Above: Less than 7% of Southborough voters made important decisions at last year’s Annual Town Meeting. Now a committee dedicated to helping the Town improve participation is asking for voter feedback. (photo by Beth Melo)
The Town Meeting Review Committee is seeking voter feedback. And they’re hoping to get it before this week’s Special Town Meeting. (Though, they will continue to collect after.)
To help them make recommendations on future improvements, take their quick survey. (And I promise, it is a quick one.)
But why now instead of after Wednesday? As one member explained to me, this meeting is different in nature than the Annual Town Meeting. It’s looking like it might draw a much larger crowd than usual. They are looking for opinions of Town Meeting voters based on their past experiences.
After last year’s Annual Town Meeting there was a lot of chatter on the blog about changes that should be made. In May, a new Moderator was elected. In his campaign, Stephen Morreale promised to research improvements.
In June 2016, he worked jointly with the Board of Selectmen to form a Town Meeting Review Committee (TMRC) to review the process, participation, workflow and schedule. They have been working on that since. Now, they are looking for voters to answer questions formed based on their research:
The committee was charged with exploring ‘best practices’ used in other New England communities, voting procedures, warrant review and community education related to Town government.
To that end, TMRC members have developed a short questionnaire. Your input is sought. Our goal is to make citizen participation in town government work as best as possible – so your comments are essential.
Feedback will be included in a report to be presented to the BOS and Town Moderator in April.
The TMRC thanks you in advance for your time and participation.
Please click this link to access the survey: http:///www.surveymonkey.com/r/n7hm3bk
Said it in the survey and will repeat here. Build an app to send out information prior to town meetings, allow voting via the app after checking in to the townhall meeting location. Just show up and vote on the topics you are sure of. The meeting itself can still be run as normal for those who don’t want to use the app, but those who do can do so. This is such a simple problem to solve and is right up the alley for the newly formed (or soon to be formed?) technology committee.