How can Town Meeting be made more accessible for busy parents, the homebound, and others who might like to attend but can’t? Town moderator Sarah Cannon Holden and selectmen brainstormed several ideas at the board’s October 24 meeting.

The topic came up after several residents discussed the matter on the LincolnTalk email list over the summer (list members can find the discussion thread by clicking here—login required).

While some in the LincolnTalk discussion celebrated Town Meeting as a shining example of New England participatory democracy, others said it was inefficient and did not allow for maximum voter participation.

“The current system is akin to holding an election that instead of giving people options, forces them to take an entire day off of  work/family/obligations and sit in a room for 5-7 hours before eventually casting a vote at a not-previously-determined time,” one resident wrote.

Another wrote that the notion of Town Meeting as it’s now conducted is “fairly antiquated” and “seems to indicate that citizens should adapt to the arbitrary choice of government administration instead of adapting the administration  of government to the needs of the citizens.”

“Civic engagement is important, yet I would think a true democracy would find ways to give everyone an opportunity to participate,” wrote a third resident who endorsed the idea of mail-in voting.

At the selectmen’s meeting, Holden and other noted that Lincoln can’t change its form of government without an act of the state legislature. Like the majority of the 351 cities and towns in Massachusetts, Lincoln has an open town meeting form of government (54 have a city/town council and 36 have a representative town meeting, according to the Massachusetts Municipal Association). However, there is some leeway in terms of the timing; Town Meeting can be held over two or more evenings, for example.

Other ideas suggested at the selectmen’s meeting included video-streaming the entire meeting so people could watch remotely and come in to vote when an item of interest came up, or expanding the consent calendar. The consent calendar is a list of warrant articles that officials have deemed non-controversial beforehand and that are voted on as a group, with the exception of individual items for which a resident has requested a separate discussion and vote.

Holden noted that Town Meeting is already divided such that finances and bylaws are usually discussed and voted on in the mornings, with public policy issues coming after the lunch break. She also noted that she does her best to encourage shorter presentations by town officials and trying to limit the length of discussions, though “it’s hard to cut off [a resident] in a sense arbitrarily” or by a set number of minutes or comments.

Holden acknowledged that there was an overflow problem at the Special Town Meeting in 2012, when hundreds of people showed up for an important school funding vote. She announced the vote about 15 minutes ahead of time knowing that the auditorium doors would have to be closed first, since it was sure to be a hand-counted vote as opposed to a voice vote. However, some people were not able to get in because of the crush, and although there was overflow space in the gym next door, it’s unclear whether they were signed in, so they could not vote.

Selectman James Craig said the most frequent suggestion he had heard from those with school-age children was to have a defined time period for all voting, such as 1-2 p.m.

Pushback from selectmen

“I’ve been going [to Town Meeting] since I was a kid, and I have a sort of instinctive sort of pushback” to this sort of change, Selectman Peter Braun said. “This is an important event in our community. It’s really important for people to hear each other and see each other and participate in democracy that a war was fought over originally. I feel a little personal constraint over saying ‘show up when you feel like it and vote when you’re here’.”

Lincoln is not the only town facing this issue. Other towns have tried things like having Town Meeting over two days, “and they all say it doesn’t seem to matter, you get the same response. He suggested that Holden do a benchmark study of “what other towns are doing to try to address these issues.”

Nevertheless, Lincoln’s Town Meeting participation rate is one of the highest in the state, Town Administrator Tim Higgins said.

“This will sound a little harsh, I have to admit… but I have a really hd time understanding why someone can’t hire a babysitter, and one with a car if necessary” for chauffeuring children to activities, said Selectman Renel Fredriksen, noting that she always attended Town Meeting even when her children were very young. “It’s one day a year… if you had a wedding, would you skip it because you had to go to a soccer game? If someone says ‘I can’t go because of X,’ then you’re clearly making it a lower priority than whatever X is. It doesn’t parse for me.” Citizens should know the issues and “show up if they care, and if you don’t care, that’s fine,” she said.

“There’s some truth to that, but at the same time, I do feel like we need to listen,” Craig said.

“The issue is accessibility and disenfranchisement of people who don’t have the ability who literally cannot attend Town Meeting, not their level of care or concern about town issues,” resident Margit Griffith said. “When you’re looking at opportunities to vote, you have to look at people who can’t—not won’t, but can’t.”

At the close of the discussion, Holden said she would look at having more items on the consent calendar, and perhaps distributing more digestible information (in print and online) ahead of time as a way of shortening presentations and questions at Town Meeting.