Learn what you need to know to participate in your community’s annual decision making process

By Rosemary Ford and Melanie Plenda

NH PBS and Granite State News Collaborative

Town Meeting is a quintessentially New England form of government tracing back to colonial times. Residents would gather together to discuss, debate, and vote on the biggest issues in town — especially how to spend money. While Town Meeting has evolved with the times, it still functions in much the same way as it did in the colonial era.

On this week’s episode of The State We’re In we discuss the ins and outs of Town Meeting with Jack Rooney, the Managing Editor for Audience Development at The Keene Sentinel, and Margaret Byrnes, Executive Director of the New Hampshire Municipal Association. 

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Melanie Plenda:

Even though it's called Town Meeting, it's not always about the municipality itself. School districts often have their own meetings. Can you talk about the differences between Town Meetings for municipalities versus for school districts?

Jack Rooney:

To start, you'd be talking about who's participating in these meetings. Town meetings are limited to one town, one municipality, and any registered voter there, whereas many school districts in New Hampshire are regional or collaborative school districts. In those districts, the registered voters from any of the towns in the school district can participate in those meetings. The other big difference in New Hampshire with town meetings versus school district meetings is that school district budget proposals and spending proposals are often significantly larger than municipalities. There's a number of reasons for that, one being that New Hampshire historically hasn't provided a ton of money for public education - at the moment, we rank near the bottom of all 50 states in terms of how much we contribute to education funding. Because of that, school districts often have larger budgets than municipalities. Here in Keene, the Keene School District budget proposal for the coming year is $72.6 million, whereas the City of Keene’s operating budget for the current year is $65 million. 

Melanie Plenda:

One of the main terms you might hear at Town Meeting is warrant or warrant article. What is that? Where do these come from? What are the rules about amending or changing warrant articles?

Margaret Byrnes:

In a way the terminology is a bit old fashioned, but a warrant is basically the notice of the town meeting, the school meeting, or the village district meeting. It comes from the concept of “warning” – you are being warned as inhabitants that a Town Meeting is being scheduled, and that you can come out and vote as a member of the legislative body. Warrant articles are the individual items on the warrant that seek some sort of authorization from the legislative body, from the voters. An example of a warrant article would be the operating budget article, which contains the proposed operating budget that asks voters to raise and appropriate the funds for the proposed operating budget. A warrant article could also be something unrelated to money, such as dissolving or establishing a local board. Those actions are required by state law to be put on the warrant for the legislative body.

Melanie Plenda:

Language in these warrant articles is often filled with jargon that can be confusing or off-putting. For example, many articles use the phrase “raise and appropriate” instead of “spend”. What are some other common phrases that have a simpler explanation?

Jack Rooney:

That's a great question, because the technical language can be a barrier that makes people feel they don't know enough to participate in their Town Meeting, or would give them some pause to go debate and discuss these issues. At a Town Meeting you might hear a reference to the “legislative body”, which just means “the voters in the town”. The registered voters serve in a similar capacity to the New Hampshire House of Representatives or US Congress – they’re the legislators for the town. Another common phrase you'll see on school district warrants is something along the lines of, “to come from the unassigned fund balance available for transfer on July 1 2023”, which basically means “a budget surplus” and asks voters to direct money from the budget surplus into specific spending priorities or accounts. On that same note, you might see “come from the unassigned fund balance or unexpended fund balance”, which is in reference to funding capital reserve or expendable trust funds.

Melanie Plenda:

Town Meeting can take different forms in New Hampshire. What are those different forms and why do they exist? Which form is most prevalent in NH?

Jack Rooney:

In the so-called traditional Town Meeting system, once a year all of the residents of a town have the opportunity to gather to discuss, debate, amend, change, add or subtract money from the budget, and make decisions as a community on what they're going to do and how they’re going to spend money in the coming year. In my view it’s really cool because it is about as close as we have to direct democracy here in the United States. Then there’s the SB2 form of Town and School District Meetings. Senate Bill Two was signed into law in 1995 and paved the way for the creation of that form of meeting. SB2 in some ways modernizes the traditional model by separating the business and the voting, which makes it easier for more people to participate. In a traditional Town Meeting, if you're not able to make it at that day and time, then you miss it entirely. But in an SB2 town there's a deliberative session first, then you go to the polls on a separate day and vote according to your own schedule, similar to an election day.

Margaret Byrnes:

The so-called traditional version of town meeting still is a little more prevalent than the SB2 version. According to our information we have just over 72 towns that have adopted the SB2 official ballot referendum form of government, and there are about 220 towns out of our 234 municipalities. So still more than half are operating under the traditional version as opposed to SB2.

Melanie Plenda:

Deliberative sessions can fly a little under the radar, yet are so important. What a deliberative session is and what happens there?

Jack Rooney:

I'll offer a theory as to why they fly under the radar a little bit. Lost of these deliberative sessions happen in early February when it’s usually bitterly cold. It's also about a month before the actual election when people are going to the polls and making those final decisions. But at the deliberative sessions themselves it's essentially the same format as a traditional Town Meeting. People still have the chance to get up and speak to amend, discuss, deliberate, ask questions of the Select Board or the school board on everything that's on the warrant that year. The main difference is that, at the end of the deliberative session, no final decisions have been made. The only thing that has been finalized is the warrant that voters will decide on at the polls in early to mid March.

Melaine Plenda:

When money is earmarked at Town Meeting, how definite is it that it will be spent on what's earmarked for?

Margaret Byrnes:

Rather than “earmarked”, I would use the New Hampshire term, which is “appropriated”. In New Hampshire, whenever you look at a warrant article that contains money, you're going to see something at the beginning of the article if the town will raise and appropriate XYZ. Those terms seem strange, but technically they both have legal terms. “Raised” means where's the money going to come from? Is it going to come from taxation, unassigned fund balance, a grant that's being accepted? “Appropriate” means “to authorize”, so an appropriation is an authorization to spend money for a particular purpose. Whenever the voters vote yes to raise and appropriate funds for a particular purpose, they are authorizing the spending authority in the municipality – in most towns the Select Board –  to expend funds for that particular purpose. It doesn't mandate that those funds be spent, and it doesn't mandate that exact amount of money is required to be spent, but it is an authorization. Generally you will see funds spent for that purpose as authorized, but because circumstances can arise during the year you can also potentially see Select Boards transferring money from one authorization to another and doing other things that are authorized by law to meet changing circumstances that arise after the budget has been adopted.

These articles are being shared by partners in The Granite State News Collaborative. For more information visit collaborativenh.org.