Tightening Up

If you’ve ever attended a town meeting, you know how easy it can be for things to go wrong. Debate, while important, can be lengthy, and explanations from town officials can sometimes be lengthier. Questions can arise from voters for which town officials may lack answers. Town meetings, almost by their nature, are a bit of a beast, and there’s always room for improvement in how they run. 

 Orleans officials learned as much this past spring. The May annual town meeting came in close to five hours in length, tiring a number of voters who opted to leave before its conclusion. While a quorum remained, the exodus prompted some in town to argue that passage of some articles that came up for debate in the late hour weren’t reflective of how voters truly felt about certain issues. Discussion on town meeting floor occasionally drifted away from the articles being discussed, and concerns were raised about misinformation from speakers that went unchecked.

 The May meeting wasn’t the smoothest, but it’s clear looking at the warrant for next week’s special town meeting that Orleans officials have put in the time in recent months to ensure a better result for the fall session. Most notably, the warrant for the Oct. 28 meeting comes in at a svelt 24 articles, roughly a third of the 70-plus articles that have loaded up town meeting warrants in recent years. There’s such a thing as too much, and overloaded warrants don’t always promise a body of voters well apprised of all the issues up for discussion. At 24 articles, it’s easier to expect voters to come in with a ready understanding of what’s before them.

 At its Oct. 16 meeting, the select board and finance committee, as well as Town Moderator David Lyttle and Town Counsel Michael Ford, further discussed ways of making the fall meeting run smoother. There were discussions about tightening the amount of time allocated to comments and who would take the responsibility of explaining articles to voters. Mefford Runyon of the select board preached the importance of correcting misinformation as officials see it during the meeting. It was a constructive discussion that left hope that Monday’s meeting will be an improvement procedurally over what we saw in May.

 Town Manager Kim Newman called the fall meeting “a trial run” for next year’s annual town meeting, an opportunity to play with the formula and try new things to see what sticks. The town deserves credit for taking that experimental approach. Town meeting is ultimately too complex a machine to ever run perfectly, but part of good governance is working to address problems when they arise. Here’s hoping that by 11 p.m. Monday we’ll all be in bed.