by Joan Eliyesil ·
Friday, November 29, 2024
When Annual Town Meeting rolls around again next spring, voters might want to consider packing a lunch. At its Nov. 19 meeting, the Select Board voted to return to a single-session Town Meeting, to be held in the spring. Special town meetings could still be called as needed at other times of the year.
Town Administrator Dan Nason proposed the switch to one Annual Town Meeting a year when the board met Oct. 15. He said business that has typically been conducted in the fall might add a few hours to the spring meeting, but it would be feasible if the moderator kept things moving. Select Board member Rich Maiore asked Nason to poll members of the other boards in town, especially the Planning Board, to get their opinion on the single meeting. Only about a dozen people responded, with a little more than half saying they were in favor of a single meeting.
The Select Board voted in 2019 to split Annual Town Meeting into a spring and fall session as a way to improve attendance. Before that, spring meetings that were held on Saturdays typically started at 9 a.m. and ran far into the afternoon, creating conflicts with sports and other family activities.
In addition, many residents left the long meetings after the lunch break, leaving fewer people to vote on the articles farther down the warrant, typically those inserted by the Planning Board. The two-session approach was intended to allow for general articles in the spring and planning articles in the fall, when they would get more attention from voters.
Select Board member Charles Oliver said he was against returning to one Town Meeting a year because Planning Board articles would once again get shortchanged. “We made the change for a reason,” he said. Member Kara Minar was also in favor of keeping two meetings, saying that it’s easier for parents to attend two shorter meetings a year than one long one.
It’s difficult to predict meeting length because it varies dramatically depending on what’s being discussed. At Annual Town Meeting in spring 2023, for instance, voters dispensed with 27 articles in just a little over two hours. At this year’s spring meeting, 26 articles took almost five hours. A fall nine-article meeting lasted less than an hour in 2020, a little over two hours in 2023, and three hours in 2017.
The board voted 3-2 in favor of returning to a single session of Annual Town Meeting, with Oliver and Minar voting against it. Chair Don Ludwig said the board can revisit the issue “if it turns out to be a bad idea.” The change means that all boards and committees must prepare all the articles they plan on submitting for a vote next year in time for Annual Town Meeting in the spring.