The Rumble Strip podcast by Erica Heilman on 2/05/2021 titled “Town Meeting” is excellent! It is well worth 30 minutes of your time.

[Town meeting] is the most civilized and surprising social gathering of the year, every year. [Erica at 1:50]

Town Meeting Day in Vermont is the first Tuesday in March. It will be different this year because of the pandemic lockdown. Many towns, including Cambridge, will not be gathering in person. In this podcast Erica interviews several town meeting moderators about why town meeting is important, and what we will be missing this year. Following are selected comments, to entice you to listen to the whole thing.

Starting at about 24:00, Susan Clark of Middlesex talks about “town meeting culture”:

We have expectations in Vermont of civility. We have expectations of inclusion. We expect to be asked about things before decisions come down. We have democratic expectations in Vermont that other places might not have, that I think many other places do not have, because of a town meeting culture that we have created over centuries.

At 8:50 Paul Doton of Barnard talks about how town meeting works:

One of the things I point out is that everybody addresses their comments to the moderator, and the moderator will ask the questions, so there aren’t two people that are arguing across the room – which can be, and has been sometimes a problem because emotions get in the way, and I try to make sure that emotions are set aside.

(I have known Susan Clark and Paul Doton for years. I’ve mentioned Susan several times on this blog.)

Susan and Paul and the other moderators interviewed by Erica are talking about deciding issues in a meeting after discussion. They are not talking about deciding issues by merely casting a ballot, or Australian ballot as we call it in Vermont. Voting by pre-printed ballot does not build the “town meeting culture” mentioned above. It destroys it.

Australian balloting ought to be outlawed, as far as I’m concerned. [State Senator Bobby Starr of Troy at 18:35]

In addition to interviewing town meeting moderators, Erica also plays clips from several town meetings from various towns and years. The following speaker at 19:35 is not identified, but residents of Cambridge who regularly attend town meeting will immediately recognize the voice and know exactly what he is talking about:

You know right now, the house, the old Meigs house right there by Tobin’s old garage, every time it floods, that fills the basement with water. I talked to Pat Mayo, where Pat Mayo grew up [nearby]. He said, that was nothing, he says our house was always full of water. I said, you know, we turn around and build that road up now, you think about it, somebody else is going to pay for it.

That is Dana Sweet speaking at the 2018 Cambridge town meeting. Video here. Commentary here. He is speaking at 4:41:40 under Article 11 – Discussion of other nonbinding business.

Dana is talking about a problem that bedeviled Cambridge for years: how to deal with periodic flooding of the Lamoille River across Route 15 and Pumpkin Harbor Road that cut off access to Bartlett Hill Road.  There was no perfect solution, and various residents had strong and incompatible opinions about the matter. After years of discussions, the town finally implemented a solution in 2019. It did involve building up “that road” (Pumpkin Harbor Road) which Dana spoke about in his comments, but that seemed to be the best solution for the most people.

No sooner was the project completed than it was tested by the “Halloween Flood” of 2019. The project was a success. The town wrote about that flood, including access to Bartlett Hill Road during the flood, in the 2019 town report. See the cover, the inside front cover, the message from Emergency Management Director Dan St. Cyr on page 1, and the Selectboard Report on page 12.

Further to Dana’s comments above, in the summer of 2020, with federal funds and at the request of the owner, the town purchased and demolished “the old Meigs house” at 57 Pumpkin Harbor Road. As a condition of the federal grant, that flood-prone lot will never be developed again.

That is a good example of the kinds of issues that citizens grapple with at town meeting in Vermont, solving real problems that affect our communities.

And that is a good example of a local official who knows the town and its people. See Dana Sweet Wins Marvin Award. Dana has been on the Cambridge selectboard since 1989, and I have been proud to serve with him since 2017. (I’m just a newbie.)

Again, here is the link for this excellent Rumble Strip podcast by Erica Heilman:

https://rumblestripvermont.com/2021/02/town-meeting/

For more about town meeting, see posts on this blog with the “Town Meeting” tag.

UPDATE 2/15/2021: See also the next post Vermont’s superpower. It is about Susan Clark’s commentary in VTDigger on 2/05/2021: “Vermont’s superpower, revealed: The ability to practice local democracy.” The theme is similar.