Finance Members Objected To Fall Town Meeting Protocols

ORLEANS – Ruth Delude stood at the microphone at last week’s special town meeting looking for answers on Article 21. The finance committee had voted 6-2 in favor of recommending that $500,000 in free cash be allocated to support the pursuit of housing initiatives in town, but Delude wanted more insight into why two members voted against the majority of the committee.

She did not get a response. 

One of the dissenting votes, Chris Kanaga, was not in attendance. The second, Ed Mahoney, declined to give his reasons for voting no.

“None of our ‘no’ votes would like to speak,” finance committee chair Constance Kremer said.

“Why is that?” Delude asked.

“They’ve chosen not to,” Town Moderator David Lyttle said.

It was an unusual move for the finance committee, members of which have historically been ready and willing to speak at length on their positions for and against articles at town meeting. But disagreements between members of the finance committee, the select board and town management ahead of the special meeting showed a disconnect over how finance members should be able to address articles at the meeting.

“That was awkward,” Lyttle said when reached by phone after the meeting. “That woman deserved an answer to her question.”

The select board on Oct. 23 discussed procedures for the fall meeting, including how finance committee members would be able to address minority opinions on articles. It was agreed at the meeting that members could address their minority votes, but as residents from town meeting floor.

Kremer argued this would help eliminate any confusion between the minority votes and the majority vote taken by the committee.

“I would like to see the minority go to the floor as not representing the majority of the finance committee, but going as their individual selves on the floor and speaking from one of those mics,” she said.

But finance members voiced their concern with that approach the following night at their Oct. 24 meeting. Earlier in the meeting, Lyttle said that members who voted in the minority on an article would have one minute to speak on their position from the podium. Otherwise they could have more time speaking from the floor, where under the town charter voters can speak for up to five minutes.

“How do you convey information in one minute to a couple hundred people for them to understand what goes into my justification and rationale for my vote?” Mahoney asked.

Kremer said that Lyttle, who has moderated town meeting for the last eight years, has been under increased pressure from the select board and Town Manager Kim Newman to tighten up the length of the meeting. Specifically, she said there were concerns about the amount of time that has historically been given to the finance committee to speak on articles in the past.

“This is pushback to that,” she said.

Reached by phone last week, Lyttle agreed that there has been pressure from the select board and town manager to move town meeting along quickly. But select board chair Mark Mathison disagreed. While he said there has been public discussion about the need to streamline town meeting, it is ultimately up to the moderator to decide how committee members can address voters and for how long.

“There’s been no sit down with David Lyttle or a directive that he should do X, Y or Z to shorten the meeting,” he said when reached by phone last week, “None of that has happened.”

Both Mathison and Newman said they have heard feedback from residents asking that the town work to reign in the length of town meeting, especially after the spring session in May ran close to five hours.

“One of the points that was raised repeatedly was about individual members of a board using the podium to represent a board's position when it was not the board's position; it was either their own personal opinion, and/or not an opinion related specifically to the article being discussed and/or did not correctly provide factual information to help voters make a decision,” Newman said in an email last week.

Lyttle said he recommended that members speak for one minute from the podium, but only as a guideline. He said the intention was to allow for a brief explanation from the committee and then open discussion up to questions from voters as needed.

“I’m just trying to make everything efficient,” he said. “If someone went over a minute, I wasn’t going to put my hand up and cut them off.”

Regarding the committee’s unwillingness to address voters on Article 21, Mathison said the reasoning behind members’ votes against the article were given during public meetings ahead of the fall session.

“If you want to know what the finance committee’s dissenting opinions are, you could have watched the finance committee’s meeting (from Oct. 24) Friday, Saturday, Sunday or Monday ahead of town meeting,” he said.

Others on the committee took issue with not allowing members who vote in the minority on article to address their position as a member of the committee. 

“Why is it that a majority vote isn’t made up of a collection of personal votes?” asked Lynn Bruneau at the committee’s Oct. 24 meeting.

“Your personal reasons for dissenting are not the finance committee’s reasons,” Newman told the committee. “They’re yours, and you have every right to say so like every other person at the meeting.” But she said those minority opinions should be raised on the floor of town meeting.

Bruneau has since resigned from the committee, which she had been a member of for eight years. She said at the special town meeting that she tendered her resignation two days earlier on Oct. 26.

While she declined to comment on the specifics behind her decision to resign, Bruneau said in her resignation letter that it was “time to move on.”

Lyttle expressed disappointment with the way in which discussion on the housing initiatives article unfolded. But he said going forward he’s going to run the meeting according to the town charter, which does not put any limitations on how long officials can speak from the podium.

“All I can say is I’m going to make it very clear before our annual meeting in May that this isn’t going to happen again,” he said.

Newman said she is happy with how the special town meeting went overall, and said the town “will continue to look for ways to improve so that we can provide the most information in the most efficient way possible.”