Town Meeting, Is It Time For A change?

The embarrassing view of our dictatorial Town Meeting of Monday October 21st reminds us that the open Town Meeting form of government has to be rethought. Citizens were bullied and the town leaders were ill prepared. The attendees were constantly being lectured to and. had to repeatedly wait until regulations were read, words studied and technical language re-written.  You wonder why Town Meeting attendance is reaching record lows.

In his article “Too Much Hot Air at Town Meetings” in the Boston Globe on October 17, 2013, Harvard economist Edward L Glaeser states, “In their present form, open town meetings aren’t as democratic as they seem”.  Mr. Glaeser goes on to say that to subject citizens to sit through hours of debate and confusion is unfair to today’s time strapped citizen   just as the poll tax was unfair to the cash strapped citizen.  After all, time is money.

This time price of admission is what is driving down attendance and prohibiting the elderly, parents and other time strapped citizens from having a say in how their tax dollars are spent.   This limits those who attend to special interests, elected and appointed officials and those who are required to attend to run the meeting.  For example, 95 people attended the Special Town Meeting and 56 were either an elected official, an appointed member of a board, or a town employee.  This leaves just 39 of the general public to exercise their democratic right to vote on issues affecting everyone.  This disparity grows hour by hour as the meeting drags on. When the final hand count vote was taken, around 10:20 PM, only 42 people voted.  How many of those votes do you think were cast by the general public?

I agree with Mr. Glaeser, “We should be proud of our local government, and the Town Meeting tradition should continue.  But we should bring it into the 21st century and make it easier for busy town residents to vote”.

How do we get broader participation and make the town meeting more representative?  The most common approach is to change to representative town meeting.  However, this still limits participation.  I favor the approach advocated by Mr. Glaeser and the approach used by some towns in N.H.

This approach is to have the regular open Town Meeting and allow people to air their concerns and debate the issues, but not vote on the articles.  The articles should be put on a ballot, and all registered voters could go to the Town Hall and cast their vote one week following the Town Meeting.  This allows the time strapped voter to participate in their government.

No matter what approach you favor, the evidence is clear that the present system is not working and some form of change is needed.  It is time to review it.