Last Sunday in this space, we made the argument that when it comes to democracy, New England Town Meeting is — to adapt a slogan associated with the Masters golf tournament — a tradition like no other. The unparalleled opportunity that the traditional floor meeting affords to debate and amend warrant articles before voting them up or down makes citizen legislators of those who attend, giving them the power to shape policy on matters closest to heart and home.
But fewer people have been taking advantage of that opportunity in recent decades, and pandemic-era precautions ushered in wider use of Australian ballot voting, shrinking in-person participation even more. It’s anybody’s guess whether, when those temporary measures lapse, they will have contributed to an even steeper decline in Town Meeting participation.
Longtime observers of Town Meeting say fewer residents are coming out because more people work out of town and thus are unavailable during the day and/or cannot afford to take time off to attend; that many newcomers are unfamiliar with the tradition, and in any case came to Vermont and New Hampshire to enjoy solitude, not community; that the divisiveness that now grips the nation has a carryover effect at the local level, where people have little appetite for face-to-face interaction with others whose opinions may differ radically.
What might be done to reverse this trend? We don’t propose to return to the early days when attendance was compulsory and inhabitants were fined for not showing up or being late. But state law gives Vermont employees the right, with seven days notice, to take unpaid leave from work to attend the annual meeting, “subject to the essential operation of a business” or state or local governmental entity. Vermont students 18 and older also have the right to attend Town Meeting without school disciplinary consequences. Those who have the right to attend ought to be urged to do so.
And we suppose that the experience of Croydon this year could provide an object lesson in the danger of failing to show up. There, a small group of voters who attended the floor meeting were able to hijack the school budget and cut it in half, a result that predictably enraged many other residents who later vented their displeasure at a subsequent School Board meeting. Too little, too late.
There are also a series of small steps that, in the aggregate, could move the participation needle. Widely circulating the annual town report in both print and digital form ahead of the meeting is crucial, of course. Its value would be enhanced if it were supplemented with a primer that contained a glossary of terms and explained how to read and interpret a budget, how Town Meeting is conducted, who may participate, procedures for amending articles and so on. It is not a safe assumption that everyone is familiar with the nuts and bolts of how the meeting works. Having it laid out in black and white might build confidence in potential attendees who feel ill at ease because they don’t know what to expect.
Town officials might maximize that effort by reaching out to newcomers to whom the Town Meeting tradition is foreign, providing them with the background and informational tools they need to participate. Making the case that doing their civic duty in this fashion also would help them connect more strongly with their new hometowns could elicit a positive response. Surely, at least some new residents of the Twin States relocated not only for perceived safety from the pandemic but also for the possibility of living in a place where they could make such connections.
And, of course, schools could help shape a new generation of participants in several ways: by teaching about the Town Meeting tradition as part of ongoing civics instruction; by organizing replica meetings at which real issues affecting student life are decided; and by taking their students to watch the real thing in the spring.
No less an authority than Steve Taylor, who served as town moderator in Plainfield for 30 years, emphasized to our colleague Alex Hanson the important role food can play in fostering community spirit at Town Meeting. It points up the fact that Town Meeting is a social as well as a political event.
Finally, the Upper Valley is full of creative thinkers. We are sure that if they put their minds to it, they could come up with more innovative ways in which to help return Town Meeting to its glory days. It’s worth a try.