Moderator, Select Board Assess Good And Bad Of Special Town Meeting

ORLEANS – John Kanaga is no stranger to town meeting. But last week he watched the proceedings from the podium.

 “It’s a different perspective from any town meeting I’ve been to, because you’re trying to move the meeting along,” said Kanaga, who on Nov. 17 oversaw his first meeting as town moderator.

 Kanaga ran unopposed in May for the moderator post. He succeeds longtime moderator David Lyttle, who did not seek reelection at the annual town election.

 While the special town meeting warrant came in at a relatively slim 12 articles, several of those articles generated considerable debate. Those included an article seeking the adoption of a specialized energy code, which failed to pass with voters, and another seeking adoption of a zoning amendment to create a downtown housing overlay district. The zoning article passed 340-243.

 “There was a lot of discussion and debate, and a lot of people got up,” Kanaga said. “That zoning article probably had the most people to speak in a long time. There were four lines of people the whole time right up until the question was called.”

 Kanaga is not entirely new to running town meeting. Prior to his election, he on occasion would stand in as moderator on articles in which Lyttle recused himself. But he said there was a lot to take away from the fall meeting in terms of helping future sessions run more smoothly. That includes taking additional measures to get everyone situated in time for the meeting’s scheduled start.

 Last week’s meeting got off to a late start as voters stood in line and slowly worked their way into the Nauset Regional Middle School gymnasium. For a bi-annual meeting that typically runs multiple hours, Kanaga said, every minute counts. 

 “I think what I need to do is encourage people to be there at six,” he said. “Because I knew the second article was going to have a lot of discussion, I didn’t want people to miss it. But people need to be there at six, otherwise it delays the meeting 15 minutes from the start.”

 Kanaga said he will also look to better manage the amount of time voters at the microphone are given to speak, especially on articles that generate significant discussion. 

 “If I could change one thing with a wand, it would be to bring it back to three minutes max,” he said. “We need people to know how long they’re going. Because if you have 20 speakers on two separate articles and they all go five minutes, you now have a very long meeting.”

 The issue of time limits for speakers on town meeting floor was raised at the select board’s meeting on Nov. 19. Board Chair Kevin Galligan read a letter the board received from Orleans resident Carolyn Witt requesting that speakers be given two minutes to speak instead of five as currently allowed.

 “Last night’s meeting dragged on,” the letter read. Witt argued that giving speakers less time to speak will force them to be more concise in their comments.

 Galligan said in other towns including Brewster and Provincetown, clocks are used to help manage people’s time at the microphones. 

 Mefford Runyon of the select board, who called himself a “hard line critic” of town meeting as it relates to time and length, agreed. 

 “I thought there was a lot of time spent at that town meeting unnecessarily,” he said. Runyon said that at several points, debate “strayed” from the scope of the article at hand.

 “That’s something that I think we should be trying to keep people within,” he said.

 “I thought with 10 or 11 articles, we’d have been moving through a lot faster,” said Michael Herman of the select board. “But it did seem there were a lot of people who wanted to speak, and it was what it was.”

 But Galligan said preparation ahead of the meeting can help speakers tighten their comments.

 “Write it down, you’ll be much more effective,” he said.

 But while there were instances where speakers strayed from the article at hand, Kanaga said he thought that voters did a good job of sticking to the articles and staying on point.

 “We stayed on topic, and we had a really good turnout for a special town meeting,” he said.

 Runyon also said that more work can be done to focus town meeting as a place for “debate, not education,” citing the informational meetings and other resources that were made available to voters in the weeks leading up to the fall session.

 “This is where those questions should come up, especially if they’re technical or legal questions,” agreed Herman.

 Select board member Andrea Reed applauded the additional efforts town staff made to educate voters ahead of town meeting across various platforms, calling those efforts the most “robust and accessible” she’s seen in her nearly 30 years in town. But she also said the select board needs to have a more active role in preparing and advocating for articles with town staff going forward.

 “This is our meeting and our warrant,” she said. “We have to marry staff expertise with our own advocacy. I think that really is part of our job, and that was absent at this town meeting.”

 But for all of the meeting’s imperfections, Galligan complimented staff and the town’s boards and committees on what he saw as a “really good meeting overall.”

 “But there are always ways to improve, aren’t there?”