Middlesex Town Meeting Solutions Committee
Meeting Minutes
January 14, 2004

Present: Susan Clark, Nancy Reilly, Dave Shepard

Note: Tim Murphy, Barb Whitchurch and Greg Whitchurch also arrived at the Town Office for this meeting but because of another meeting going on at the same time, this committee met in a different room than normal and they did not realize the other committee members were present.

1)Welcome Package for New Town Residents
Nancy has done some checking into the idea of providing welcoming information to new town residents. One idea was to include some information about town government and the Middlesex community with some information that is already delivered to new residents by other organizations. Her research into this revealed that the information that is currently provided is completely commercially oriented and these organizations did not appear interested in including the type of information this committee was interested in distributing.

Nancy also learned from June Lakin that a list of newly registered voters will be available about two weeks prior to Town Meeting. Nancy agreed to draft a welcome letter that could be mailed to these new voters.

2. Talk by Paul Gillies
Susan has spoken with Paul Gillies who is willing to come to Middlesex to give a talk about local democracy, Town Meeting and having civil debates about issues. The committee agreed this sounded like a good idea and decided to hold this event on February 9th.

3. Neighborhood Meetings
The committee discussed neighborhood meetings prior to Town Meeting to talk in general about how Town Meeting works and more specifically about some of the issues to be voted on at this years meeting. It was decided to try to conduct three of these meetings: one during the playgroup at Rumney School, one at Nancy’s house on Notch Road and one at Susan’s house on McCullough Hill Road. A probable date for the McCullough Hill meeting is Sunday, February 8th in the morning.

4. Child Care During Town Meeting
Susan hasn’t been able to view the fire station as yet to gauge its’ suitability as a location for child care during Town Meeting but she is still trying to set up a time with the appropriate Fire Department person to do this. Committee members tried to think of other possible locations in proximity to the Town Hall and came up with these to potentially check into if the fire station doesn’t seem suitable: the B&B adjacent to the Town Hall, the Methodist Church and Camp Meade.

5. Town Hall Cleaning
The committee decided to spend some time cleaning Town Hall in preparation for Town Meeting as was done last year. It was determined that about an hour of the next meeting would be spent cleaning and the date was set for February 11th at 6:30. [Addendum: After the meeting adjourned, June Lakin asked us to choose a date to clean that was closer to Town Meeting. We will still meet on 2/11, but will choose another date (TBA) to clean.]

6. Middlesex Website
Susan suggested that perhaps Tim could bring a computer to the Paul Gillies event to set up and have the website available for viewing. Dave mentioned that it seems like an internet search doesn’t find the Middlesex website and that one has to know the website address to find it. No one present at the meeting was computer savvy enough to know why this might be but we will pose this question to Tim.

7. Voting Without Being Physically Present at Town Meeting
Susan has had conversations on this question with both the Secretary of State, Deb Markowitz, and former Assistant Secretary of State Paul Gillies. Neither of them felt this is likely to increase participation in Town Meeting. The Office of the Secretary of State is promoting legislation that would require businesses to allow their employees to attend Town Meeting. Secretary Markowitz was also skeptical that the technology exists to allow full participation in Town Meeting from a remote location. She felt more assurance it could work would be necessary before it would be worth putting in the effort that would be required to change existing law to allow voting in such a manner. Nancy said she would check with her husband as he might have some insight into the feasibility of this idea from a technical standpoint.

8. Revisiting Controversial Issues from Town Meeting by Australian Ballot
Susan has also discussed this idea with Secretary Markowitz and she was not supportive of this concept. One of the reasons existing law doesn’t make it really easy to conduct a re-vote by Australian ballot may be to encourage attendance at Town Meeting.


Next Meeting: February 11th at 6:30.



Minutes recorded by Dave Shepard