The Weekend Long Read: What Is Town Meeting, and Is It Still Working?

This week, we're staying close to home — looking at what Town Meeting is, how it works, what has happened at recent Williamstown meetings, and whether the system is as democratic as its reputation suggests.

Welcome back to the Weekend Long Read. On Tuesday evening, Williamstown residents will gather at the Elementary School gymnasium on Church Street for Annual Town Meeting: 32 articles on the warrant, millions of dollars in town and school spending, Community Preservation projects, bylaw changes, and a few bigger questions about what kind of town we want to be.

Town Meeting is so old, and so distinctly New England, that honestly — as a Hoosier — it still kind of blows my mind.

Grab a coffee. Let's get into it.

What Is Town Meeting?

Town Meeting is Williamstown's legislature.

For one night, the registered voters who show up become the town's lawmaking body. In a very literal sense, the people in the room are the ones deciding what the town can spend money on, what local bylaws can change, and what direction the town should take. Under Massachusetts law, town spending and local bylaws have to go through Town Meeting approval. [1]

Williamstown has an open Town Meeting, which means any registered Williamstown voter can attend, speak, and vote. Some Massachusetts communities have representative town meetings, where voters elect delegates to act as the town legislature. Williamstown does not. Here, the meeting is open to every registered voter who can make it into the room. [1]

At Town Meeting, we vote on the Town Warrant Articles. The warrant is the list of articles voters will consider. The Select Board prepares it. Some articles are routine financial items — the town operating budget, school assessments, department funding. Others come from boards and committees. And some come directly from residents through a citizen's petition. In Williamstown, at least 10 registered voters can sign a request to put an article on the Annual Town Meeting warrant. [1]

Where Did This Come From?

Town Meeting is one of the oldest continuous democratic institutions in the country, and it started right here in New England.

In the 1630s, white male English settlers began gathering to make decisions about their towns. They drew on English parish traditions and congregationalist religious practices, where local communities had a strong role in governing themselves. Meeting houses often doubled as both church and town hall. By the mid-1600s, those local gatherings had become more formalized, and open town meeting has been part of Massachusetts civic life ever since. [2][3]

The institution became so central to New England life that it was eventually seen as a threat by the British Crown. In 1774, British soldiers tried to shut down a Salem town meeting in progress. The townspeople barred the door and kept going. [4]

Town Meeting is not just a quirky local tradition. It is part of a much older fight over who gets to govern, who gets to speak, and how close democracy should be to the people living with the consequences. This tradition feels especially meaningful as we think about our current state of democracy and the attacks on voters rights.

What Actually Happens at Williamstown's Town Meeting?

A typical Williamstown Town Meeting is a mix of routine votes and more consequential ones. Budgets, school funding, capital spending, and administrative articles usually have to pass for the town to function. But citizen petitions and zoning articles have made recent meetings much more than a rubber stamp.

At the 2025 Annual Town Meeting, voters approved all 32 articles on the warrant, including the town operating budget and school district assessment. But the biggest discussions came around short-term rentals, smoking and vaping in multifamily housing, and local civil rights resolutions. Voters approved a 90-day cap on most short-term rentals, a ban on smoking and vaping in privately owned multifamily buildings with more than four units, a resolution supporting the rights of transgender and gender-diverse people, and a resolution reaffirming due process protections for all residents regardless of immigration status. [6]

In 2023, one of the most closely watched articles was a zoning amendment that would have allowed manufactured homes anywhere a stick-built home can be built in Williamstown. The proposal had unanimous support from both the Select Board and Planning Board. Supporters argued it was one tool for addressing housing affordability — almost half of Williamstown renters were cost-burdened, and manufactured homes could offer a lower-cost path to ownership. The vote was 216 to 114 in favor. But zoning changes require a two-thirds majority, and the proposal failed by just four votes. [7]

That is one of the clearest recent examples of why Town Meeting matters. A handful of votes changed the outcome of a housing policy that had support from both major town boards.

This year's warrant has 32 articles. Budget items include the town operating budget and the Mount Greylock school assessment, both facing continued pressure from health insurance and inflation. Other articles would update the plastics bylaw, lower eligibility requirements for the senior property tax exemption, enroll Williamstown in the state's Seasonal Communities program, authorize the town to acquire a former landfill parcel, and act on citizen petitions related to rodenticides and soil amendments made from sewage sludge. [8]

Community Preservation Act requests are also on the table, including funding for a skate park on Stetson Road, trail work through Purple Valley Trails, and historic preservation grants. The Select Board split on several of those recommendations, including the skate park and historic preservation grants. [8]

So yes, some of Town Meeting is procedural. Some of it is technical. Some of it is a little dull. But buried in that long warrant are real decisions about housing, taxes, climate, recreation, preservation, public health, and who this town is actually built to serve.

The Turnout Problem

OK, so here's the thing.

Town Meeting is open to every registered voter, but only the people who can actually show up get to vote.

In 2025, roughly 300 community members attended Williamstown's Annual Town Meeting. A letter published in the Berkshire Eagle shortly afterward argued that turnout was "less than 7 percent of all voters." [6][9]

That is not unique to Williamstown. Academic research on Massachusetts Town Meetings has found that attendance is often very low, and that the people who do attend are not always representative of the town as a whole. One study found that Town Meeting attendees are more likely to be older, white, married, homeowners, and long-term residents. Sixty percent of attendees surveyed said they had come to each of the previous five annual meetings. [10]

In other words, there is often a faithful core of regulars who show up every year, while many registered voters never come at all.

Compare that with a ballot-box election. For the Annual Town Election, voters can show up at the polls any time between 7am and 8pm, vote in a few minutes, and leave. Town Meeting is different. You have to be there in person, at a specific time, for an evening that can run several hours. There is no absentee voting, no early voting, and no remote option for open Town Meeting under current Massachusetts law. [11][12]

That creates a gap between who is technically allowed to participate and who can realistically make it through the door.

Working parents with young kids, people with evening jobs, renters who are newer to town, elderly residents who do not drive at night, people with disabilities, and anyone who feels intimidated walking into a room where everyone else seems to know the rules — those people are not staying home because they do not care.

The format just does not work equally well for everyone.

The Case for Town Meeting

The strongest argument for Town Meeting is deliberation. It is not just voting. It is listening, asking questions, hearing from neighbors, and sometimes changing your mind.

You can walk into that room with a firm view on a warrant article, listen to an hour of discussion, and leave thinking differently. That does not happen when you fill out a ballot in a booth.

There is also a real accountability piece. When the Finance Committee explains the budget, the Select Board defends its recommendations, or a citizen petitioner makes their case directly to the room, everyone is in public. Residents can ask questions, and officials are expected to answer them. That does not mean they always have to, or always will. A version of this came up at last year’s Town Meeting, when a resident asked why the Select Board had split on several Community Preservation Act recommendations, and no one from the board answered in the moment. That is a real limitation of the format. Town Meeting gives residents a chance to ask questions face to face, but it does not guarantee that every question will get a clear answer.

The citizen petition process is another advantage of the Town Meeting system. In many forms of local government, ordinary residents have no direct path to putting something up for a vote. In Williamstown, 10 signatures can get an article on the warrant. Recent debates over short-term rentals, smoking in multifamily housing, immigration due process, and transgender rights all show how residents can use Town Meeting to bring issues forward that might not otherwise get there.

That is the best version of Town Meeting: local democracy that is direct, accountable, and close enough that regular people can actually shape it.

The Fairness Debate

So is it fair?

It depends on what part of the system you are looking at.

On paper, Town Meeting is extremely democratic. Every registered voter can attend. Every registered voter can speak. Every registered voter can vote.

In practice, the people who show up make binding decisions for everyone else. So who shows up matters a lot.

Harvard political scientist Jane Mansbridge, one of the leading scholars of New England Town Meeting, has written about how face-to-face democratic spaces can favor people who are already comfortable speaking in public. People with more education, more confidence, more social standing, or simply more familiarity with the room often have an easier time participating. [5]

That rings true locally. A Berkshire Eagle letter after the 2025 meeting argued that Town Meeting can feel intimidating and unrepresentative — especially for people who do not already know the process or the people in the room. [9]

There is also the question of how the warrant works. Some articles have no realistic alternative. Sewer assessments, routine appropriations, and legally required budget items are not exactly choose-your-own-adventure democracy. The Finance Committee and town staff already made the major decisions, the numbers are what they are, and a "no" vote may not be a meaningful option.

Those items sit alongside genuinely consequential votes, which can make the evening feel both overly procedural and incredibly important at the same time. People can be worn down by the time the controversial articles arrive.

None of that makes Town Meeting bad. But we should be honest about what it asks of people, and push for reform and expanded access when and where we can. 

What Reform Could Look Like

There are reforms that could make Town Meeting more accessible without getting rid of it.

Electronic voting is one example. Williamstown already uses electronic clickers, which allow for anonymous votes and faster counts. That helps — it reduces the social pressure of a visible vote and makes close calls easier to count. More than 70 Massachusetts towns now use electronic voting at Town Meeting. [1][12]

The bigger question is remote or hybrid participation.

During the pandemic, many public meetings moved online or became hybrid. Open Town Meeting is different. Under current Massachusetts law, it still requires in-person participation. The League of Women Voters of Massachusetts has supported legislation — H.2274 — that would allow towns with open Town Meeting to adopt hybrid or remote formats. As of March 2026, that bill had been tabled for the legislative session, and advocates were instead pushing for a pilot program that would allow up to five towns to test full remote participation. [12]

That kind of reform would not solve every problem. Remote participation comes with real logistical and security challenges. But it would at least acknowledge that democracy should not hinge quite so heavily on who can be in one room on one night.

There are other options that could be on the table. Some towns use Representative Town Meeting, where elected members vote on behalf of residents. If you are thinking, “Wait, isn’t that basically Congress?” then yes, ding ding ding, you’ve got it. Other towns use ballot votes for some warrant articles. Those systems can increase participation and accessibility, but they also change the character of the meeting. You may gain turnout, but you lose some of the deliberation.

There is no perfect version of this. Every system involves trade-offs.

What's on the Line Tuesday

Williamstown's 2026 Annual Town Meeting is Tuesday, May 19, at 7pm at the Williamstown Elementary School gymnasium, 115 Church Street. Check-in opens at 6pm. The full warrant is on the town website. [13]

The big financial decisions are on the table: the town operating budget, the school district assessment, capital projects, and other fiscal articles. So are Community Preservation grants, including the skate park proposal, Purple Valley Trails funding, and historic preservation projects. There are also citizen petitions on plastics, rodenticides, and sewage sludge-based soil amendments. [8]

Whether any of these pass depends entirely on who shows up.

We want to be honest about something. One of the biggest barriers to coming to Town Meeting is simply not knowing what to expect. It can feel intimidating to walk into a room where other people seem to know the rules, the history, the committees, the acronyms, and the personalities.

For me personally, it took the encouragement of Bjorn and Rebecca from Wild Soul River to start attending.

That is part of why we are writing this. We hope that by laying out some of the history, explaining how the process works, and showing how consequential past votes have been, Town Meeting feels a little less mysterious.

We also think reform is needed to make Town Meeting more accessible to more people, and we will keep covering those efforts.

But until then, the best any of us can do is show up, help others understand what is happening, and make the room a little less intimidating for the next person walking in.

If you come Tuesday and feel nervous, look for a friendly face.

We'll be there.

Sources

[1] Town of Williamstown, "Town Meeting." https://williamstownma.gov/town-meeting/

[2] Participedia, "New England or 'Open' Town Meetings." https://participedia.net/method/159

[3] Participedia, "Town Meetings in Massachusetts." https://participedia.net/case/4723

[4] Town of Milton, "Town Meeting Origin." https://www.miltonma.gov/543/Town-Meeting-Origin

[5] Jane J. Mansbridge, Beyond Adversary Democracy. University of Chicago Press, 1980.

[6] WAMC, "Williamstown voters approve smoking ban for private multi-family units, 90-day cap on short-term rentals at town meeting," May 23, 2025. https://www.wamc.org/news/2025-05-23/williamstown-voters-approve-smoking-ban-for-private-multi-family-units-90-day-cap-on-short-term-rentals-at-town-meeting

[7] WAMC, "Williamstown residents narrowly reject plan to expand manufactured home zoning," May 18, 2023. https://www.wamc.org/news/2023-05-18/williamstown-residents-narrowly-reject-plan-to-expand-manufactured-home-zoning

[8] iBerkshires, "Williamstown Select Board Makes Recommendations on Town Meeting Articles," April 16, 2026. https://www.iberkshires.com/story/82365/Williamstown-Select-Board-Makes-Recommendations-on-Town-Meeting-Articles.html

[9] Berkshire Eagle, Letter: "Williamstown Town Meeting Has Become Unrepresentative," May 30, 2025. https://www.berkshireeagle.com/opinion/letters_to_editor/letter-williamstown-town-meeting-has-become-unrepresentative/article_17a797ee-cacb-4b25-baf6-71c099685526.html

[10] Lyndsey Rolheiser and Albert Saiz, "Is Participatory Democracy Representative? A Survey of Engaged Town Meeting Voters," New England Journal of Political Science, 2020. https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/nejps/vol12/iss1/3/

[11] Town of Manchester-by-the-Sea, "Town Meetings and Elections." https://www.manchester.ma.us/503/Town-Meetings-and-Elections

[12] League of Women Voters of Massachusetts, "Update on Remote Open Town Meeting," March 31, 2026. https://lwvma.org/update-on-remote-open-town-meeting/

[13] Town of Williamstown, "2026 Town Meeting." https://williamstownma.gov/2026-town-meeting-warrant-articles/