Former Andover Select Board and Finance Committee member Richard T. Howe wants the current select board to ask voters for their opinion on whether Andover should continue with its current open town meeting.
“A key indicator of a healthy democracy is voter participation….average voter participation at town meeting has been about two percent of Andover’s voters, and that proportion is gradually declining as the town grows,” Howe said in a letter to the select board. “So 98% of voters do not attend town meeting, and therefore they have no vote on the budget and other important town decisions…These citizens are effectively disenfranchised, with no vote on local matters.”
In 2021, the select board appointed Howe to serve out the remaining year of Dan Koh’s term after Koh resigned to become chief of staff at the U.S. Department of Labor. Howe’s letter comes as the select board is scheduled to hear public input on the recently-completed Town Governance Study at its meeting Monday night.
Howe proposed the select board place a non-binding advisory vote on the ballot for an upcoming election, asking voters which form of town government they would prefer. He cited a 2019 University of Massachusetts at Lowell survey showing “considerable support” for changing open town meeting, including among respondents who regularly attend town meeting. And, Howe added, the Town Governance Study had done much of its work with little or no media coverage and when the pandemic made public participation in its meetings difficult.
“The members of the Town Governance Study Committee deserve our thanks for their time and efforts over the past two-plus years. They have compiled, produced, and analyzed an impressive amount of information and included it in a report of more than 150 pages,” Howe wrote. “But all this time and labor has resulted in a disappointing conclusion: Andover, they decided, should not change its basic form of government – the open town meeting.”
The select board is in the process of adopting a framework to review and implement the Town Goverance Study Committee’s recommendations. Last month, committee members told the select board it unanimously voted to recommend retaining open town meeting after lengthy discussion.
“One of the things we recognized at the outset…is changing your government is a big step. That is a really big thing to do. It affects not only the government of the town, but the culture of the town,” Vice Chair Dara Obbard (photo, above) said. “So we determined early on we would most likely not recommend doing it unless we could definitely say other forms of government were going to be better.”
Richard T. Howe’s complete written statement to the Andover Select Board on open town meeting: