With the advent of May this week we enter into ‘Annual Town Meeting’ time in our hilltowns. Along with free elections and volunteers, annual town meetings are the backbone of small towns allowing individuals the power to make decisions about town governance for the next year. This isn’t one of those ‘representative’ government processes that happens in large cities, the state, and the nation where you vote for a representative of the people and then lose all control over his/her decisions. No, this is the real deal where each registered voter can ask questions, state opinions, and then vote on the article being debated. Each individual voter can choose the stance he or she wants to take, it doesn’t have to agree with the recommendations of elected officials (i.e., finance committee or selectboard members), and where the final count of the actual voters at a meeting determines the outcome and then sets that in motion for the next year. Don’t think the highway department has enough funds to maintain the roads? Think the finance committee is putting too much money in stabilization, or that the library is underfunded? Each individual has the opportunity to adjust budget figures from the floor and if their suggestion passes, that amount becomes the amount that will be spent.
If you don’t like the way a bylaw is presented and believe that you have an amendment that would make it better, you have the ability to suggest a change that will then be implemented, if you can convince other voters that your idea has merit. The power of the electorate at a town meeting is significant as long as appropriate protocols practiced in each town are followed (along with the statutes of the Commonwealth and the federal government, i.e., you can’t vote in an action that is illegal even if everyone agrees).
As Stan Rosenberg noted this past week, the original Massachusetts Constitution mentions only one required public service and that is public education. As noted by many, perhaps most famously by Thomas Jefferson, democracy only works if there is a knowledgeable, articulate, literate, and educated populace. Given the increasing complexities of modern life, and the ever more challenging job of meeting myriad laws and regulations, it’s important to be able to access and assess information, determine the real from the false, make an informed decision based upon the facts, and apply a little common sense, all without becoming defensive, overbearing, or giving into perceptions. As we all know, this can prove difficult given various points of view, each individual’s understanding and passion, and the overwhelming amount of information available at any given moment. Yet where else can an individual actually have the ability to directly influence their government and the operation of their piece of America?
Despite this, we still have towns that have difficulty meeting a minimum quorum in order to conduct business at an annual town meeting and where just a few people can make decisions that affect everyone in that community. I’d certainly recommend that each registered voter participate in their town’s annual town meeting rather than delegating your ability to influence government actions to someone else who may, or may not, share your viewpoints. It’s difficult to raise a complaint about a decision if you weren’t there to speak and vote on that particular item. Our towns are essentially run by volunteers who devote much time to making our towns function; it only seems fair that the rest of us take the time to ‘volunteer’ our time at our annual town meeting to fulfill our duty to democracy given all that others have sacrificed over time to ensure us of that right.
