Editor’s note: This story by Tommy Gardner was first published in the News & Citizen on April 20.
MORRISTOWN — Attendance for a special town meeting in Morristown Tuesday evening was so large that the Peoples Academy auditorium couldn’t hold everyone, and attendees overflowed into the school cafeteria.
It may have also spelled the end of Town Meeting Day in Lamoille County’s largest town.
Voters Tuesday unanimously agreed to conduct future town business by Australian ballot.
The meat of the meeting was petition-driven, with 258 registered voters in January calling for a special meeting to switch to ballot voting for town budgets. The town selectboard, when warning the April 18 special meeting, added two more similar articles — one calling for elections and another for “all public questions” to be voted that way.
For a historic moment that may have essentially ended traditional town meeting forever — unless the town is one day again petitioned to return to tradition — Tuesday’s votes were definitive and anticlimactic.
There was no discussion, no debate, no questions or comments on any of the three votes to change the way Morristown votes, nor was there a single audible vote in the Peoples Academy auditorium against switching to ballot voting.
If this is the way town meeting ends, it was done swiftly and quietly, a swelling chorus of “ayes” followed by a smattering of applause.
Even without the petition, there were indications that Morristowners were more inclined to vote at the ballot box than in person. While every other community in Lamoille County went back to live gatherings on Town Meeting Day March 7, Morristown was the lone holdout, taking advantage of the Legislature’s extension of pandemic-era meeting laws that allowed towns that normally hold Town Meeting in person to vote by ballot.
Tom Cloutier, one of the people behind the petition drive, said that, in the five years pre-pandemic, an average of 200 people participated annually in Town Meeting. But during the pandemic state of emergency in 2021 and 2022, the number of people voting by Australian ballot skyrocketed — 1,371 people voted in 2021 and last year 1,458 voted, most of them before the actual day of the meeting.
That trend continued last month, when more than 1,800 people cast ballots, again with most of those votes cast before March 7.
At least four current or former selectboard members signed the petition in January, with former board member Bob Beeman saying it is “far better to have 2,000 people vote on those important items than 200.”
Said Cloutier shortly after submitting the petition, “I hate to see the town meetings go, I really do, but nobody’s showing up.”
No means no
While Morristown residents Tuesday voted yes on switching to Australian ballot voting, they voted no on spending taxpayer money to build sidewalks along Jersey Heights.
It was the second time this year voters shot down the $200,000 ask, even if the first vote on March 7 didn’t count because the town got the name of the road wrong on the ballot.
Town officials touted the spending measure as a way to fill in the gaps between where developers have been required to construct new sidewalks in front of their developments on Jersey Heights — town zoning bylaws require the developers to bear the cost of those sidewalks, but only within the bounds of their new properties.
At Tuesday’s meeting, zoning administrator and planning director Todd Thomas said the $200,000 spending measure would be a cheaper alternative to seeking federal grant funds, because of the strings attached.
“Federal money is very expensive. Grants are very expensive. There are no free lunches,” he said. “This is the most affordable way we can build the sidewalk connections.”
That proved an ineffective sales pitch to voters already disinclined to spend more money in a year where they shot down the town’s proposed $10.1 million budget on a vote of 1,441-391.
