Another View of Town Meeting

continued from page 1 over the last dozen years an average of 150 voters have made the decisions for the town. A simple majority, 76 votes, can make or break a new dump truck, Sheriff’s budget, or capital funding. The last Australian ballot in March had 423 people voting on budgets and fire trucks.

When I looked around at town meeting, voters tended to be a mix of the older residents, along with those that could afford to take a day off work. Our town meeting system disenfranchises those residents that can’t afford to lose a day’s pay or can’t find daycare when all the schools are closed. Just ten percent of our voters end up having the final say on how we raise and spend a million dollars or more.

To get a discussion going I’d propose that we create an in-person opportunity for townspeople to weigh in on articles and budgets before they are finalized and have an Australian ballot for the actual final vote. This could take some of the best parts of the in-person town meetings and combine them with the increased participation of a ballot voting system. Residents could tell the selectboard in September, October, and November items they would like to see on the Warning, from highway spending to social services, suggestions for anything on the business of the town. By December, the selectboard usually has the budget and articles roughed out. We could then hold an in-person meeting to go over these, item by item if need be, that would function much like town meeting but without a final vote. The selectboard can then take the comments and suggestions into consideration for finalizing the budgets and articles. Then we’d hold an informational meeting to review the ballot and answer questions before a final vote by Australian ballot in March. house and lay in in the brook next to our house.

I would additionally suggest that ballots be mailed out to every registered voter to help make voting even easier.

As a side note, we were without a phone or internet for two weeks before Consolidated Communications ever got out to us. Cell phone reception was almost non-existent and we discovered later there were problems with the nearby cell tower. We really had no idea what was going on in the world outside of our little area.

We have neighbors that live beyond us and checked on them the following day when it was safe to snowshoe up the road. We had to climb over and under trees to get to them. They had a woodstove but no other alternate means of heat. They did have a gas range so were able to heat food on the burners. They slept in their living room by the woodstove for five days.

At some point I managed to crawl under and over trees to go down Bear Hill Road toward the intersection with Wickopee Hill Road and walk to my mother-in-law’s house on Rice Farm Road to let her know we were okay and tell her what we were dealing with. I used her phone to check in with Green Mountain Power and my family so they knew we were alright. When the power trucks from Quebec came in on day four everything had to be done in shifts. The town plowed to a certain point, the tree people came in to cut the trees, then the power company folks would move lines out of the way so the plow could get in a little further, then the tree people continued to cut and on and on it went until the road was clear. The power company contractors were great once they got going. They had to bring in a new power pole, new transformer, and restring the lines up and down the road. It was quite an experience, that’s for sure, and I am sure glad it’s spring!

Sponsors

Elsa Waxman

Elizabeth & George Wright

John and Lori Brunelle

Debbie & Wayne Carpenter