BRATTLEBORO — In a possible precursor to what other communities may face if Covid-19 remains a threat next March, this southern Vermont hub will hold the state’s first online town meeting Saturday.
“How do we make sure the meeting is running as close to normal as possible in this new way?” Town Clerk Hilary Francis is asking herself. “We’re aware there are going to be some unknown unknowns.”
Those challenges could be considerable, as seen in a public technology tutorial this past Labor Day weekend that drew attendees ranging in age from twenty- to ninety-something.
“This is a great exercise in practicing patience,” Selectman Daniel Quipp said during a nearly three-hour training intended for people unfamiliar with how to log onto a video conferencing platform and vote using a computer mouse.
Most Green Mountain municipalities decide budgets and other ballot questions at annual town meetings in early March. Brattleboro, the state’s seventh most populous locality with about 11,000 residents, aims to keep attendance manageable by electing some 150 representatives who wait to gather later that month.
Local leaders, forced by the pandemic to delay this year’s original March 21 meeting date, since have struggled with how to corral several hundred people under state guidelines that limit crowds to 75 indoors or 150 outdoors.
After considering a myriad of ways to hold an in-person event — including renting a tent big enough for a three-ring circus — the Selectboard has opted for plugging into Zoom to debate and decide 20 agenda items. But that means training both Luddites as well as those who think they know technology.
“This is not your usual version of Zoom,” meeting moderator Lawrin Crispe said at the start of the recent tutorial. “It’s not the same system many of us are accustomed to.”
The advanced platform, for example, has a special feature to allow participants to cast votes and see them calculated. But this means teaching beginners what keys to click and video-conferencing veterans to disregard their usual practices and follow different directions.
“I don’t understand anything about computers,” one trainee said, “but I’m also concerned about people who think they know what’s going on but don’t.”
To prevent “Zoom-bomb” disruptions and nonresidents from voting, the town is only sharing the meeting link with locals approved in advance. (The public will be able to watch live on Brattleboro Community TV and call in on a special phone number.) It also has sent out a 25-page informational booklet and set up a “technical hotline” for participants with computer problems.
“We can’t spend the first hour or two dealing with these sorts of issues,” Crispe says of all the prep work.
Then again, townspeople might debate that, having gone off script last year to add $100,000 to the municipal budget during a roller-coaster 13-hour meeting. Back then, Crispe was standing at a lectern flanked by dozens of local leaders and hundreds of townspeople. This year, he’ll sit 6 feet apart from a computer screen and Assistant Town Manager Patrick Moreland, who’ll serve as the Zoom host.
“This frees up the moderator from having to get involved with the technical machinery,” Moreland says, “and allows him to focus on the meeting content.”
Everyone else will be at home, their offices or, for a handful without internet access or ability, spaced throughout the downtown public library.
“We want to make sure a lack of technology or know-how doesn’t prevent someone from participating,” Francis says at the town clerk’s office.
This could prove tricky for town meeting representatives who live in the same household, as each must log onto separate computers in order to vote through the system.
For all the hurdles, the move is the most popular of several options. A recent survey of representatives found 96% have some sort of computer, 95% have sufficient internet access, 88% had the technical understanding to plug into video conferencing and 75% are open to trying an online town meeting.
In comparison, only 65% were willing to meet in person.
Brattleboro’s town meeting is set to start Saturday at 8:30 a.m. and, if more time is needed, continue Sunday. The agenda will lack just one article from the original proposed in March: the town’s annual budget. Representatives are required by charter to approve a spending plan. But when the Selectboard couldn’t schedule a meeting before the July 1 start of the current fiscal year, it turned to a temporary state measure that allowed it to adopt a budget to ensure municipal operations continue.
“Hopefully we’ll never have to do this again, but if we do, we’ll use this as a learning opportunity,” the town clerk says. “There are going to be technological glitches, but this gives the voters the most power to do things the way they normally would.”
