Amherst's Representative Town Meetings were both consultative and legislative. Elected representatives had the power to vote on municipal legislation while unelected members of the public were free to propose agenda items, attend and speak on proposed measures.
Problems and Purpose
A Representative Town Meeting is a local elected legislature that meets regularly to make public governance decisions, including on money appropriation, law creation, and land use zoning. 33 of Massachusetts' 351 municipalities use Representative Town Meeting. They are similar to Open Town Meetings, which are direct democracies.
Such representative town meetings are municipal legislatures. In Amherst, the town meeting would exercise “all powers vested in the municipal corporation. It does not, however, have the power to affect the municipality’s existence or form of government, decisions which may only be approved by the public of Amherst through referendum."
Background History and Context
New England or 'Open' Town Meetings have been used as the legislative bodies for communities in New England since their founding in the 1600s and 1700s. In Amherst, town meetings have taken place since 1748. Amherst's town meetings were originally “open” town meetings, meaning that any registered voter could propose a subject for deliberation, deliberate, and vote. However, this model was found unwieldy and often unrepresentative of the town’s population. These problems led the citizens of the town to vote in 1998 to adopt a “representative” (“limited”) town meeting model. The town later changed to a city council on March 27, 2018.
Organizing, Supporting, and Funding Entities
Amherst’s representative town meeting was a legislative body made possible via the Commonwealth of Massachusetts’ General Laws. Funding for the Moderator (the presiding officer of the town meeting) originates via tax revenue, which was then allocated by the town meeting itself.
Participant Recruitment and Selection
The 240 town meeting members in Amherst were elected, with twenty-four representatives coming from each of Amherst’s ten precincts. To be placed on the ballot, candidates submitted 50-word statements and one nomination signature from a voter within their precinct. In any election, the member with the greatest number of votes served a three-year term; the member with the second-greatest number of votes served a two-year term; and the member with the third-greatest number of votes serves a one-year term. Ties are decided by the votes of the precinct’s already-elected members. Town meeting members are not compensated for their service.
A Moderator keeps order at the meetings and calls the votes. The Moderator is elected annually by Amherst citizens at the annual town meeting. The Moderator also appoints a finance committee of seven members who investigate the proposals which would affect Amherst’s finances and make recommendations.
Only the 240 elected members, as well as ex-officio members, were able to vote at town meetings. Ex-officio members included the School Committee, the President of the Library Trustees, the Finance Committee Chair, the Town Manager, and the Select Board (Amherst’s five-member elected board which set policy, decides liquor licenses, and hired/supervised the Town Manager who runs the day-to-day operation of government departments). In case of a tie, the Moderator will also cast a vote.
Any registered voter of Amherst could speak at a town meeting, although (unless they are an elected town meeting member) they may not vote. The town meeting could also vote to allow non-registered voters of Amherst to speak.
Methods and Tools Used
The Representative Town Meeting model used in Amherst was a local elected legislature that met at least twice a year to make public governance decisions, including money appropriation, law creation, and land use zoning. Representative town meetings are usually moderated discussions with certain procedures and rules, like restricted speaking time, a restriction on how many contributions each member can make on a certain topic, and an order of contributions. The agenda of meetings are set by a specific group of members forming a board with certain authorities, and members of the public may submit proposals as well.
What Went On: Process, Interaction, and Participation
In Amherst, the Annual Town Meeting occurred once a year, comprised of multiple meetings spread out over several weeks in April, May, and/or June. Special Town Meetings could occur at other times as necessary, called by the elected Select Board, or by a petition of 200 voters.
Town residents must be appropriately warned of the town meeting’s time, location, and topics that will be discussed. If an individual must pay a babysitter or caregiver for their dependents while at a town meeting, the municipality reimbursed them in order to keep the meetings accessible. All registered voters in Amherst were allowed to speak at a town meeting. They were required to restrict their comments to the topic at hand, as outlined by the article; these comments ranged from asking and answering questions to making a report or recommendation. Criticizing or insulting individuals, speculating on others’ motives, and advertising were prohibited, although criticizing the actions of an individual or institution was allowed.
The town meeting adhered to the agenda set by the Select Board, known (per state law) as a “warrant”. If any 10 registered voters agree that a certain issue must be deliberated publicly, they bring a signed petition to the Town Clerk's Office. By state law, the Select Board must add it to the warrant. Topics within the warrant are arranged into separate “articles.” While one meeting may involve several evening sessions, no action can occur on the proposals on the articles unless the town meeting completes the warrant. This involves voting each motion on every article up or down, voting to dismiss it, or sending it to a town advisory or regulatory board. Proposals become binding when the town meeting is dissolved. Each meeting is its own bound event; no issue may carry over to the next. The Attorney General's (AG) Office offers a final review of all town meeting decisions on articles. Decisions take effect once the AG's office finds that the decisions are legal.
Voting members at the town meeting will vote to approve, adopt, amend, or dismiss the article. A variety of actions may result, from raising and appropriating money, transferring money between accounts, resolving to do some action, or changing/creating a by-law (city ordinance).
Any measure passed by the town meeting would not be not enacted for five business days from the end of the meeting. If, within those five days, a petition signed by at least five percent of registered active voters of Amherst was submitted to the Select Board, the matter will then be submitted as a referendum to the voters at large. Certain matters, however, were not eligible to be put on referendum—these include emergency measures, expenditures less than $20,000, temporary borrowing of money in anticipation of revenue, appropriations of money in order to pay notes or bonds coming due in the then-current financial year, etc.
Influence, Outcomes, and Effects
In 1999, Amherst had a $50 million budget. The town meeting controlled 78% of expenditures for the operating budgets and 6% of expenditures for the capital budget. The town meeting appropriated money and creates and amended bylaws; no other groups or individuals were able to do this independently. Citizens thus had the power to direct where this significant amount of money goes, to shape zoning regulations, and to care for their environment through creation of new regulations or budgetary decisions.
Analysis and Lessons Learned
The procedural order functioned to ensure that every position seeking to be heard will be heard. The Moderator did little to discourage speaking; it was rare for him to cut people off or refuse to continue discussion. However, the rule that “no speaker may be heard more than twice on the same subject” encouraged different voices to be heard.
The willingness of the town meeting to be flexible was also important to is functionality. It rearranged its agenda to accommodate temporary participants who may have necessary information but are unavailable for a particular session.
See Also
References
Amherst, Town of. Amherst, Massachusetts. 5 Jan. 2006 http://www.amherstma.gov/.
Bryan, Frank. Real Democracy: The New England Town Meeting and How It Works. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2003.
Carbaugh, Donal. "Communication Rules in Donahue Discourse." In D. Carbaugh (Ed.), Cultural Communication and Intercultural Contact (pp. 119–149). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1990a.
Chapter 216 of the Acts of 2001: An Act Relative to the Amherst Town Government. 29 Dec. 2001. www.amherstma.gov/DocumentView.asp?DID=234.
Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Commonwealth Communities. 5 May 1999 http://www.magnet.state.ma.us. [BROKEN LINK]
Johnson, Richard B., Benjamin A. Trustman, and Charles Y. Wadsworth. Town Meeting Time: A Handbook of Parliamentary Law. 1962. Rev. ed. Committee of the Massachusetts Moderators Association (Ralph C. Copeland, Joseph Harrington, Jr., John B. Howard, Charles L. Kirkpatrick, and Douglas D. Nichols). Malabar, FL: Krieger, 1984.
Kerr, Harry P. “Big Business ‘Round the Cracker Barrel.” Today’s Speech 12 (1964): 4-5, 29.
Lederman, Diane. "3rd session of Amherst Town Meeting to begin with debate on Supreme Court Citizens United ruling, Secure Communities program." 5 May 2012. Masslive.com/The Republican. 22 June 2012. http://www.masslive.com/news/index.ssf/2012/05/the_third_session_of_the_amher.html
Mansbridge, Jane. Beyond Adversarial Democracy. New York: Basic, 1980.
Schudson, Michael. “Introduction: All Politics is Local, Some Local Politics is Personal.” Communication Review 3 (1999): 213-17.
Townsend, Rebecca M. “Town Meeting as a Communication Event: Democracy’s Act Sequence.” Research on Language and Social Interaction. 42 (2009): 68-89.
Townsend, Rebecca M. “Local Communication Studies.” Lead Review Essay. Quarterly Journal of Speech 92 (2006a): 202-222.
Townsend, Rebecca M. “Widening the Circumference of Scene: Local Politics, Local Metaphysics.” KBJournal. Spring 2006. www.kbjournal.org/townsend
Tracy, Karen, and Aaron Dimock. “Meetings: Discursive Sites for Building and Fragmenting Community.” Communication Yearbook 28 (2003): 127-65.
Tracy, Karen and Heidi Muller. “Diagnosing a School Board’s Interactional Trouble: Theorizing Problem Formulating.”Communication Theory 11 (2001): 84-104.
Tracy, Karen and Christina Standerfer. “Selecting a School Superintendent: Sensitivities in Group Deliberation.” Group Communication in Context: Studies of Bona Fide Groups. Ed. Lawrence R. Frey. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 2003. 109-34.
Zimmerman, Joseph A. The New England Town Meeting: Democracy in Action. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1999.
External Links
Journal Article: Town Meeting as a Communication Event