Most Vermonters tap March Town Meetings to chew over proposed local spending and, on occasion, a potluck lunch. But residents in Newfane, Vt., population 1,645, have bit into a smorgasbord of larger issues, be it calls to ban genetically modified foods in 2002, impeach President George W. Bush in 2006, oppose the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza in 2024 or pledge to be “an apartheid-free community” in 2025.
“When Vermont Town Meetings speak, the nation and the world listens,” resident Dan DeWalt, who proposed all those headline-grabbing advisory petitions, wrote in a recent commentary.
Newfane won’t see any similar resolutions this year, as DeWalt has turned his focus to picketing against President Donald Trump. But as another Town Meeting approaches, residents nonetheless have engaged in debate — this time, on what to debate.
“Reality check: I doubt very much that any decision in Washington, D.C., is predicated on a vote at Newfane’s Town Meeting,” resident Cristine White wrote in a recent letter to the editor. “Similarly, I see little indication that it has any impact on decisions made in Montpelier.”
And so goes the perennial question asked by Vermont’s 247 municipalities each mud season: Should March Town Meetings wade into state, national or world issues?
At least seven communities — Brandon, Vt., Bristol, Vt., Cornwall, Vt., Middlebury, Vt., Putney, Vt., Salisbury, Vt., and Weybridge, Vt. — are set to consider whether to ask the Vermont Legislature to vote this session on House bill 433, which would launch the “incremental implementation” of a state universal health care plan.
“H.433 has stalled in the House Health Committee, and our resolution will encourage legislators to move it onto the floor for debate and consideration,” retired Middlebury physician Jack Mayer wrote in a recent commentary.
Westminster, Vt., for its part, has placed a citizen-requested advisory article on its agenda seeking the removal of Trump and Vice President JD Vance “for crimes against the United States Constitution.”
The topics are just the latest in a long history of Vermont Town Meeting talking points. The state Supreme Court has ruled repeatedly that communities don’t have to consider advisory petitions that are unrelated to municipal business or “for a useless, frivolous or unlawful purpose.” But that hasn’t stopped generations of people from seeking signatures from a required 5% of local voters in hopes of bringing up all sorts of items.
The state made national news in 1982 when more than two-thirds of its municipalities considered a call for the United States to propose a nuclear arms freeze with the former Soviet Union.
“The issue was placed alongside such mundane Town Meeting agenda items as snowplows and school budgets,” the New York Times reported of a measure endorsed by more than 150 communities.
Two decades later, discussion sparked by dozens of Town Meeting petitions opposing genetically modified organisms (or GMOs) led the state Legislature to adopt a first-in-the-nation seed-labeling law in 2004 and a similarly unprecedented food-labeling act in 2014.
“Veteran lawmakers from Derby to Bennington, Georgia to Brattleboro who typically are unimpressed by the deluge of rote form letters they receive for various causes found that these messages came from real people they knew,” USA Today reported upon passage of the latter law.
DeWalt — an artisan, activist and former Newfane selectboard member — saw his 2006 advisory article to impeach Bush draw national attention after it was endorsed by four other Vermont communities that March and another 38 a year later. That’s why, when he heard recent gripes about petitions that don’t pertain to municipal matters, he filed another one asking his local leaders not to curtail any future resolutions.
In response, the five-member Newfane Selectboard said DeWalt’s request was “duly noted” and took no further action, minutes show. But that didn’t stop residents from continuing the debate online and in the media.
In a local newspaper commentary, DeWalt extolled the fact that last year’s Newfane Town Meeting devoted more than two hours to the plight of Palestinians.
“If the political class had not stopped doing its proper job over the past few decades, maybe we would not have to weigh in on these issues,” he wrote. “If local values such as community, mutual respect, care and empathy for our neighbors, and a genuine interest in understanding our community needs were being honored by the political bodies who govern us, then we wouldn’t have to take a moral stand.”
But other townspeople have expressed different priorities. White was one of several letter writers to lament the short time spent reviewing Newfane’s $2.5 million annual budget.
“It is sad that millions of dollars in expenditures are approved in less than five minutes with no questions or discussion, while a statement about our position on the situation in Gaza is discussed for nearly three hours,” White wrote. “As we go forward, is this the sort of thing that will bring people back to the process? Does anyone else see a future Town Meeting with all sorts of pet issues?”
Newfane may receive a reprieve this year, as DeWalt hasn’t filed any petitions.
“Resistance to Trump is taking so much of my time that I decided not to add a ballot measure, which also takes plenty of time,” he told VtDigger.
DeWalt, for example, has orchestrated protests at Brattleboro’s Citizens Bank for the past two weeks as part of a national effort to question its reported financing of two of the largest private operators of immigrant detention centers.
Citizens Bank has declined press requests for comment. But local customers trying to enter the bank found the demonstrations sparked their own discussions.
“Just trying to pay the bills,” said one mother as she and her young child walked past protesters and into the bank.
As for advisory petitions, the debate on what to debate continues in other Vermont communities.
Brattleboro — the only municipality in the state to elect resident representatives for Town Meeting — is set to vote March 3 on whether to open its gathering to all or move to making decisions by ballot.
Montpelier leaders recently considered asking voters to change the local charter so the city council could veto nonbinding petitions, only to drop the idea in the face of citizen opposition.
“If we’re going to do this, we should have a full public debate of the pluses and minuses,” Montpelier Mayor Jack McCullough told The Bridge newspaper.
And for a third year, the Burlington City Counci recently denied a citizen request to hold a public vote on an “apartheid-free community” pledge.
“We hear complaints that we should focus on matters of local concern,” Burlington City Councilor Gene Bergman, a supporter of the proposed ballot measure, said at a Jan. 26 meeting. “This is a matter of local concern to many, many people.”
But City Council President Ben Traverse took issue with the wording of the item, which begins, “We affirm our commitment to freedom, justice, and equality for the Palestinian people and all people” and ends, “We pledge to join others in working to end all support to Israel’s Apartheid regime, settler colonialism, and military occupation.”
“To be clear, I firmly believe all Palestinians and Israelis alike are entitled to live in safety, with dignity, freedom, equality, self-determination, and the opportunity to thrive,” Traverse wrote in a letter he read aloud. “My chief concern remains that placing such a polarizing issue on our city council agenda or local ballot will continue to deepen fractures in our community more than leaving it off.”
In the end, the Burlington council rejected the request 7-5. It instead voted to allocate up to $12,000 for a “Promoting Community Dialogue” program in hopes of bridging divides — albeit in an equally split decision.
This story was republished with permission from VtDigger, which offers its reporting at no cost to local news organizations through its Community News Sharing Project. To learn more, visit vtdigger.org/community-news-sharing-project.