By moving Town Meeting to a weeknight, the selectmen hope to avoid low attendance like the start of this year’s Town Meeting, April 6.
(Photo by Lisa Aciukewicz)
It’s eight months away and already Harvard’s 2014 Annual Town Meeting is one for the record books. Throwing tradition under the bus, the selectmen this week voted to hold next year’s Annual Town Meeting on a weekday night—or two, or three—in the hope of bolstering attendance. Town Meeting will convene on Tuesday evening, April 1, and continue on Wednesday and possibly Thursday evenings if necessary.
By all accounts, Harvard has been one of a handful of towns in Massachusetts that still hold Town Meeting on a Saturday, and one of the many looking for ways to attract more voters. According to an article in last Sunday’s Boston Globe, the town of Concord is considering starting its Town Meeting on a Sunday afternoon next year, and continuing on successive weeknights; Concord has been holding Town Meeting on weekday nights, but officials there think a Sunday afternoon would be preferable for senior citizens and others who don’t want to go out at night.
At the Harvard selectmen’s meeting on Tuesday, board member Stu Sklar proposed Sunday afternoon as an option, and suggested that the selectmen do a survey to gauge townspeople’s opinions before making a decision. But other board members commented that families are as likely to have conflicting activities scheduled for Sunday as they are for Saturday, and that weeknights seem like the best option.
It was board member Leo Blair who suggested convening ATM on a Tuesday, rather than Monday, and who particularly liked the idea of starting the meeting on April Fool’s Day. “I can’t think of a better time,” he cracked.
Having made the decision, the board agreed on the importance of establishing new rules for the meeting, including time limits for each session. And they further agreed that the Annual Town Meeting Warrant should be mailed out this year, as it was before last year’s experiment with a mostly electronic distribution.
