Would you like to be a legislator? Well, if you live in one of the many towns in Massachusetts with open Town Meeting, then you can. That's because Town Meeting is the Town's legislative body; any registered voter therefore can be a legislator just by showing up during Town Meeting. Now, how cool is that??!
We think it's VERY cool. And even more cool is that each legislator here is part of Concord's 374-year unbroken tradition of governance through Town Meeting.
Like any legislative body, Town Meeting makes decisions vital to the Town's operation. We approve or reduce the budget, we make or amend bylaws. Town Meeting forms or dissolves committees and boards, start or kill projects through funding decisions, and informs elected and appointed officials of the Meeting's wishes on a variety of subjects.
This page on the Town's website has all kinds of helpful links to help you learn about and get ready for our upcoming Annual Town Meeting. The Town Meeting warrant, presentation templates, handout guidelines and more.
We have a lot of very important zoning bylaw articles coming before Town Meeting to either enact anew or amend already existing bylaws. While they are far from simple (which is the very nature of most zoning articles), they are absolutely CRITICAL to get right. This is because each of them will have impacts into the future that may be very large indeed. And many of these effects cannot be undone, even if we were to repeal a new bylaw or change. Some things once changed, cannot ever be restored.
We need your educated vote. Start with the overview in this press release from Concord's Planning Department. But do use your critical thinking powers in reading it -- there may be many, many important "unintended consequences" present in each article which are not mentioned. Judge for yourself if that document seems accurate to what you read in the warrant articles themselves.
As a Meeting, it will be our job to find the PUBLIC GOOD for making each change, weighing that against the PUBLIC HARM each makes possible, and seeing what most benefits the community.
For it is only in the calculation of the greatest good for the overall community that the success of each legislator's work can be judged. We have 374 years of history hanging on just how well we do our job.
We think it's VERY cool. And even more cool is that each legislator here is part of Concord's 374-year unbroken tradition of governance through Town Meeting. Like any legislative body, Town Meeting makes decisions vital to the Town's operation. We approve or reduce the budget, we make or amend bylaws. Town Meeting forms or dissolves committees and boards, start or kill projects through funding decisions, and informs elected and appointed officials of the Meeting's wishes on a variety of subjects.
This page on the Town's website has all kinds of helpful links to help you learn about and get ready for our upcoming Annual Town Meeting. The Town Meeting warrant, presentation templates, handout guidelines and more.
We have a lot of very important zoning bylaw articles coming before Town Meeting to either enact anew or amend already existing bylaws. While they are far from simple (which is the very nature of most zoning articles), they are absolutely CRITICAL to get right. This is because each of them will have impacts into the future that may be very large indeed. And many of these effects cannot be undone, even if we were to repeal a new bylaw or change. Some things once changed, cannot ever be restored.
We need your educated vote. Start with the overview in this press release from Concord's Planning Department. But do use your critical thinking powers in reading it -- there may be many, many important "unintended consequences" present in each article which are not mentioned. Judge for yourself if that document seems accurate to what you read in the warrant articles themselves.
As a Meeting, it will be our job to find the PUBLIC GOOD for making each change, weighing that against the PUBLIC HARM each makes possible, and seeing what most benefits the community.
For it is only in the calculation of the greatest good for the overall community that the success of each legislator's work can be judged. We have 374 years of history hanging on just how well we do our job.
