Implementing State of the Town Forum
At the annual 2011 town meeting, the town’s legislature of which all voters are members, passed Article 39 that called for a semi-annual state of the town meeting similar to a format that Lincoln uses. The article was non-binding and had been submitted by resident Dan DePompei.
In the roughly two years since the articles passage, no progress had been made by the Board of Selectmen to implement the forum. Hopefully, that is about to change based on a board meeting two weeks ago.
Implementing a state of the town forum is an important part of improving town wide communication and getting the legislature better educated prior to town meeting. The challenge today is that the format of town meeting and many of the other town committee meetings are not particularly conducive to give and take discussion with members of the legislature. Town meeting is especially notorious for this given tight time limits, a sometimes emotional hall, and the complexity of some of the articles presented. From complex budgets to regional authority agreements, capital expenditures, and governance changes, it is nearly impossible as a resident to feel prepared to vote on the issues at town meeting.
You could attend all the various committee meetings prior to town meeting, ask the questions needed, then arrive at town meeting more educated. But the time commitment required to do this would make this close to impossible for most households.
At town meeting, in addition to the warrant articles that are presented, there are also issues not presented that impact voters in the hall. For example, can you really vote favorably for the Sudbury Housing Trust funding if you have doubts about their plans for 40B development in town or their paid settlements with contractors whose agreements they have broken? What about confidence in SPS budgets given the issues at SPS over the past year? What is going on with LS and the Lincoln funding model? What about teacher’s contracts? Having an open discussion unencumbered by Robert’s Rules would help clear the air for many issues while also providing needed information for residents to make informed decisions at town meeting. Such was the basis for Article 39 when presented in 2011.
Article 39 was based in part on Lincolns’ solution to this problem which was to implement a state of the town forum where top issues in the town were discussed in an open meeting. Lincoln's town forum, moderated by the selectmen, starts with each town committee listing their top concerns on sheets of paper around the auditorium. Residents arriving at town forum vote used yellow sticky notes to vote the issues they want to discuss. After about 45 minutes of presentations by the selectmen, the balance of the meeting is open to discuss the issues prioritized by the town residents.
You can watch the Lincoln Town Forum from 2010 here. Watch at minute 2:00 where Lincoln discusses options to pull out of the regional agreement with LS due to Sudbury funding woes. While this was an important topic in Lincoln, it was never discussed in Sudbury.
Two weeks ago, I appeared before the BOS on a citizens petition to understand:
• If the BOS felt they had implemented Article 39 (they had not implemented it)
• If there were any reasons why we could not do it (none surfaced at the meeting)
• How to implement Article 39
You can watch the back and forth between me and the selectmen here starting at minute 11:00.
What is the next step? I am off to Lincoln with Town Manager Maureen Valente to meet with their town manager to understand more about Lincoln’s meeting. There is an agenda item on the selectman’s calendar to discuss the findings Tuesday, Feb 26.
With all the articles that have the potential to appear at Town Meeting, including, a revised push for a police station, a state of the town forum prior to town meeting could go a long way in making sure all of us are ready to cast informed votes.
ron darden
8:15 am on Tuesday, February 26, 2013
Bryan, I hope your date with Moe goes well.
I hear Moe goes all the way with members of the "in" crowd, but outsiders cant even get to 1st base.
Too bad the BOS have squashed public input by breaking a long standing Subury tradition in doing away with a fixed agenda item at BOS meetings for open public comment without preregistration or censorship.
Bryan, you wrote an excellent blog on above a while back detailing Drobinskis bogus reasoning for the suppression - required due to open meeting laws. All of the Town's other committees and even Town Counsel have rejected such an interpretation.
What became of it?...Same as Open forum? (Moe, LOB, Drob majority ignore and continue to implement their own private agendas - after all, they know what's best for the Town.
Why bother with the apearance of obtaining Town input when it will be ignored if not in synch with the powers that be objectives?
Rob F
8:39 am on Tuesday, February 26, 2013
Bryan - Thanks for the update, and thanks for your tenacity on this! I just watched the video you linked to of the BOS meeting, and it seems pretty clear to me that if you hadn't kept pressing, it would have been dropped or remanded back to the "further study" pile.
Unfortunately, I can't get to the BOS meeting tonight to hear the findings, but I look forward to reading about them and hearing about your take on them as things move forward.
John J Kohler
8:55 am on Tuesday, February 26, 2013
Bryan, thank you for bringing this back to life.
It only makes sense that if the people of Sudbury want more and better communication on what is going on in Sudbury then we should discuss openly. The Lincoln format is very effective. It is not formal and it gives people a chance to discuss various issues in a more comfortable environment than Town Meeting.
I hope this forum becomes a reality.
siobhan hullinger
4:46 pm on Wednesday, February 27, 2013
Thanks for this Bryan, I also enjoyed the conversation on this at last night's BOS meeting.
Rick Billig
5:55 pm on Thursday, February 28, 2013
Bryan, we don't see eye-to-eye on most things but this one seems like a very reasonable thing to do. Shouldn't be too much burden on anyone. Might even eliminate some of the negativity in town because people will have actual facts when they form their opinions. Thank you for being patient and working with the "system" too.
JJoseph
6:24 pm on Thursday, February 28, 2013
Hello Rick,
Good post. Just keep in mind there are only 2 reasons why this was not implemented even though town meeting overwhelmingly said it should be implemented.
Reason # 1 Larry O'Brien
Reason # 2 John Drobinski
There is no other blame to be placed anywhere else. Remember that when you vote. My vote was certainly ignored.
Thom Kenney
8:33 am on Tuesday, March 5, 2013
Bryan, you mentioned in your post that "there is an agenda item on the selectman’s calendar to discuss the findings Tuesday, Feb 26." Was this discussed, and if so, is there an update you can share in this forum?
Pat Brown
8:47 am on Tuesday, March 5, 2013
I'd also be interested in Bryan's comments on this.
However, you can view the approximately 20 minute discussion on SudburyTV here:
http://sudburytv.pegcentral.com/player.php?video=ba1138daba169c7f39cd6bd9374f233b
The final index point "Lincoln's State of the Town Forum" jumps you right to the start of this discussion.
Thom Kenney
8:52 am on Tuesday, March 5, 2013
Pat, thank you for the link, very helpful.
Bryan S
7:40 pm on Wednesday, March 6, 2013
UPDATE
I wanted to update my blog with notes from the Feb 26 BOS meeting. The town manager presented a very detailed report on what we learned in Lincoln. You can watch her report on SudburyTV.org.
Here are some general comments from my notes:
First, Lincoln’s political environment is very different than ours which makes success of a forum more difficult to predict:
* Much higher percentage of Lincolns voters attend town meeting than Sudbury
* Few contested races – last Selectman race to be contested was over 10 years ago
* Town forum came from a general consensus that the town was doing a good job
Second – the meet is an annual affair, not semi-annual
* Done 4-5 months prior to town meeting when the warrant can still be influence
* Lot of work to do a town forum
* About 3 hours long, 1/3 was presentation by selectmen, 2/3 was open Q&A (for the 2010 meeting)
* Selectmen run the meeting since they are the CEOs of the town
Three - some soft items
* Cathartic for residents to see all the committees, the scope of the town work
* Residents see the bandwidth and other issues that limit how much work can get done in the town
* Allows different committees to see each other and discuss issues
Next step from what I can see is the BOS will take a vote on how/whether to proceed with a Town Forum for the Fall.