By a margin of only eight votes, residents passed an article at Town Meeting that will place on the November ballot a measure to reduce the Community Preservation Act (CPA) surcharge from three percent to one percent.

Article 39, a citizen’s petition introduced by Thomas Chapman, served as a double blow to advocates of the CPA, coming on the heels of a previous measure that had already exempted the first $100,000 from the assessed value of residential homes from the surcharge. That article, introduced by the Community Preservation Committee (CPC) which did not want to be the unintended beneficiary of an expected jump in local taxes, passed unanimously.

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