I've submitted a citizens' petition to be included in the warrant for the May town meeting to amend the town bylaws by increasing the quorum requirement for town meetings from 60 to 150. The petition describes the reasons for doing so as follows:

"There are roughly 890 registered voters in Egremont. Only 60 of them have to show up at a town meeting to constitute a quorum. And most matters at town meeting require only a majority vote. That means 31 voters – 3.5% of registered voters – can make legally binding decisions for all of us. Even where our bylaws wisely require a two-thirds vote for important matters – like borrowing money or changing zoning requirements – a mere 5% of the voters can make those decisions and we’re all stuck with them.

Egremonters usually aren’t hurt by that low quorum requirement when it comes to routine matters. But when an important matter is on the agenda, the low quorum requirement all too often results in a small group of voters “stacking” the meeting, producing a result that the vast majority of Egremonters may strongly disagree with."

To those who object on the basis that we can't get that many people to come to a town meeting, I would reply that I recall at least three times in recent years that we have gotten more than 150 people to attend. And in all three cases, the decisions reached were far more representative of what townspeople really wanted than at meetings with only 60 or 70 attendees.

More on this later.