Catherine A. Fleurant

Catherine A. Fleurant served on Billerica's Finance Committee and its library trustees in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and in 1989 she was the town's Director of Fair Housing. She entered Town Meeting in 1985, when the members of Precinct Two met before the first session and elected her to fill a vacancy, and from 1987 to 1994 she was an elected member for Precinct Six, serving for most of those years as the precinct's clerk. At town meetings from 1987 to 1991 the moderator, William G. Greene Jr., regularly appointed her one of the tellers who counted the rising votes.

Appointed to the Finance Committee in 1985, she gave a minority report at the 1986 town meeting and was the committee's vice-chairman in 1987, when she read its resolution asking that the money for about twenty miles of sanitary sewer lines under Article 29 of that spring's warrant "remain within the limits of Proposition 2½," and that the selectmen, who had the power to put overrides on the ballot, keep to those limits in deciding how to fund the sewer construction. She also sat on the Personnel Board until August 1987. She was re-appointed to the Finance Committee in September 1991, gave a minority report in 1992 when town meeting debated the Building Department personnel account, and resigned at the end of 1993. In 1992 she was the Finance Committee's appointee to the Street Acceptance and Discontinuance Committee chaired by Arthur L. Doyle.

She was appointed a trustee of the Billerica Public Library in July 1986, was the board's recording secretary in 1987 and its vice-chairman in 1991 under chairman John Coyne, and resigned in February 1992. As Director of Fair Housing in 1989 she ran the town's Fair Housing Office, which had been set up with a Fair Housing Committee in July 1986 under state affirmative action rules. Her report for that year said the office, "open for 20 hours per week," had filed no formal complaints with the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination or the federal housing department, but that most calls were for help with Section 8 and family housing or for information on "tenant and landlord rights and responsibilities"; she planned landlord and tenant guides, a newspaper column, a speakers bureau and a fair housing pledge for local realtors. She also worked the town's elections for many years, as an inspector, clerk and warden at the polls, from the late 1980s into the 2000s.

References

1. Billerica Town Report 1985, town meeting: Precinct 2 elected Catherine A. Fleurant a Town Meeting Member to fill a vacancy
2. Billerica Town Report 1985, Finance Committee: Catherine Fleurant, term to June 30, 1986
3. Billerica Town Report 1986, Library Trustees: Catherine A. Fleurant, appointed 7/86, term to 6/30/89
4. Billerica Town Report 1986, town meeting: Catherine Fleurant, Finance Committee member, gave a minority report
5. Billerica Town Report 1987, Personnel Board: Catherine Fleurant, resigned 8/87
6. Billerica Town Report 1987, town meeting: Finance Committee resolution on funding sewer construction within Proposition 2 1/2, read by Vice-Chairman Catherine A. Fleurant
7. Billerica Town Report 1987, Library Trustees report: Catherine Fleurant, Recording Secretary
8. Billerica Town Report 1989, Fair Housing Committee report signed by Catherine A. Fleurant, Director of Fair Housing
9. Billerica Town Report 1991, Public Library Board of Trustees: John Coyne, Chairman; Catherine A. Fleurant, Vice-Chairman
10. Billerica Town Report 1992, town meeting: minority report from Finance Committee member Catherine Fleurant on the police overtime account
11. Billerica Town Report 1993, Finance Committee: Catherine Fleurant, resigned 12/93