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What Is a Town Meeting? By Arden Miller, CZM Like pahking the cah in Havahd Yahd, Big Dig ice cream, and the Evacuation Day holiday (aka Saint Patrick's Day in Baaahston), Town Meetings as a form of local government are rarely found outside of New England. For communities that consider themselves to be towns—a definition based not on size, by the way, but on the municipality's charter—the Town Meeting form of government is mandatory. (In Massachusetts, a city form of government can only be adopted by a community with a population of 12,000 or more, but an area with more than 12,000 residents can still call itself a town and practice the Town Meeting form of government if it so desires. Confused? Yeah, well welcome to Massachusetts! Open v. Representative There are two distinct types of Town Meetings: Open Town Meeting and Representative Town Meeting. The Open Meeting is for towns with 6,000 or fewer residents. In this forum, the Board of Selectmen (the group of officials elected to administer the public business of a New England town) will call the meeting by issuing a warrant (i.e., a list of items known as articles, to be voted on). Articles are to Town Meeting what Bills are to the State Legislature and, if they pass, they become a locally enforceable bylaw. All of the town's registered voters are welcome to attend and vote on all articles. For the towns with 6,000 or more residents, the Representative Town Meeting is the norm (any town can elect to have the Open Meeting, but few in the larger-than-6,000-residents category do). In the Representative Meeting, votes are cast by those elected by the townspeople to be Town Meeting Members. (Not unlike how a U.S. Representative would vote on behalf of their constituents in Congress.) A town could have as few as 45 Town Meeting Members, or, as is the case with Framingham (the state's largest town), as many as 216 Town Meeting Members. Special or Annual? All towns and city's that have the Town Meeting form of government have an Annual Town Meeting (in many towns, this is more commonly known as the Annual Budget Meeting), held sometime between February 1 and June 30. Since towns' fiscal years begin on July 1, this meeting is where the town resolves any leftover financial issues and then approves the next year's budget. The meeting may also include non-budgetary items, such as articles on the town's zoning bylaws. An article can get brought up for voting through a variety of channels, including the request of a specific town department (e.g., the water and sewer commission), or through a petition signed by 10 or more of the town's registered voters. The second type of meeting is the Special Town Meeting. These are held whenever necessary to deal with issues that can't wait until the Annual Meeting. For an article to be considered for a Special Town Meeting, a petition needs to be signed by either 20 percent of the town's population, or 200 people, whichever is the lower number. When voters call for a meeting through a petition, the Selectmen have 45 days to hold a Special Town Meeting. Annual, Special, Open, or Representative: Town Meetings are an effective way for citizens in New England to affect change. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Boston, MA 02114