BRATTLEBORO — For a third pandemic year, this southern Vermont hub is preparing to hold the state’s only virtual official town meeting.
Most Green Mountain municipalities decide budgets and other ballot questions at annual meetings on or around the first Tuesday in March. Brattleboro, the state’s seventh most populous locality with about 12,000 residents, aims to keep attendance manageable by electing 140 representatives who wait to gather on the third Saturday after the first Tuesday in March.
The Covid-19 pandemic has spurred the Vermont Legislature to allow the state’s 246 cities and towns to replace 2022 town meetings with Covid-safe mailable ballots or rescheduled warm-weather proceedings where attendees can open windows or move outdoors.
“The citizens of Vermont should be able to protect their health, safety and welfare,” one of three new laws states, “while also continuing to exercise their right to participate in annual municipal meetings.”
The legislation permits online public information hearings but mostly prohibits official town meetings on video conferencing platforms — out of concern that organizers don’t have the ability to open participation to all locals, yet close it to outsiders who aren’t eligible to vote.
Brattleboro is the sole exception. It’s the only locality the state has allowed to make decisions electronically, as its unique meeting of elected representatives is the sole one that can limit online participation to official members and let everyone else watch on public access television.
(Last year’s gathering marked the 60th anniversary of the first such meeting in 1961.)
Given the options of holding this year’s meeting in person or online, the Brattleboro Selectboard has chosen to plug into technology on Saturday, March 19.
“This is the solution that seems to work best for Brattleboro because of the unique circumstance that we have a representative town meeting,” Selectboard Chair Elizabeth McLoughlin said. “It’s not optimal, but it certainly can be successful.”
Municipalities throughout the state are currently deciding whether to continue or temporarily change their traditional procedure for town meeting, which must be warned at least 30 days in advance — Jan. 30 for communities seeking to take action on the traditional first Tuesday in March.
Before the pandemic, the longest Brattleboro town meeting in memory was in 2019, when participants began at 8:30 a.m. and ended at 9:27 p.m. Trading metal folding chairs for the comfort of home couches smashed that record, with last year’s two-day online meeting running a total of 15 hours.
“We will all suffer through it as we have twice before,” selectboard member Daniel Quipp said in approving a third virtual meeting. “It’s not desirable, but it is good for the health of our community.”
