Warrant Committee evaluation: Town Meeting members' needs are primary

I get the agenda for some of the bigger committees in Town and noticed a self-evaluation item for the Warrant Committee a few weeks ago. Given that this is report card season, with school just wrapping up and the end of the Town's fiscal year, evaluations are the right thing for many organizations to do.

However, in this case, since the Warrant Committee is an advisory body to Town Meeting, I think that Town Meeting members themselves should have a chance to evaluate the Warrant Committee. Note that the Town By-Laws (section 19.2) state: "It shall be the duty of the Committee to consider for all town meetings all articles in the warrant which involve an appropriation of money and to report thereon at the town meeting."

The WC "serving" Town Meeting seems to be an appropriate way to think of this. This past year, the WC (perhaps just the chair) has excluded public input from their meetings. The Board of Selectmen and School Committee both have standing agenda items for public input at the start of their meetings, and the chairs of those boards welcome comments and questions from the public for most agenda items throughout their meetings.

At any other committee meetings – and I have attended (too) many – I have never noticed the public being explicitly told their input is not welcome.

I've heard the WC chairwoman say something about the WC being an appointed committee, and public input is not as appropriates as for elected boards. But nearly all committees in Belmont are appointed. By their nature, a fairly high fraction of various meeting attendees are Town Meeting members, and these are the very people we need to be engaged. Or, at the very least, make them feel they're being listened to. Quite late in the game, the WC opened themselves to email input from the public, which was only a small step in the right direction.

I think some on the WC have become tone-deaf to the opinions and needs of TM.  TM can be a circus at times, and appropriately focused committees can and should dig into issues, but TM is the ultimate authority: "We're the decider."

On some less-important articles (hopefully no really important ones), a few TM members have told me explicitly that they voted against WC recommendations just to vote against the WC. The same is true of some Board of Selectmen's recommendations. This is definitely a problem!

To be fair and balanced, the written WC report to TM, an always-evolving work, was a very good tool for TM. Hearing questions from the public, as issues arise, would make it that much better.

I don't know what a good mechanism for feedback from Town Meeting to the Warrant Committee would be, but helping Town Meeting make effective financial decisions should be their primary objective of that relationship.