The Town of Hancock will hold its 2021 Town Meeting virtually after a Select Board decision at Tuesday afternoon’s meeting.
The town is following the provisions of HB 1129, which allows for virtual town meetings under the state’s emergency order. This means that residents will be invited to participate in two Zoom-based hearings prior to voting on the warrant via ballot on Tuesday, March 9, Select Board Chair Laurie Bryan said.
The town lacks a facility suitable for holding an in-person town meeting while following social distancing guidelines, Bryan said. Last year, the town held a socially distanced Town Meeting in March in the Hancock Meetinghouse. Although their first preference would have been to move the meeting to an in-person, outdoor event in May, the Board determined that the delay would hold up road projects and the purchase of new equipment. Bryan described the virtual option as as “balancing act” between continuing services for the town while factoring in public safety and town meeting participation. “It’s not something anybody’s delighted about,” she said. “We all would really like to have an in-person meeting, but would like to keep people as safe as we can.”
Residents will hear the warrant at the first hearing, scheduled Saturday, February 27 from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., and can comment during the meeting and afterward via email. The Select Board will discuss the comments and make associated adjustments at their meeting on Monday, March 1, and present the updated version of the warrant at the second hearing, on Wednesday, March 3 from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m., sending the finalized warrant to print immediately after the meeting.
The Select Board knows the Hancock community appreciates the debate and camaraderie of the traditional town meeting, Select Board member Jeff Gray said. “If we didn’t respect the principles of a traditional town meeting, we would have been an SB2 town a long time ago,” he said.
One notable difference in procedure is that only the Select Board, not the voters themselves, may amend the warrant this year. “Hopefully there’s some trust out there that we’re really going to listen and take people’s concerns seriously,” Bryan said. “If we hear a loud consensus that our budget needs to be reduced by $20,000, $30,000, we will have to really talk it over,” Bryan said, when asked how voters could expect the Board to address any calls for change.
Voters can also opt to effectively cancel town meeting if they don’t like the Select Board’s final warrant, Gray said. The first question on this year’s ballot will ask voters whether they want to move forward with this year’s form of voting, Bryan said. If the majority votes “no,” the operating budget gets set as last year, and no warrant articles pass. The elections of officials would continue as normal in such an instance.
Town Moderator Ric Haskins noted that the virtual model might even make Town Meeting more inclusive to residents than in normal years, when people who work that day either miss the whole thing, or can’t vote on an article that already passed by the time they show up. “We disenfranchise people every year,” he said. The decision to have one hearing on a Saturday morning and another on a Wednesday evening was an effort to accommodate a diversity of schedules, Bryan said. Up to 15 people can participate in the hearings in person from the town offices while masked and socially distanced, she said.
Every registered voter in town will receive a letter explaining the process, postmarked by Feb. 12, Bryan said. Information will also be posted in two editions of Hancock Happenings and various places around town, she said. The town’s budget hearing is scheduled for Feb. 8.
Nobody at the Select Board meeting knew of any time in history that Hancock was unable to have its traditional town meeting before this year.