If you were offered a seat in a legislature, with the power to propose or amend the laws you live under every day, would you take it? Well, you do have that chance—next week at Annual Town Meeting, April 5 and 6, at 7 p.m. in Cronin Auditorium.
Diane and Bill Cordner find the light of a cell phone comes in handy for reading in the dark Cronin Auditorium during 2014 Town Meeting. (Photo by Lisa Aciukewicz)
The Annual Town Meeting is Harvard’s annual legislative session. Sign in, and you suddenly acquire the powers and responsibilities of a representative of your town. You may speak for or against any article, offer amendments, and cast your vote, along with the other 200 to 300 of the town’s roughly 3,600 registered voters who typically take part each spring.
The town meeting form of government has been described as the world’s purest form of democracy. But in Harvard it’s always been more than that, full of local color and as representative of the town’s diverse interests as the May Apple Blossom Festival, or the fall League of Women Voters and Harvard Schools Trust Flea Market. With the meeting moved back to Cronin Auditorium at the Bromfield School on a weekday evening or two this year, most of that quirky local color will be lost. Still, for newcomers and veterans alike, here’s a short list of things to look for and do:
Make plans to drop off your children at the Hildreth Elementary School, where child care will be available at no cost each night from 6:30 p.m. until the meeting adjourns, courtesy of Students Against Drunk Driving (SADD). (Donations are appreciated.) Drop off and pick up kids at the back doors by the K-wing. Kids will be in the Bridges room, #151, which is the room closest to the back door. Although an RSVP is not necessary, for planning purposes it would be helpful if you could contact the babysitting coordinator, Colleen Nigzus (the school nurse), at cnigzus@psharvard.org with a note stating how many children and their ages, by Friday, April 1.
Arrange for a ride
If you need a ride to the meeting, contact the Council on Aging, which is coordinating transportation to and from the event, at 978-456-4120. COA Director Deb Thompson asks that anyone needing a ride give 24-hour notice. Parking at Bromfield is always at a premium, so ride sharing is encouraged.
Collect your meeting supplies
Grab your copy of the Town Meeting booklet, which you should have received by now in the mail. (It’s the booklet with Finance Committee member Heidi Frank’s black-and-white photo of apples on the cover.) In addition to its detailed reports on town finances, the booklet contains a copy of every article up for consideration, a handy glossary of Town Meeting terms, and a two-page guide to Town Meeting rules of order by the League of Women Voters. Extra copies of the warrant will be available at Cronin, but why waste paper?
Don’t forget to bring a copy of this issue of the Press as well, which contains our “Warrant in Plain English” for the bureaucratese challenged, as well as deeper looks at some of the warrant’s more expensive and controversial proposals.
Are you a knitter? Many attendees are. If you’re one of that flock, you might want to pack a headlamp; it’s dark in Cronin.
Attend a board meeting
Seriously. The Planning Board, the selectmen, the Finance Committee, and the School Committee are all meeting at 6:30 p.m. in Cronin Auditorium to hash out the final wording of articles that will be changed. Such meetings are open to the public. If you wonder what they might be up to, just stop by.
Sign in early
Even if you skip the last-minute scrum of town boards, you’ll want to arrive early and sign in before you do anything else. To participate you must be a registered voter. As you enter the auditorium, you’ll be asked to confirm your status with a “checker” and you’ll be handed a colored card, which you’ll raise each time the moderator calls for a vote. As 7 p.m. approaches, there’s often a crush at the door, says Town Clerk Janet Vellante, and you may find yourself waiting in line as the meeting gets under way.
Moderator Bob Eubank, who chairs Town Meeting, suggests that if you plan to speak on any of the articles, you should consider claiming an aisle seat for easier access to a microphone. Microphones will be available in both aisles of Cronin.
Look for civic groups in the lobby
The path to the meeting room has traditionally been filled with booths and easels set up by various groups. Not so much this year, given the lesser amount of space available in the Cronin Auditorium lobby. Space is available on a first-come, first-served basis, Executive Secretary Julie Doucet told the Press. As of Tuesday, March 29, only the Village Nursery School had announced plans for the event. The school will have a table where residents who haven’t already done so can opt to be listed in the annual VNS Harvard town phone book and confirm that their information is correct. Alas, at press time, no community groups had stepped forward to offer coffee or food.
Pick up the 2015 Annual Report
Once you’ve checked in with the Town Meeting registrars, look for copies of the 2015 Town Report for all you ever wanted to know about your town. The Town Report includes updates from virtually every board and department in Harvard. Pick any town organization, and you’ll find its latest stats and accomplishments enumerated here. Look for other handouts, such as last-minute changes to the wording of articles.
Every year, the selectmen name a citizen of Harvard whose contributions to the town are worthy of special recognition. The name is kept secret until the day of Town Meeting. At some point during the evening, the moderator will pause to announce the name of this year’s choice and invite the individual to step forward, along with family members. For a sneak peek, flip open the cover of the Town Report and you’ll know who it is.
Take a seat and legislate
“I love thinking of the Town Meeting as a legislature, with everyone as a representative of the town,” Town Moderator Bob Eubank said in a recent phone interview.
Eubank, who is in his ninth year as moderator, is known for reminding people at the beginning of Town Meeting, “Remember, at the end of the day, we are all still neighbors.”
“We really have a terrific town, and people are very respectful of the process,” Eubank said. “Everyone is civil.”
In some ways the process itself, whose rules can be found in the Town Meeting booklet, helps to keep that level of civility (see “Town Meeting Procedures” on page 25). People stand in line, sometimes for quite a while, waiting for a turn to speak. A person may offer an amendment to an article, and the board that proposed the article considers the change. If the board decides it is a “friendly” (acceptable) amendment, the change is made. Or if the board does not accept the change, then the amendment goes to a vote.
Process also keeps the meeting on track and on topic. Changes or amendments have to be “within the scope of the article.” As Eubank puts it, they have to be “within the initial goal or intent of what the article was meant to address.” The moderator can rule out changes that add vague or unrelated material to an article. No one, for example, would be allowed to add a rule to regulate chicken coops to the town’s omnibus budget, unlike Congress, which sometimes adds riders to otherwise unrelated laws.
“The moderator is remarkably empowered to say no to things,” Eubank acknowledges, but he adds that he has never had to use that power to stop a meeting from veering out of control. “I’ve never encountered disorder.”
Stick around to vote on Article 57
Yes, it’s the last one on the agenda and may not be taken up until late Tuesday, if the meeting moves quickly, or Wednesday, if it doesn’t. But just before Article 57 are several bylaw changes that deserve Town Meeting attention. Town officials have had their say in adding them to the warrant. Now they need to hear from you.
