Please mark your calendars for a special in-person town meeting to be held at the library on April 29 (Saturday) at 9 am. The sole purpose of this meeting is to consider moving the Town Meeting in person session on Town Meeting Day each March back to Tuesday as it had been since time immemorial and eliminate the Monday night meeting.

This meeting was called as a result of a citizen petition that received more than 5% of town voters' signatures.

Back in 2020, the town authorized a move to hold the in-person town business meeting on Monday night followed by Australian ballot voting on other items the next day, on the traditional Town Meeting Day. We did not follow this format in 2021 and 2022 due to Covid-19 issues. 2023 was consequently the first time we actually held the in-person town business meeting on Monday night.

At this year's in-person Monday night town meeting, we had (as hand-counted by a number of people) approximately 133 voters present, not counting Boy Scouts and town officials who were not Richmond residents. That was out of 3377 registered voters, or just shy of 4%.

I mention this because the impetus to switch to Monday night came from a belief that we might boost participation by holding the meeting outside traditional 8-5 working hours. Unfortunately, that was not the actual outcome. (The last in-person meeting, in 2020, saw 160 voters take part.)

Given that we did not see any increase in attendance at all and in fact saw a decrease, and given that a Monday evening event cost us the Town Meeting Day socializing, donuts, hot dogs, coffee, etcetera that are part of many residents' beloved memories, the request was brought to the Selectboard to take necessary steps to put the question before town voters.

This question has to be asked at a formal in-person town meeting and we had a choice -- wait until next March to bring it up, or call a special meeting just for this purpose. We elected to call a special meeting. The meeting will be called to order at 9 am in the Richmond Free Library community room.

You MUST BE PRESENT IN PERSON TO VOTE. No votes will be taken remotely, via Zoom, etcetera.

Please add this to your calendar and attend on the day of.

Thanks,

Jay Furr
Chair, Richmond Selectboard

May 15, 2024, 1 to 2:30 PM

May 16, 2024, 6:30 to 8 PM

May 17, 2024, 5 to 7 PM