Millicent Cooley represents District 9 as a member of Brattleboro’s Representative Town Meeting, where she also chairs the body’s Finance Committee. She is author of the petition to place open Town Meeting as a voting option on the March 3 election ballot.
BRATTLEBORO-When I moved to Brattleboro in 2018, I had only ever known ballot voting. In most places that I lived, I did not know the name of my mayor. My impression is that most people in those communities were uninvolved in their local governance and elections.
The first time I attended and watched Representative Town Meeting (RTM) voting here, I was inspired and incredibly impressed — to see a variety of people, debating, challenging, presenting evidence for their views, being respectful, and voting together on their future for the next year.
Then I became an RTM representative, which was quite easy, and I gradually learned more about the town and the people. Now I think...Town Meeting is terrific! Why would we give this up?
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Brattleboro’s Representative Town Meeting is an incredibly vital and expressive use of our democracy and an ongoing lesson in civics, way beyond anything I ever learned in school. In my view, a full day dedicated to listening, debating, and voting on the budget and other important issues is necessary and worthwhile.
Voting by Australian ballot is already an option in the charter. If 50 RTM members or 5% of residents petition to oppose a budget vote, it will be brought to a full town vote. There is no need to remove Town Meeting and make Australian Ballot voting mandatory for the budget.
True, Australian ballot voting will allow more people to cast a vote, though not nearly as many will actually do so, as the One Person One Vote Brattleboro group’s slogan suggests. Between 2014 and 2025, an average of 22% of Brattleboro voters placed a vote in national elections (11% for midterms and 36% for presidential elections).
An Australian ballot vote about our complicated $27 million budget will be a vote that is not informed by the type of debate and probing and tough questions that come out of Town Meeting. And it will only be a yes/no vote, without the ability to amend the question or to make new compromises.
Brattleboro switching to Australian ballot voting will consolidate power with the Selectboard, whose decisions will get less scrutiny because the most significant means for open debate will be gone. Comments at Selectboard meetings are limited to 2 minutes. Attendance at pre-Town Meeting informational sessions is consistently weak.
I’m on the finance committee, whose role is to provide an independent analysis of the budget that is proposed by the Selectboard each year, and to help make it understandable for others. It’s a complicated set of documents and proposals that takes us several months of weekly meetings and side work to understand it well.
The Australian ballot movement has no proposal for how an independent finance committee will function, or even whether it will exist at all. One fan of the Australian ballot proposal has publicly proposed a future where the Finance Committee members will instead be appointed by ... the Selectboard!
If that were to happen, it would mean another of the checks and balances to Selectboard power going away.
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Everyone is affected right now, many quite deeply, by the attacks on our constitutional rights, by the dismissal of civil service structures that are stable and necessary, and by the disturbing way that different groups of people have been pitted against other groups of people, by our current presidential administration.
Brattleboro’s strong participatory democracy has been, for me, a kind of solace against these threats.
This is not the time to attempt to replace our current governance system with an entirely different ballot system that removes our community-based deliberating and voting.
This is the time, instead, to keep finding more ways to talk and work together, not to separate further from each other by voting from the comfort of our kitchens.
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If people want to see changes in the outcome of Representative Town Meeting, or in the way it works, there are good options for making changes:
• Participate in RTM. Look to become a representative. Step up and be willing to be appointed to fill vacant seats. Invite your friends and neighbors to participate so we can add new voices to the mix.
• Call your reps and tell them how you want them to represent you and then ask them how they did and will do so. In five years of being a rep, only one constituent has ever asked me to represent them on something, which I then did in a public meeting.
• Attend Charter Commission meetings and communicate with commission members about what you want to see happen. Every 15 years, a commission looks at the town charter and makes recommendations for revisions. Those meetings have been poorly attended.
This is regrettable, because the outcome of their decisions for updating governance rules is quite consequential for the town. I would like to see Charter changes that help RTM to become more responsive to the public.
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I will be happy with either RTM or with open Town Meeting.
RTM is full of people who are valuable contributors because they are consistent and dedicated, and they work for the interests of the broader community beyond their own social group. I also like the fact that an Open Town Meeting welcomes everyone, and no representation is needed.
I think Australian Ballot voting is the worst system for voting on the budget, especially when that option is already available when needed, in any given year.
I plan to vote no to rescinding RTM (as the question is worded — this means keeping RTM), no to the Australian ballot question, and yes to the Open Town Meeting question.
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