To the editor:
I moved to Greensboro in 1946 and I delivered telegrams on my bike because cottages didn’t have phones (let alone internet) and cottages didn’t have refrigerators, just ice boxes with huge blocks of ice to keep food from spoiling.
My mother was born in Greensboro, and I have relatives scattered all over the Northeast Kingdom. My love for Greensboro is strong, and my love for the March Town Meeting (one of Vermont’s greatest additions to life) is equally as strong.
The March meeting allows us to talk about things, make amendments as new information is discovered, nominate town officers from the floor, and get voting results immediately. We are a small town and in-person meeting gives us the flexibility to make changes and find people to do all the volunteer work. This will be lost with an Australian ballot system. The Australian ballot system adds work for the select board and the volunteers who then might not want to apply for positions. Greensboro is full of people who have good ideas I’m interested in hearing, and sometimes they can persuade me that I like their ideas better than mine.
Before we change to an all-Australian ballot system of voting, I think we should check out the reasons some people don’t attend town meeting. We aren’t addressing the root problem: a lack of engagement from a large portion of the voters.
We are a town of retired people, self-employed people who can make their own schedules, and employed people who can take personal days off. I suspect everyone has a day or two when they cannot make the meeting, but for the most part, the people who are at the meeting are the ones that want to be there.
I hope we choose to find out why folks aren’t engaging in town meeting before we make the drastic decision to end a tradition that started in Bennington in 1762 and was codified into Vermont law in 1880. I suggest we vote “no” on the articles at the June 30 Special Town Meeting and discuss this subject further before proceeding.
Janet Long, Greensboro
