By Sam Stockbridge — Correspondent
The Select Board continues to mull changes to the town’s ceremonial flag policy, meanwhile leaving in place a temporary moratorium on community requests to raise banners.
The Board last week reached a consensus on most of the suggested qualifications and prerequisites to add, but members were unsure whether an option to allow ceremonial flags to appear on town light poles would have unintended consequences if included — or left out.
The proposal
After the Select Board grappled over the summer with whether to allow the Progress Pride banner to fly during Pride Fest, Concord’s first formal celebration of the LGBTQIA+ community, members Wendy Rovelli and Cameron McKennitt teamed up to research and write a revised policy proposal.
They modeled some of their work on what they termed “well-defined” flag policies that other cities enacted following a 2022 U.S. Supreme Court decision that cost the city of Boston $2.1 million in a settlement.
Rather than follow the practices of cities with “restrictive” flag rules, which only allow a small set of pre-approved flags to be flown, or the town’s current policy, which gives the Select Board total authority to decide which flags will fly, Rovelli and McKennitt’s proposed changes seek middle ground.
Under their proposal, any request to fly a ceremonial flag would need to be sponsored by a Select Board member and have to be “associated with a town celebration or proclamation.” The board member would have to make the request in writing at least 30 days before the proposed flag-raising date.
Flags would only be flown on the day of the event, and only from the Concord Center flagpole.
Consensus on alternatives
The board also considered allowing flags to be flown on temporary poles, and allowing flags to be flown “during the period of the associated celebration,” instead of for just one day. Both proposals were shut down.
“I just feel like we’re asking for trouble, kind of. And we’ve got flagpoles,” Chair Mary Hartman said.
McKennitt said he was concerned about fairness.
“My worry … is that people will come and say, ‘Well, it’s such-and-such a month,’ or ‘It’s such-and-such a week,’” he explained. “Then we get into, ‘Well, why did you let them do it for this long, but you didn’t let me do it for this long?’”
A final piece of optional language allowing ceremonial flags to be flown on light poles around town split the Board.
Without that change, Select Board Clerk Mark Howell argued, the proposal would stay focused on how flags are chosen for the main flagpole, and the board could revisit the light pole issue later.
But “if we did remove it,” DEI Commission Co-Chair Joe Palumbo asked, “what would we do in the meantime around requests like that?”
The board agreed to revisit the topic at a later date.
