Sunday, March 4, 2007
Staff photo by Jack Milton
Limington residents vote on an article during their town meeting at the municipal center on Saturday. About 50 people spent about five hours debating and deciding on issues, including a $1.3 million municipal budget.
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LIMINGTON - Charlie Huntress has been moderating the town meeting in Limington for years, and this Saturday was about the same as most years: not too many people, but they got the job done.
After more than five hours of debate and discussion, the group of about 50 residents approved a $1.3 million budget covering everything from postage stamps to another installment for a salt shed the town hopes to build when it gets enough money together.
"I wish there was more participation," Huntress said, noting that the town had mailed the annual report with all the warrants to 3,400 residents for the first time this year, instead of just hoping folks would pick one up at Town Hall or the market. But it didn't seem to attract more people to the budget discussion Saturday.
On Friday, a town meeting vote on candidates and referendum questions drew 564 people, an encouraging turnout considering the snowstorm, Huntress said.
"It's down-home Maine," said Betty MacWilliams, a 35-year resident, describing the town meeting process. "It's fun, and I come here because I'm interested in the process."
This weekend is the kickoff of Maine's annual town meetings, often called the purest form of government, where residents gather to vote in simple yea-or-nay fashion on towns' budgets and ordinances.
The process is defended stoutly, yet also is acknowledged to be slipping away in some communities where only a few dozen residents decide what's best for a much larger population.
About 440 of Maine's 496 municipalities hold town meetings. Some towns now call for a simple up-or-down vote on the budget, saying it attracts more voters who are less likely to attend a drawn-out meeting to discuss the fine points of a budget.
In Limington, many of the town's 65 warrants drew at least a bit of discussion before being passed. Only one -- a request for $240,000 for a new emergency services vehicle -- was voted down. Huntress said the nature of that request -- for such a large amount and coming from the popular fire department -- prompted him to call for a secret-ballot vote for the first time in Limington town meeting history. The proposal failed, 41-22.
The secret vote called attention to what some would call a drawback of the usual town meeting system: "There's a tremendous amount of peer pressure," Huntress said.
The gentle jibing and laughter at the meeting showed how residents who attend town meetings are well-known to one another and comfortable with laughing at themselves and each other.
But MacWilliams and others acknowledge that it takes some fortitude to stand up and speak out before your neighbors.
"It's a risk-taking exercise," MacWilliams said. "People are really willing to put their feelings right out there."
That's one of the things that makes the town-meeting style of government so attractive, said state Sen. Jon Courtney, who sat in on the Limington meeting.
"This is great. This is where your neighbors stand up and you have a really frank discussion," said Courtney, R-Sanford. "This is a tradition, and a tradition that should continue."
Still, municipalities are trying to attract more people to the town meetings with more regular updates on the town finances online or in newsletters and by televising town meetings.
The Maine Municipal Association recently launched an effort to get more residents involved in their local governments.
"The people I see here are the people I always see here," MacWilliams said. "Those people are long-term residents."
Staff Writer Noel K. Gallagher can be contacted at 324-4888 or at:
Reader comments
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They had their chance to be part of the process and if they don't exercise their privelege to be counted it's their tough luck. Wait until a swarmy developer comes in and wants to build 5 houses per acre - if they don't turn out then for a referendum vote like in Scarborough the past few years who knows what will happen to the area. People had better start to care in the outer rural areas what's happening to them before they lose out completely.report abuse
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