BRATTLEBORO — Last year’s record-length Brattleboro Town Meeting chewed over municipal matters for 15 hours across two days, seemingly leaving only the noon break for a moment of digestion.
But this coming weekend, even lunch will be up for debate.
Brattleboro’s 150 elected Town Meeting representatives are set to consider a proposal to feed themselves a $2,500 catered meal once they return from an online to an in-person session, possibly as soon as next year.
“There’s a tradition in some Vermont towns for having lunch,” Millicent Cooley, chair of the Representative Town Meeting Steering Committee, recently told local leaders. “It’s community building and helps break up tensions between people who may be disagreeing.”
But some members of the selectboard, asked to place the question on Saturday’s agenda, are finding the idea of a $15-a-person municipally funded meal hard to stomach.
“If I spent $15 on my lunch, I’d feel terribly guilty, and that’s with my own budget, much less taxpayer dollars,” Selectboard Chair Elizabeth McLoughlin said. “Other towns have potlucks. Other towns don’t spend taxpayer money on things like this. I think it goes against the spirit of volunteerism and fiscal frugality.”
A majority of Town Meeting representatives also are questioning how much time they’re eating up debating everything else.
Most Vermont 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 representatives who wait to gather on what’s usually the third Saturday in March.
Last year’s event marked the 60th anniversary of the first such meeting in 1961.
Brattleboro had a decades-long history of completing its agenda in a day. Before the Covid-19 pandemic moved proceedings online, the longest in memory was in 2019, when participants began at 8:30 a.m. and ended at 9:27 p.m.
But since the town has traded metal folding chairs for home couches, representatives have smashed that record, with last year’s Saturday online meeting bleeding well into Sunday.
A recent survey of more than 100 representatives found almost 70% believe the meetings have grown so lengthy that they’ve become, in the opinion of many, “untenable.”
“It goes on way too long,” one respondent said. “I’ve thought of not running for membership because of this.”
“Town Meeting Day is not the time to craft budgets or policy; that time is before — at Selectboard meetings, budget meetings, committee meetings,” a second added. “If folks want to be involved in town governance, they should show up for the many, many meetings where budget and policy is developed.”
“The most cited complaint by far,” a survey summary concluded, “is that a very small number of members abuse their role by dominating speaking time in forwarding a narrow personal agenda that is not representative of the interests of the whole.”
Last year, for example, local gadflies took up time by seeking to unmute everyone (a request rejected 113-16) and sparking debate on why the electronic yes-or-no voting system did not allow for abstentions.
Said one survey respondent: “Often feel held captive to constant harangues by the same people.”
And another: “Tyranny of the minority is often in evidence.”
The latest example came at last week’s informational pre-meeting when one member continually asked why the assembly couldn’t use the video conferencing platform’s chat feature.
Newly elected moderator David Gartenstein said such messaging — which can be seen by participants but not the general public — is not allowed under the state’s Open Meeting Law.
That spurred another attendee to note the evening hour.
“I have three small children, and I have a job tomorrow,” the man said. “It’s just a plea to limit the questions to the topics on hand.”
But that did not stop the inquiring member from interrupting several more times with unrelated requests.
During the pandemic, the Vermont Legislature has permitted online public information hearings but mostly prohibited official town meetings on video conferencing platforms out of concern that organizers do not have the ability to open participation to all locals but close it to outsiders who are not 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.
