Our town meeting was this week, and for the first time, Kimberley and I attended. It was an astounding experience from a couple of angles.
Let's talk about the format of the meeting first. Imagine a decent sized town hall, with about 150 attendees, eager to get going. You need some form of process to make sure you get decision on the 20 or so articles in a timely, and most importantly, predictable manner. I was thinking about how this can be done before the meeting, but never envisioned to see what kind of well oiled machine I will encounter. The system that was used is called "Robert's Rule of Order". Suffice to say, that the "Robert rules" provide a superb framework for the meeting. Have a look at the website, it's impressive. I bought the book already.
Secondly, it was the high degree of asserting direct power of the future of our town. Money does talk, and we had our voice. Next time, I see our local police officer drive past in his new cruiser, I know I paid a piece of the $33.000 machine. Good stuff, and so much more direct that the income tax we pay to the IRS.
Lastly, I was especially interested in the articles that were voted down. Like this one. The planning board asked for an additional $10.000 to pay for a traffic research at one of the local intersection. One could sense, that the crowd had no desire to spend any more money on this issue. I actually think, people did not see that there was a problem to start with, despite the passionate pleas of the representative from the planning board.
Oh, there was a bit of a bonus as well. The state capital newspaper covered the event, and Kimberley and I ended up on the front page of the Concord Monitor the day after the meeting. Check out the picture below, we're the couple on the balcony just left of the centre.
