Town Meeting

The second session of Annual Town Meeting will convene next Saturday, Sept. 28, at noon in Cronin Auditorium at the Bromfield School. Town Meeting is Harvard’s legislature, a place where every citizen is an unelected legislator with the right to speak and vote, the place where budgets and bylaws are decided.

This year’s fall session feels early. The sunny skies and warm temperatures are those of summer, even as leaves begin to turn and annuals wither in gardens parched by four rainless weeks. If such weather continues next Saturday, it will be tempting to skip Town Meeting and leave the decision-making to whomever shows up. None of the 13 proposals on the fall warrant appear controversial, and without the prospect of lively and sometimes witty debate, the thought of spending an hour or two in a sparsely populated auditorium might seem less than compelling.

And yet, Town Meeting belongs to us, bequeathed to our generations by forefathers who fought and sacrificed to make it possible. It’s an atypically direct institution in a time of increasingly centralized power. But whatever power a citizen has in our modern state is exercised only by showing up, debating, listening, and voting.

As has become our custom, the Press will publish a special edition of the paper next week and distribute it free to every household in Harvard and Devens. Copies will be available at the auditorium as well. Inside you’ll find our award-winning Warrant in Plain English, along with a Guide to Town Meeting and a glossary to explain the arcane terms scattered among the articles of this year’s warrant. We’ll single out one or two articles for deeper explanation and analysis.

All of this is in pursuit of a primary mission of the Press: To provide residents with the unbiased information and well-argued opinions they need to make reasoned decisions about matters that affect them. We hope the effort arouses interest in the measures being placed before voters next week and spurs readers to be part of Harvard’s continuing experiment in direct democracy. As they say, use it or lose it.

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