seats open at the Oct. 16 Town Meeting, as roughly only 100 residents attended to vote on the 11 warrant articles.

Articles one through 10 all passed with either unanimous affirmative vote or majority affirmative votes. The First ten articles were all in regard to fund transfers for a variety of reasons including the payment of bills of prior year, monies for the Community Preservation Fund and the purchase of five in-car video systems for the Police Department.

The town spent the most amount of time on warrant article 11 which was in regard to the prohibition on non–biodegradable single–use plastic bags. The article was to see if the town would vote to amend the General Bylaws of the Town of Longmeadow by adding a new Article 2 Chapter 500 Section 2–516. Currently, more than 80 communities in Massachusetts have implemented similar bans.

While the article was lengthy, in summary it suggested that the purpose of the amendment would show that Longmeadow is combating the devastating long–term environmental effects and a need to reduce dependence on fossil fuels. Within six months of the bylaw taking effect, no store in Longmeadow would be able to provide a single–use carryout bag to a customer at the point of sale.

The warrant article definition offers several clarifications of the definitions of compostable bags, recyclable paper bags and reusable grocery bags.

As far as penalties and enforcement goes, the Director of the Longmeadow Department of Health or other administrator as assigned by the Town Manager will have the authority to enforce the bylaw. Each store will comply with the bylaw, and if it is determined that a violation has occurred the Director shall issue a warning notice to the Store for the initial violation. The penalty for each violation that occurs after the issuance of the warning notice shall be no more than $25 for the first offense, $50 for the second offense and all subsequent offenses. No more than one penalty is allowed to be imposed upon a store within a seven-day period. The store shall have 15 calendar days after the date that a notice of violation is issued to pay the penalty.

Moderator Rebecca Townsend could not act as moderator for article 11 as a relative of hers conducted research on it. A temporary moderator, Michael Kalick, was nominated.

Select Board member William Low stood before the Town and proposed an amendment to the article. He proposed that under the effective date, the bylaw should take effect within 12 months of passage, as opposed to six months. The town voted on the proposed amendment first, which led to a hand–count of votes. The amendment failed.

Moving forward, there was no discussion on warrant article 11, and the town voted to pass it with a majority affirmative vote. Applause and cheers rang across the auditorium.