Can technology save the town meeting?
An “electronic town meeting” might connect more people to their local governments, but would something important be lost in cyberspace? After about 100 residents turned out last month for West Brookfield’s annual town meeting, Selectman Thomas Long voiced a sentiment heard regularly throughout New England. “I think the towns around here have outgrown the old New England town meeting,” he told the Worcester Telegram & Gazette. Since West Brookfield has fewer than 6,000 residents it is required by state law to keep a Board of Selectmen and to hold open town meetings. Larger towns, though, are not. On May 14, the annual town meeting in Braintree was held for the last time, after a run of more than three centuries. Next spring Braintree voters will elect a new nine-member town council and a mayor. A dozen other Massachusetts towns have made the same decision over the past four decades. (1). New Englanders have long complained that the traditional town meeting is unsuited to the demands of
