Ayer Asks Town Meeting to Adopt Single Searchable Bylaw Code June 15

AYER — June 9, 2020 — Ayer officials preview a $20,000 bylaw codification project headed to Town Meeting on June 15. Assistant Town Manager Carly Antonellis and Town Manager Robert Poprian held a public Zoom forum Tuesday to explain Articles 32 and 33 of the annual town meeting warrant, which would formally re-adopt all of Ayer's existing bylaws and regulations in a consolidated, searchable format produced by General Code, a national municipal codification firm. The project, authorized by Town Meeting in May 2017, brings together a 562-page final draft covering rules previously scattered across the town website in separate PDF files and board-specific pages — some of which contained superseded bylaws never taken down. Antonellis, who led an internal working group with Town Clerk Susan Copeland, Police Chief Bill Murray, and Selectman Janice Livingston, stressed that no substantive policy changes are included unless existing provisions were already in conflict with state or federal law.