Quorum Requirement for Town Meeting

One item on the agenda for the upcoming town meeting is a proposal to change the quorum requirement from 60 to 100. It was on the warrant last year but didn't get voted on for technical reasons.

We've all seen too many instances of meetings being "stacked" by a small group of people - often people who otherwise don't attend town meetings regularly - who have a particular interest in some matter and who pass (or defeat) that matter even though a more representative group of voters would have voted the other way. Would you want the US Senate to have a quorum requirement of 7 (out of 100) so that 4 senators could pass legislation even if the other 96 senators would have voted the other way? That's essentially the situation in Egremont.

On a number of occasions in recent years, we've had to rally voters to come to special town meetings because otherwise a small group of dedicated people would have pushed through some action that would have helped them but hurt the rest of us. That just isn't democratic and it just isn't right. And it should be changed.

The problem is even worse when it comes to special town meetings. They're often far more unrepresentative than annual town meetings, because the voters who are affected by the issue under consideration come out in droves but the voters who aren't directly affected by it tend to stay home. That has happened twice in recent memory at special meetings deciding whether to buy another fire truck. (I'm not saying we did or didn't need a new fire truck, only that the decision wasn't democratic.) And the problem is made worse by the tendency of our current selectmen to call special town meetings to decide important issues, a practice that I strongly disagree with.

The opposition to this change will come from the town hall denizens. They'll say it's too hard to get people to come to town meeting. It seems to me the solution to that is to streamline town meeting, not to have decisions made by too small a group. (And remember the old adage: "No man's life, liberty or property is safe while the legislature is in session." Some recent town meetings have made decisions so bad that we'd have been better off if the meeting hadn't happened.)

So come to the town meeting and vote yes on this change!

Comments welcome, especially from the town hall denizens.