Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Report Writing topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Town Meeting Study Committee sets process for drafting final report and assigns next steps
Summary
The Town Meeting Study Committee agreed on a shorter, edited structure for its final report, delegated a first draft pass to the chair and set a schedule to deliver a revised draft before the Select Board hearing on April 14.
The Town Meeting Study Committee agreed to condense its draft report and to delegate a first editorial pass to the committee chair. The committee discussed length, audience and authorship and set a writing workflow aimed at producing a concise main report with appendices for detailed materials.
Nut graf: Committee members said the final report should front-load major findings and recommendations, keep the narrative concise (members suggested a short executive summary and a report ideally under 20 pages), and place detailed backup material in an appendix or on the committee website.
Committee members debated process and authorship. Several members urged that the drafting be done by a single author or a small drafting team to avoid repetition and achieve a consistent voice. Eric Moore, the committee chair, said he would take version 1 of the draft, integrate submitted comments and produce a revised “version 2” for review. Alice Kaufman agreed to serve as an editor on the next pass. Chase Thompson offered to review and provide editorial feedback but said he could not take primary authorship because of outside commitments.
Members asked staff to investigate AI-assisted summarization as a tool to speed drafting and to identify any tools that could help condense the committee’s longer materials into a concise draft; speakers cautioned that AI outputs must be carefully reviewed for accuracy and hallucination. The committee also noted an inconsistency between two published survey result documents and asked staff to confirm the authoritative figures from Katie’s re-run and update the website so the numbers are consistent across committee materials.
The committee set workflow and deadlines: the chair will produce version 2 of the report for committee review, Alice Kaufman will lead editing of the next pass, and the committee intends to have final material ready in advance of an April 14 Select Board preview. The chair also noted the option to include a brief preview at the Select Board hearing.
Ending: The committee will finalize its draft report in early April, resolve the survey-number discrepancy before publication, and bring the recommended clicker language to the Select Board hearing on April 14.
