Town meeting

Town meeting is a form of local government commonly practiced in the U.S. region of New England, but uncommon elsewhere in the United States. Despite the name "town," it can also apply to other governmental bodies, usually school districts.

New Hampshire

New Hampshire towns and school districts have two types of annual meeting: Traditional meetings and ballot-voting meetings, known informally as SB2 after the title of the law that established it in 1995. State law also allows representative town meeting, in which voters elect a small number of residents to act as the legislative body, but as of 2004 no New Hampshire communities have instituted it.

Related Topics:
New Hampshire - As of 2004

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In traditional meetings, voters gather in one spot at one time to debate and vote on issues in public. In ballot-voting meetings, they gather to discuss issues in February and then vote on them with secret ballots during all-day voting on election day, usually the second Tuesday in March.

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SB2 was instituted by the state legislature in 1995 because of concern that modern lifestyle made it hard for people to attend traditional meetings. Municipalities can switch from traditional to SB2 meetings - or switch back - by a vote at annual meeting.

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According to the University of New Hampshire Center for Public Policy studies, in 2002, 171 towns in New Hampshire had traditional town meeting, while 48 had SB2. Another 15 municipalities, most of them incorporated cities, had no annual meeting. The study found that 102 school districts had traditional town meeting, 64 had SB2 meeting and 10 had no annual meeting.

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Because traditional-meeting communities tend to be smaller, only one-third of the state's population was governed by traditional town meetings in 2002, and only 22 percent by traditional school-district meetings.

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External links

N.H. Center for Public Policy Studies report on SB2

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