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How We Govern Ourselves: Direct Democracy in Our Towns
By Laura Knoy on Wednesday, March 10, 2010.
Annual town and school meetings have been called the closest thing to pure Athenian democracy in today's world. Closely related are deliberative session in towns formed under SB2. Larger municipalities have town and city councils. Many say that town meetings and SB2 work because everyone can get involved and be held accountable, but the number of town meetings are dwindling and some say are becoming less relevant. We’ll look at how New Hampshire’s towns run themselves and if this model still works.
Guests
- Jon Greenberg, NHPR’s Executive Editor and curator of the Meeting Interactive 2010 project
- Doug Hall, town moderator in Chichester and past director of the New Hampshire Center for Public Policy Studies
We'll also hear from
- John Steiner, Town Moderator for Bradford and Associate Executive Director of the New Hampshire Local Government Center
- Lynn Christensen, Town Moderator for the town of Merrimack, an SB2 town
- Brian Chirichiello, Town Councilor for Derry
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Of course town meeting still works. Our town meeting is a 21st century institution well suited to tackling the issues of this new millennium. To those who suggest that town meeting is outdated, a throwback to 17th century notions of governance, I have to ask: what is outdated about people coming together in a meeting to decide their common interests? It’s done every day in every corporation and institution in America, and despite all the new technology, no one, fortunately, has yet figured out how to mechanize or automate resolution of our differences. We have to talk to one another, we have to debate, we have to compromise, and we have to disagree, to be a community. We need to shake hands, laugh, argue, boo, scowl, and applaud to be neighbors, to be people. When we no longer gather to make tough decisions, we are no longer a town. We become a governmental unit with no soul. Might as well be called GU42 than Enfield.
Having living in New Hampshire just three years after living in many different parts of the country, I am eager to be involved in the civic life of my town but find the town meeting format absolutely paralyzing. I believe strongly that our democracy works best when people are elected -- or hired -- by the people to try to represent our points of view. They are elected to understand the issues that most of us don't. I'm always stunned by the decisions we as NH citizens are asked to vote on and believe that this form of government directly compromises the ability of our community to evolve and meet modern challenges.
Town meeting don't work!
Iike many others cannot get the time off. I say this day and age with all the different ways to get information we should be able to vote different ways. Have the town meeting, have a class at the town halls and then you could votprob absent ballot or even better have a online class you take and then either vote online or absent ballot
if we are lucky 10 of the people vote I am sure if you offered different ways to vote people would.