Could pandemic further erode the New England town meeting?

MIDDLESEX, VT. — The town meeting, for centuries, was a staple of New England life

but the coronavirus pan- demic could accelerate the departure from the tradition where people gather to debate everything from the purchase of local road equip- ment to multimillion-dollar budgets to pressing social issues.

The basis of the town meeting is to bring everyone together in the same room — sometimes a literal town hall, sometimes a school gymnasium — where voters will hash out local issues until a decision is made.

The restrictions on in-person gatherings imposed by the pandemic make that impossible.

Some communities are delaying meetings this year until the virus will, hopefully, be more under control. Oth- ers are using pre-printed bal- lots to decide issues, forgoing the daylong debate alto- gether.

Some worry the temporary workaround could remain even after life returns to normal.

“I’d be very disappointed if people think that this is a new model because that would move us away completely from the essence of town meeting, which is the opportunity to assemble with our fellow voters, to hear from our elected offi- cials directly, to question, to challenge them, to debate a budget and public questions in an assembled meeting,” said former Vermont Gov. Jim Douglas, who served for 33 years as moderator in his hometown of Middlebury.

But others counter that the challenges of getting people together during town meet- ing, virus or no, restrict the number of people who can participate.

In Vermont, where the traditional Town Meeting Day — the first Tuesday in March — is a holiday, the state autho- rized towns this year only to decide local issues with pre-printed ballots. Most towns that chose the option held remote informational meetings to help voters make informed decisions.

In Middlesex, Vermont, voters will cast ballots Tuesday on a measure that, if approved, would have the town continue with the preprinted ballots to decide everything — from appropriations for the local library to payments for social programs — but the town budget.

Town meetings evolved from the era when the first European settlers in what would eventually become the six New England states would gather in a meeting house, usually the church, and decide all local issues. They are still used in some form in all six New England states: Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island.

Over the centuries, the power was transferred to groups of local “select men” who were chosen to make the communities’ decisions and the system has continued to evolve, said Douglas, the former Vermont governor.

Now some communities use representative town meetings where locals are elected to represent their neighbors. Other communities use a combination of floor debates, votes and preprinted ballots for different issues. In larger communities, voters already decide issues with pre-printed ballots.

In Massachusetts, where some of the first New England town meetings were established in the 1630s, 300 of 351 municipalities continue to hold town meetings in some form, according to Secretary of State William Galvin’s office.

Last year, Massachusetts lawmakers allowed towns to postpone their annual town meetings to the summer, enabling many to hold them outdoors after the ini

virus surge subsided.