Town Meeting

Tuesday March 4 is Town Meeting day throughout Vermont. Town meeting is an exclusive New England institution. The first American town meeting was held in Dorchester Massachusetts in 1635. The first town meeting in New Hampshire was held in the home of the Wheelers in Dunstable, New Hampshire. The first town meeting in Vermont took place in the home of Mr. John Fassetts in Bennington, Vermont, with Samuel Montague as moderator. In Bethel, Forrest, or “Tink” Aikens, was town meeting moderator for twenty years, from the 1950's to the 1970's.

Town meeting is open to all the registered voters in the town. Everyone votes individually on budget items and any other town business. This sounds dull and mundane but in bigger, more prosperous towns town meeting can be extremely entertaining. As with families, I always find that you don't fight over money if there is none to fight over, but there are often pitched arguments over how to spend the excess.

New England town business is conducted by elected selectmen. The selectmen implement the decisions made at town meeting. Let's say the citizens of a town voted to purchase a dump truck, with a maximum expenditure named at the meeting. The selectmen would then shop for the truck and purchase it. The selectmen supervise work on the roads, and supervise and hire any police officers. The decisions to hire a road superintendent, and add or subtract workers from the road crew, as well as adding or subtracting police officers from the police force, or even the decision to have a police force or a police cruiser, are decided at town meeting. Often there is extended heated discussion around these issues, and it is not unheard of for this discussion to include shouting, swearing and name-calling.

When I was a teenage, I lived in a fairly prosperous small Western Masschusetts town and my father made my sister and I go to town meeting. In our town, people who weren't registered voters could sit in the balcony in the town hall and watch the proceedings. When I started dating my future husband, he went with us. He was raised by his grandparents, who didn't get along. When it was time for town meeting, we asked his grandmother if she was going. “Goodness, no. I haven't been to town meeting in 30 years.”

“Why not?”

“Your grandfather just makes a damn fool of himself running his mouth every year. I got sick of being embarrassed to death 30 years ago and haven't been back since.”

So we went, and sure enough, my future husband's grandfather gets up and starts talking about some issue or the other and went on and on and on and on, and he and I and my sister are sitting in the balcony cracking up.

When we moved to Vermont, in my current poor and tiny town, I was horrified to learn that our town meeting consisted of twenty or so people sitting around in the basement of our town hall, pretty much passing the items on the warrant (or warning).

The town selectmen write up an agenda, with items up for discussion at town meeting. In Vermont, this agenda is called a warning. The warning must be posted in at least 5 public places 30 days in advance of the meeting.

Town meeting is run by the moderator, who is elected during town elections. The moderator begins the meeting by pounding the gavel on the podium in front of the room to call the meeting to order. Often the meeting starts with the Pledge of Allegiance, and some towns have a local clergyman say a prayer. There was an article in the Valley News this week about the controversial aspects of having a pastor pray. http://www.vnews.com/opinion/columns/10889436-95/column-town-meeting-and-public-prayer Just for the record, I thoroughly support prayer before town meeting.

The moderator then reads the warrant articles (items), starting with the first one, and asks for discussion. There might be no discussion, but if the article addresses a controversy, people can get loud, vocal, agitated and downright ugly. There are three ways articles are passed at town meeting. After discussion has ceased, the moderator calls for a voice vote. “All in favor say 'aye”. The voters who are in favor say aye”. Then the moderator says, “All opposed say “nay”. The voters who are opposed say “naye”. If it is clear which answer was loudest, the moderator says either, “The ayes have it” or “the nays have it”. If it's too close to call, he might then ask for a show of hands, first for the “ayes” and then for the “nays”. If it's still too close to call, the moderator will stop the proceedings and ask the voters to get up, go into voting booths and cast paper ballots. A voter on the floor, in other words, a voter sitting in the “audience”, so to speak, can always move for a paper ballot, if he or she feels that some people might think the article is controversial enough that they don't want their vote to be publicly known. That person would say, “I make the motion that we move to paper ballot”. If another voter seconds this motion, the moderator asks for a vote on the motion and if it carries (gets passed) that article will be voted by paper ballot.

The moderator plays the key role in these proceedings. He reads the warning articles. He opens the discussion and also ends the discussion when he feels it has gone on long enough. He makes sure anyone who is speaking stays appropriate and respectful. He also decides when to use the hand vote and the paper ballot, unless there is a motion from the floor regarding the vote. The discussion and voting have to be carried out in a certain way. All town meeting moderators follow “Roberts Rules of Order”, a book of rules that have determined how formal meetings should be run since it was published in 1876. Now you can access “Robert's Rules” online. (http://www.robertsrules.org/)

Town meeting has been called the last example of true pure democracy in the world. Each voter in the town gets the opportunity to vote and speak on important issues. Everyone over 18 is eligible to vote. Some states do not allow convicted felons to vote, but Vermont does allow felons to vote.

Forrest Aikens was the town meeting moderator in Bethel for 25 years. In fact, a couple of online news articles state that he was the first one to use the gavel currently used in Bethel town meetings, in 1946. Forrest was very active in civic organizations. In addition to being town moderator, he was in the Masons, he was a Shriner, and he was in the American Legion, and held lead positions in at least some of these organizations. Since he was a traveling salesman, you have to wonder how much he was home. Forrest died in 1974 of cancer.