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Committee reviews town meeting feedback, suggests process changes and delays townwide satisfaction survey
Summary
The committee reviewed post‑town‑meeting survey results and recommended delaying the 2025 townwide satisfaction survey to the fall to avoid survey fatigue and to coordinate with Youth and Family Services’ separate mailing; members discussed clicker voting, scheduling changes and options for more accessible meeting formats.
Members reviewed survey and post‑town‑meeting feedback and flagged four takeaways: shorten meetings by improving efficiency; better prepare voters in advance; reconsider use of clickers versus hand raises for speed and accuracy; and explore formats that separate discussion from final votes to make participation easier for residents.
The committee noted that clickers produce highly accurate counts once allowed sufficient time, but are slower than a simple show of hands; members recommended the moderator continue using hand raises for efficiency and fall back to clickers only when vote thresholds (for example, two‑thirds) are in question. The committee also reviewed results from a short public poll of town meeting attendees: respondents urged improved meeting efficiency, and 29% indicated they would value some form of virtual or remote participation (members observed state law currently restricts remote participation for town meeting voting). Eleven percent of respondents favored mail‑in or ballot voting, which committee members said is not allowed under current rules.
On the townwide 2025 satisfaction survey, members learned that Youth and Family Services has contracted a vendor and begun mailing flyers and QR codes for a community needs assessment funded by ARPA. Because that survey is already underway and may reach all households, the committee decided to delay its own 2025 town satisfaction survey until the fall to avoid overlap and survey fatigue, and asked members to request question updates from departments before then so shared items can be preserved for trend analysis.
The group logged operational suggestions for improving town meeting accessibility and turnout: creating summaries and topic‑specific alerts via the proposed chatbot/agent work; staged meeting formats where listening and discussion occur on one date and final voting occurs on a separate date; and providing clearer pre‑meeting materials so frequent questions are addressed before residents attend.
The committee also scheduled its July meeting by consensus; the transcript records agreement to meet virtually at 6 p.m. on the date recorded as "20 ninth" and staff were asked to circulate a calendar invitation noting the exact date.
