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Comment by Steltek | Hacker News Reader

That's quite a long article without actually describing a modern New England Town Meeting. They still exist and no, it's not even remotely like a national "town hall".

Make no mistake, they're still as boring as dirt. (Nearly) direct democracy doesn't make it suddenly more interesting to talk about road reconstruction or sewer maintenance. Many towns put their meetings up on YouTube. Search for "Annual Town Meeting", as opposed to "Special Town Meeting". Although STM's being more focused, those might be slightly more lively with debate or dissent.

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I've been to a lot of village council meetings. Village of ~2,000 people, I've attended biweekly meetings for ~6 years.

Most (By hours spent) of the debate and dissent came from two lunatics, who, having nothing better to do, would show up to every single one of them. The year after I stopped going, police had to be involved twice.

Occasionally, there would be an interesting conversation, for questions dealing with a lot of money, and non-obvious trade-offs, that were discussed by adults. Most of the time, though, the matters were routine and uncontroversial - or, if they weren't, the councilmembers' minds were made up long before the meeting started.

Nowadays, I hear that they've cut speaking time for members of the public, and restricted their speaking privileges to asking questions. As anyone working at Google or Facebook knows, though, statements disguised as a question are still quite common.

Is this in New England? Are you talking about Selectmen's meetings? At least in Massachusetts, Town Meeting is a once-a-year thing unless something critical comes up, then a Special Town Meeting is called. TM is expensive both in money and time so STMs aren't called unless it really can't wait.

Selectmen meet more frequently but yes, we have some persistent contrarians with perhaps too much free time on their hands too. It's good to have a devil's advocate sometimes as it keeps everyone honest.

Speaking time is mostly at the whim of the moderator, elected at the start of TM. If the Town doesn't like it, they should choose a different moderator.

No, this was in a small village in Canada.

Yes but you still have a town of council meetings on a regular basis, which is where a lot of the activities happen nowadays.

> two lunatics, who, having nothing better to do, would show up to every single one of them

It's nice to know that the Pawnee Town Hall meetings from Parks & Recreation have some basis in real life.

Then again, I should know this. A couple of years ago, I went to a Rockwall, TX city council meeting to protest a transphobic bathroom bill the mayor proposed. Lots and lots and lots of people spoke. It was the Pawnee Town Hall come to life. The people for the bathroom bill included a good many people who were just plain off their rocker, including one person who was claiming that Target sells sex toys on the shelves in the children's section. Tinfoil hats and conspiracy theories galore. The people against the bathroom bill included real-life versions of both Ron Swanson and Leslie Knope. And the mayor was Jim Jamm. There were multiple Ron Swansons on the city council, though. It ended up with not a single councilmember even seconding the mayor's proposal.

If you look at the This Week in Public Comment videos on YouTube, it's pretty representative of what they're actually like:

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=this+week+in+pu...

> Make no mistake, they're still as boring as dirt.

Boring enough that there are still cases where the police have to go out and summon residents to the meeting to secure a quorum.

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