Editor’s note: This article has been updated to correct the date originally given for the 2016 town election and to clarify the process for changing the election date.
By Alice Waugh
Residents unanimously approved changing the date of the annual Town Meeting to make sure it always occurs before the town election. The vote came at a Special Town Meeting sandwiched inside the State of the Town Meeting on November 14.
Before the vote, town by-laws called for the Annual Town Meeting to take place on the Saturday before the last Monday in March and the town election two days later; if Town Meeting would fall on the day before Easter Sunday, it would instead take place a week later. The latter situation has not come up in recent memory—but it will in 2016. This means that Town Meeting would have to take place after the election, where voters would be casting ballots on issues they normally might have discussed at Town Meeting two days earlier.
“That doesn’t really fit today’s reality. If there was something important on the election ballot, voters would be better informed if there were Town Meeting beforehand,” Selectman Noah Eckhouse said.
Voters agreed on Saturday to change the wording of the bylaw to say that, in years where Town Meeting would fall on Easter weekend, the meeting would be rescheduled for a week earlier rather than a week later.
As a result, next year’s Annual Town Meeting, which was originally scheduled for March 26, will now take place on March 19 and the town election on March 28. Easter falls on March 27, 2016.
Ideally, both Town Meeting and the town election would occur a week later than usual if Easter was on the day after Town Meeting, but this isn’t possible because the town election includes voting for the Lincoln-Sudbury School Committee. Officials hope to work with their Sudbury counterparts to reopen the regional school district agreement, which specifies the election date, Selectman Renel Fredriksen noted. Changing the regional agreement will require Town Meeting approval by both towns.
“We needed to get this done now. Sudbury is a complicated process,” Selectman Peter Braun said. “This will impact only next year at this point.”