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Online Town Meeting

by Dave Atkins

When I read John Craine's comment about a potential 3-day marathon town meeting, I was very discouraged. My wife will stay home with our 3 kids so I can attend Monday night, but there is no way I can spend 3 nights sitting through debate and discussion. But that's part the reason I started this blog. On my other blog, I have written about ways for citizens to collaborate online and I think this blog could be useful now.

With only a few days before town meeting, we're not going to radically change anything, but we might be able to find some areas of compromise and agreement. If you oppose an article outright, you can certainly rally support to just plain vote it down, but if you think an amendment is in order, we could start discussion of that here. Perhaps, armed with an amendment that had been widely-publicized and discussed, it would be possible to quickly move past the contentious article and replace it with something better.

So how to do that? If you have an actual amendment you would like to advocate, don't just comment on this post--you should register on the site and create a blog entry. If the technology gets in the way of doing that, email it to me and I will post it. I only ask that for these kinds of things, you be accountable--put your name on it as you will have to do in the Town Meeting. I recommend you "Title" the blog entry with a short description and the article number in parenthesis. For the "Topic" you should type "town meeting amendment." I will try to help as best I can as I have time.

Submitted by Dave Atkins on May 1, 2008 - 12:35pm
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Comments

Amendment not likely

Submitted by skidad on May 2, 2008 - 5:21am.

Rumor has it that the Moderator will not allow an amendment of Article 18 on the floor. The issues are too complex since it will need to include different zoning language, and thus he will consider it an altogether new article, requiring all the proper vetting through the different committees and notice to the town. In other words, it will not likely be considered at this TM.

Amendment Not Likely

Submitted by Guest on May 2, 2008 - 11:56am.

And here's the reason(s):

1. The new Moderator is the former Selectman and one of the two Selectmen who voted in favor of the Article

or

2. The new Moderator is too inexperienced as a Town Meeting Moderator and doesn't know how to deal with it being amended.

or

3. A combination of the above.

Either way, it sound like it would boil down to what He wants rather than what WE want.

Moderator

Submitted by Guest on May 2, 2008 - 2:28pm.

The new moderator does not take office until AFTER Town Meeting 2008. Homework helps.

Moderator

Submitted by Guest on May 2, 2008 - 7:11pm.

Thank you for the info. I stand corrected.