Town Meeting lives! Sort of.
Jul 15, 2010 – Well, you can imagine my surprise when I learned that Town Meeting has not been abolished after all.
I had been attending Town Meetings in one Town or another since 1967, and I always thought Town Meeting was when people in Town, um, met, and conducted the business of the Town.
All that stopped, here in Gray at least, this year, when we trooped to the polls in considerable numbers, instead of gathering at Newbegin to yell at each other. Naturally, I thought Town Meeting was a goner, to my regret.
And now I discover that I've been wrong all this time.
According to Town Manager Deborah Cabana, citing the Town Attorney, we still have Town Meeting. Only we call it a "referendum".
I came upon this information because I happened to read the Town Charter, where it is written that Town Meeting can only be abolished by first presenting a petition signed by 15% of the Town's eligible voters requesting the change, and then having a referendum vote. I don't remember such a petition circulating, so I e-mailed Ms. Cabana. Her prompt response informed me that no petition was presented because we never abolished Town Meeting.
We just don't have it any more.
Ms. Cabana and the Town Attorney can call a referendum a Town Meeting, just as I can call a hot-fudge sundae a bowl of broccoli, but it doesn't make it so.
Town Meeting is when a bunch of people get together in a room and discuss matters pertaining to the Town. A referendum is when a bunch of people go separately to the polls and stand in line until they can vote in secret. They seem like opposites to me.
Let us examine what happened this June. Some line items in the referendum failed. Did the Gray Town Council call a referendum? No. it called a Town Meeting. That seems like an ipso facto declaration that a referendum and a Town Meeting are two different things.
I have to confess that I was delighted when the referendum failed to resolve the budget. I'm always happy when a change intended to streamline and efficient-ize a procedure instead throws the whole matter into chaos, which it almost always does. Efficiency, it seems to me, is a highly overrated and terribly inefficient standard. Although Major League Baseball is forever trying to make the game more efficient, it will never appeal to baseball-haters. And those who love efficiency don't like baseball or any other game, because it involves fun.
In the name of efficiency, we went to electronic voting instead of paper ballots, which could actually be counted and, if necessary, recounted. The result was George W. Bush. If you want efficiency in government, you'd choose a dictatorship, a one-man-one-vote arrangement in which one man has the vote. President-for-Life Fred makes a decision and everybody obeys. No messy discussions, no expensive elections, no time lost from American Idol. Perfect.
But I'm an American, and I believe in democracy. If most of my fellow citizens want to abolish Town Meeting, I'll learn to live with it. All I'm asking is to follow the rules that were democratically established.
It may leave a bad taste in my mouth, but it won't be broccoli.
