Town Meeting Day
Thursday, March 6th, 2008 by Matthew DeGrootLast Tuesday was Town Meeting Day here in Vermont – a State holiday that allows voters in small and mid-sized towns to get together and debate the coming year. In my rural town, more than half of our 903 residents turned out to discuss the annual school budget, the purchase of a new fire truck, and how much support we should offer to a library in a neighboring town. Children colored and played in a near-by schoolroom, and in the middle of the meeting the town recessed to share a lunch of shepherd’s pie and jello salad.
The discussion was civil and orderly, governed by Robert’s ubiquitous Rules of Order. Everyone who wanted to have a say on a given issue, for or against, was given the chance to speak and make their case. The whole affair was eerily reminiscent of the Norman Rockwell painting Freedom of Speech, in which a weatherbeaten rural citizen — with more than a slight resemblance to Abraham Lincoln — rises to speak his mind at a public meeting, the rest of the crowd leaning in the better to hear him.