By Chris Burns
Fiasco! The word describes the Special Town Meeting (STM) last night for numerous reasons.
1. While polite and professional, there simply were not enough monitors to check in voters. The lines unhealthily snaked through the school and the meeting start was delayed until 7:30 p.m. This is on the Selects and poor planning.
2. The STM was called “to act on the following article… this warrant…” I left at 10:50 p.m. and the vote had yet to occur. This is on the moderator. The moderator is a neutral participant who holds participants to time limits and prevents the discussion from straying from the topic. Clearly, the moderator was overwhelmed since no vote had occurred almost four hours after the 7 p.m. start declared in the warrant.
3. The warrant presented at STM was materially different from the draft mailed to voters. The key difference was the addition of the Hartwell location, which would indicate that only the two designs sent to voters would be considered at a cost of $25-30 million. The warrant was not ready for voting despite 10 years of work. Haphazard warrant preparation is on the Community Center Building Committee (CCBC) and the Selects.
4. The warrant discussion was confusing at best. The Selects said the funded consulting services would include lower-cost projects and alternative sites. This is not in the warrant that they proposed. The Selects then said that the warrant would not cover these issues. The Finance Committee said the warrant had to be for more money to include these concerns. The CCBC said the money could cover these issues. The CCBC said they heard voter concerns about costs and alternative sites, but this was not in the warrant they proposed. An alternative [motion] was cobbled together by voters which was not readable by all voters and included some errors. This was done on the fly with no input from town counsel. Why? Because town counsel was not present for a $300,000 warrant [article] that could lead to as much as $30 million of spending. This is on the Selects and the CCBC. The warrant was not well crafted and the input from town boards was inconsistent.
5. A voter implored citizens to “trust” the people who have worked on this project for 10 years. Trust is earned; it is not given. I hope and expect that future presentations of this project will be worthy of that trust.
Chris Burns lives at 222 Tower Road.
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Alice, thank you for a good summary of a complicated meeting.
On Wednesday night, we all learned that democracy is sometimes a ‘hot mess’. But I will share a friend’s comments: we got democracy goose bumps at the end of our long meeting. Representative democracy is often more orderly, but pure democracy, as we experienced it Wednesday night, is active engagement by passionate citizens.
The Special Town Meeting was not a “fiasco” although many of the flaws and foibles described above would make it seem so. In fact, it demonstrated how messy, and time-consuming, democracy can be if we want to achieve a specific result–which we did, albeit after 4 hours. I would argue that the Moderator handled the meeting admirably, especially without Town Counsel present, and with occasional humor to keep the group focused and on track for the task. Not a simple accomplishment; we might not have had a decision at all without her able leadership.
One important question: Why was this meeting scheduled for a weeknight, rather than a Saturday when all could attend? An evening meeting wasn’t possible for many residents, the elderly–a primary audience for whom this proposed new Center prompted the vote. If Lincoln wishes to promote diversity, it needs to be sensitive to age diversity, also. The scheduling of this meeting speaks volumes about the Town’s attitude.
I would disagree. I will say that I had suspected that this was an important meeting to attend. We set out early and the steady stream of cars all heading to the meeting confirmed my view. I agree that check in should have been much better. There was a visual problem – people didn’t always see that there were multiple people checking folks in so I suspect that slowed things down. I think a solution can be found, hopefully by the next town meeting.
But, this was pure democracy. Messy, exhausting, but , in the end, the voices of the people were heard. The wrangling over changing the wording was awkwardly done – and I think that the powers that be need to find a better way to do that. Surely we should be able to do something better. It would seem a simple matter to let people submit , before and during the meeting, alternatives electronically.
This is a major issue , and I hope we can find more ways to interact with the committee.
I totally agree with Chris Burns’ posting. The meeting was a “fiasco” for all the reasons he mentioned. Almost four hours into the meeting the CCBC said they did not support the $25 million design that had been presented to the Town. If they had said this in the beginning it would have saved us hours . They clearly ascertained as the meeting progressed that they did not have Town support for the expensive, over
The top design they had put forward. Then they back tracked and rested in the “trust us” argument. Too late.by that time no one trusted anyone in the panel.
The moderator lost total control of the meeting early in. Voters were leaving in droves fed up with the entire process.
I hope the Board got the message. The Town does not support the expensive building they envision. The man who actually said he did not notice seniors leaving down is clearly not paying attention. The tax burden is already extreme for many of us.
I hope they were listening.
Crickett Kerrebrock, 29 Boyce Farm Road
The queuing seems to be an issue of design of the building.
It seems designers did not plan for check-ins for a full auditorium- for Town Meeting or any other events.
Perhaps gyms could be used to manage this?
Imagine a well- attended school event, with only a few people to check folks in.
Nothing will start on time!