Everett Poole, Chilmark
    
Everett Poole, seventy-five, has lived on the Island his whole life, and he’s never been to any town meeting except Chilmark’s. When he was a boy, the meeting was held during the day and all the children from the Chilmark grade school were required to attend to learn about democracy first-hand. Everett came to believe that it was every person’s obligation to pay something back to his town. When, as a selectman twenty-five years ago, he found he didn’t have time to attend weekly meetings, Everett ran for moderator, as did his great uncle, Chester Poole, two generations earlier.

 When Everett started running meetings, there was no legal quorum. Now the number is twenty-five, which isn’t a problem in Chilmark because, according to Everett, there is a lot of interest in town government. Years ago, he could call by name anyone who wanted to speak. “Now I’m very lucky if I can call 30 percent of the people by name. A great many people have moved here from off-Island and have had no experience with the town-meeting form of government. Consequently, you have to instruct them a little bit sometimes. People ask questions that the old-timers might know the answers to, so some town meetings can be quite lengthy.”

In his role as moderator, Everett tries to keep people on the subject and the meeting moving along expeditiously. People get fired up more about the small expenses than the big budgets, and he can remember when, awhile ago, discussion went for over half an hour about whether to spend fifty cents to buy a new baseball for the school. But, he says, “It’s a good form of government. Everybody has his or her chance – several times. I have been criticized some for allowing people to talk so much, but it’s the only chance they have to speak, so I make sure everyone gets to say their full piece.”

Everett never misses calling on anyone on purpose, but he did miss someone once: A registered voter who was speaking for a taxpayer who was not a voter and thus not allowed to speak. Everett tells the story: “It’d been quite a long meeting. I’d gone around the room several times. I overlooked this person who wanted to speak again. She’d spoken several times and somehow I missed her. When the meeting was over, not the person I missed, but the taxpayer came up to the podium, grabbed the gavel, and swung at me. I was talking to somebody else. Fortunately, the police chief, Tim Rich, was standing right there and grabbed him as the gavel missed me. I didn’t even realize it was going on.”

In the 1970s and 1980s, Everett owned Poole’s Fish Market and employed as many as seventy people at the fish-processing plant where he now keeps an office and shop. What he does these days: “I go lobstering in the summertime. I do a little fishing and that’s about it.” In the Island tradition of multiple occupations with no retirement from any of them, Everett also builds lobster pots, repairs other fishermen’s gear, and sells line wholesale from the former fish plant, where the sign outside says: “Open on windy days, late afternoons, and other inconvenient times. Never on the first and third Tuesdays and never on Sundays.”

Deborah Medders, Tisbury

Tisbury town moderator Deborah Medders grew up in Texas, which has a county form of government. In 1988, at her first town meeting on the Island, she was immediately taken with this kind of democracy. “There’s a sense of empowerment. In town meeting we’re voting our values directly,” she says.

Deborah has always been politically active, working on legislative campaigns, and on the Island she became a moderator for the forums of the League of Women Voters and a mediator with the Martha’s Vineyard Mediation Program. She serves as executive director of the Island chapter of the Red Cross.

There is a sense about Deborah that she knows the people in her town, both individually and as a whole. In town meeting, she likes to call on speakers by name and will ask people to introduce themselves if she doesn’t know them. From observing two of her predecessors, she picked up the meeting’s protocol, and from campaigning door to door she learned what people wanted from their town meeting. She believes it’s a characteristic of Tisbury that the majority of voters come to the meeting with the intention of hearing the discussion and, along with the information they already have, of using it to make a decision at the time.

Deborah lets people talk as long as they want unless she hears them repeating themselves or “moving beyond the scope of the article.” She also notices if the people start to fidget or shuffle papers. Her intent, though, is to make sure the pros and cons have been explored and that the minority has effectively presented its position.

One thing Deborah has noticed is that the town’s tradition of allowing people to speak without a time limit sometimes creates a kind of “spontaneous oration.” As a person speaks about an issue, he might start off talking about the cost of something, but in continuing to speak, his deeper concerns, fears, or beliefs might come out, and in the end, the person effects an unexpected change in other people’s minds as well as having a satisfying feeling of being heard.

Tisbury is different from other Island towns in that the appropriating and non-appropriating articles are tackled on two separate nights, a week apart. During a meeting, the articles are drawn by lottery: Deborah draws numbered chips from her great-grandmother’s buttermilk pitcher as the meeting proceeds. Only written amendments can be brought to the town meeting floor, which, she says, makes a person seriously consider a proposition before speaking. The quorum in Tisbury is 100 people, which has always been achieved during Deborah’s tenure, even if it means people getting on their cell phones as 7:30 approaches.  

Deborah, called a “snappy dresser” by one town board member, comes to a fall meeting in a black tailored suit with a wide polka-dot tie. Her half-glasses and neatly coiled hair give the impression of someone firmly but politely in charge. With a calm, clear voice and deliberate gestures, she fields comments and directs questions with the grace of an orchestra conductor.

Deborah is one of thirty women who moderate town meetings in Massachusetts (where 300 towns are governed this way). “As moderator,” she says, “I have the same feelings as I did attending my first town meeting: absolute awe about governance by the people.”  

Walter Delaney, Aquinnah
    
Walter Delaney runs Aquinnah’s town meeting as though he were sitting around the kitchen table with his extended family. There is no raised platform, podium, or microphone, and people don’t have to identify themselves when they stand up to speak. “Sitting up front here for so long, I can almost know, or read into it, I guess, what they’re going to say,” Walter says with a laugh. “But they’re entitled to speak their mind, as long as it’s proper.” One of his only concessions to formal town meeting decorum is his gavel. When people get too rowdy, Walter intervenes. “If the background noise gets too loud for what’s going on, I give a couple of taps with the gavel, and then, when I hit the table hard with the gavel, they know it’s time to back off a little bit.” On controversial issues, Walter calls on people, a row at a time, letting anyone speak who wants to. “It calms everyone down so they’re not jumping up and down.”

Walter, seventy-seven, started as moderator in 1975, before he even lived full-time in what was then Gay Head. He and his family came to the Island summers and bought a house in 1959. Winter was spent in Woburn, where Walter owned a business servicing printing equipment. He decided to register to vote on the Island when he became disenchanted with the city form of government in Woburn, where, he says, “You’re giving away your authority on how to spend your money.”

As moderator, Walter decided that he wouldn’t cast his vote, even if there were a tie; he felt that would be fairer. The only time he has spoken on the town meeting floor was to support the purchase of a new fire truck. Walter is fire chief. He also serves on the conservation commission and was a selectman for nine years.

In Aquinnah, the moderator appoints the finance committee. It can be hard to find people willing to serve in town positions, but Walter feels that for such a small town, there is a lot of interest in what’s going on.     

The quorum is 10 percent of registered voters, which was fourteen people at Walter’s first town meeting. Now it’s up to about thirty-eight people. The total town budget has grown from $174,844 in 1975 to $2,487,521 in 2005, and about 75 percent of that goes out of town for school costs and the county assessment.

Walter started out as moderator during the time when the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah) was applying for federal recognition; the town supported the application and began to negotiate which town lands – among them the face of the Cliffs and the wild cranberry lands – would be transferred to the tribe after it was recognized. In 1983 when the town sought approval from the state legislature to transfer the selected lands to the tribe, national news teams came to the meeting and Walter had to direct how many cameras and lights could be set up and where they could be placed. The meetings, though emotional, went smoothly, and Walter says, “There was excellent input. Both sides had counsel with expertise. They were really good meetings.”

The most unusual visitor to town meeting was a skunk. “It was a warm evening,” Walter says, “and the front door was open. The meeting was about to adjourn when in waltzes a skunk. I was up front; people couldn’t see it. I told them to walk forward and go out the side door. I didn’t say why until we were all outside. Then I said: The skunk thanks you for an orderly exit.”

David Richardson, Oak Bluffs
    
Oak Bluffs moderator David Richardson says of running town meeting: “It’s a little like the fellow who’s got a couple dozen sheep, who has to get from one end of the road to the other without them wandering off in odd directions. I try to keep the meeting moving and give people a chance to speak and have a sense that it’s very much their meeting.”

 The quorum in Oak Bluffs is only fifty voters, and for David, a roomful of people doesn’t necessarily add to the effectiveness of the meeting – the folks who come are interested in getting the business of the warrant done and are a good representation of the town. While he intends to restrict speakers to the article at hand, he says, “There are times when people are absolutely determined. They’ve got the microphone and they’re going to have their say.” He adds, “It’s a very rare speaker who doesn’t [say] best whatever he’s going to say in less than a minute.” When a person strays beyond the scope of the article being discussed, “sometimes they’re responsive to a simple gesture,” David says, drawing a finger across his throat. “That can give a person pause.”

Before becoming moderator in Oak Bluffs in 1999, David led town meetings in Marshfield for six years. He and his family spent summers on the Vineyard beginning in the 1970s, and after moving here, he and his wife Ellen bought and ran Tony’s Market. They still own it, but now they hire a manager, which gives them more time for boating and being grandparents.

David enjoys a bit of controversy at town meeting and finds Oak Bluffs feisty, although not as much as it was six or seven years ago. He sees fewer people who try to keep the officials up to snuff and on the straight and narrow. David credits the good order at town meeting to a finance committee that presents issues effectively and responsibly, and he adds, “I have a sense that a lot of people feel there’s a civic obligation or ownership in town, [that] it’s important to participate in this, but not necessarily to draw battle lines and have a donnybrook.”

David uses the guidelines in Town Meeting Time, published by the Massachusetts Moderators’ Association, as a basis for how to run the meetings. Since the handbook doesn’t set down definitive rules, the traditions of the town also guide him. He finds that a little humor can help, and says, “Too much formality and gavel banging wouldn’t go over well in Oak Bluffs.”

Jeff Norton, Edgartown

Philip J. Norton Jr., known around town as Jeff, sole partner of the Worth and Norton law firm, leans back in the armchair behind the wide wooden desk in his book-lined office on Church Street and talks about his job as town moderator for Edgartown, a position he has held since he was first elected in the 1970s.

“In those days, we all felt we had to go to town meeting. You might as well do something if you go,” says Jeff about why he became a moderator. Years ago, when debates over the issues were more heated, his job was more like a referee’s. Jeff says, “Nowadays, we don’t have that and I think the voters feel they’re rubber stamping.” Jeff thinks people at town meetings even become upset when someone questions something. “We have no characters anymore,” he says. In former years, Dr. Leroy Erickson would bring up issues and then “Pete Vincent would take up the other side of it.” Jeff’s belief is that, in Edgartown, there is so much money coming in from non-voters that the year-round residents don’t feel the brunt of the spending “as maybe we should.”

Having grown up in town, Jeff, sixty-seven, knows the place pretty well. After graduating from Suffolk University Law School in Boston, he worked in the city for six years until a law firm there wanted someone to help out in an office on the Island. Jeff came home and has been here ever since. Knowing people so well can help him run meetings. He says, “I used to know exactly what people were going to say.” He doesn’t anymore, but knows the group well enough that he can predict who will be pro, and who will be con.

Jeff has an easygoing manner. He is known in town for his ability to take the pulse of the meeting, maintain its rhythm, and carry things along. He believes in letting people talk as long as they want, though he may comment, “I think we got the point,” if someone loses their place in the middle of a long-winded testimony, or he may stroll over to the window and look out for a bit until the person has had his say. He’s quick to pronounce the vote unanimous, but if he hears a lone “No” or two, he’ll amend it to, “Or almost.”

In Edgartown, there are no parliamentary rules, no Robert’s Rules of Order – the town never adopted them. Jeff says, “On the back of the warrant, they have various rules, basically common sense. But I don’t know where they came from.” Jeff follows his own rules and, after so many years, has a clear idea of what the job is.

“A moderator’s job is to keep the business flowing, to come to a conclusion, and to stop anybody from killing anybody. Keep it on a level playing field, so to speak. That’s the way I see it. When it gets a little tiresome, throw a little humor at them, and that way it loosens things up.”

Pat Gregory, West Tisbury

Pat Gregory moderates town meetings for West Tisbury in the elementary school where he used to teach math. Back then he and his fellow teachers ran weekly student community meetings modeled after the town’s. He says, “Many of the students who participated in that are in turn participants in town meeting now, which always makes me smile.” He adds, “I really do know most of the people who speak.”

His main concern during meetings is to keep people focused on the issues at hand. He likes to keep a tally of speakers for and against to make sure people have heard “all sides of the thing.” About the importance of respectful debate, he says, “You can certainly differ strongly from someone, but you don’t have a right to criticize them personally.” In this agricultural town, it’s often the smaller issues that generate the most discussion, especially about animals – dogs in particular. Pat says, “Any bylaws to restrict animals in some way or another are often good, lively debates.”

Listening to the debate at meetings makes him realize how much people care about important town matters. He says, “We’re all just citizens. Town meeting is pure democracy. That’s the best part of it; it’s a remarkable form of government.”

On his first trip here to interview for a teaching job, Pat didn’t know the Vineyard was an island until he got to Woods Hole. He was pleasantly surprised, though, and took the job. Over the years Pat has been a big presence in the Island’s youth soccer leagues. Now, at age sixty, he has been on the Island for thirty-two years and, with his wife Dorothy, owns Educomp, an office- and computer-supply store in Vineyard Haven, or as he says wryly, “I am owned by Educomp.”

Pat first served the town on a committee to create the personnel bylaws and found he enjoyed doing town work. When he looked around for something else to do, about fifteen years ago, some friends suggested he run for moderator. “So I took a pop at it,” he says, and he’s been elected to run town meeting ever since. “It’s a nice way to be a participant in government and it has a nice beginning and end, unlike being on a committee.”

There is no quorum, so Pat has to declare one based on the particular issues in front of that meeting and whether he feels there are enough people present to make an informed decision.

At one winter special town meeting concerning some controversial articles about the town-hall addition and the assessors’ legal bills, the school gym was full. Three video cameras recorded the proceedings. The atmosphere was tense, and Pat, in a neat gray suit, was attentive as he took a casual stance, leaning against the podium. He directed questions to the appropriate town officials, called on people to speak, and decided when to move on to the next orator or the next issue. On hearing the close voice vote of a less controversial article, Pat paused momentarily, as if to weigh the sound in his mind. Then, like the experienced soccer referee he is, he looked up and called out a decisive, “Pass.”

Leo Roy, Gosnold
    
I became moderator because of fish,” says Leo Roy, who runs town meetings for Gosnold, which includes the thirteen Elizabeth Islands and 113 registered voters. Moderator Charlie Tilton was out fishing in 1999 when he radioed in to say he wasn’t coming in for the annual meeting. The selectmen asked Leo to run the meeting, and he’s been doing it ever since.

Annual meetings are held on Cuttyhunk, the southwestern-most island in the chain, on the third Monday in May, and about twenty-five people from Naushon Island take the launch there. Leo starts the meeting at 10 a.m. with a roll call, the Pledge of Allegiance, and a moment of silence for town members who have died. He tries to finish within two hours so everyone can go to lunch. There is no set quorum, and anyway, usually about half the voters show up. “It’s one of the biggest entertainments of the year,” Leo says. “It’s about the only time the community comes together, and so I let discussion wander to other areas of community interest,” such as the debate about the tiled walkway that’s been stacked outside Cuttyhunk’s church for the past five years. And at the end of one meeting when Donna Hunter, “a fixture on Cuttyhunk,” hadn’t said anything for the whole time, Leo asked her, “Don’t you have anything on your mind?” She replied: “As a matter of fact, I do. There’s a problem of barking dogs.”

If controversy arises at a meeting, Leo may intervene, but he says, “Town meeting is the purest form of democracy there is; people appreciate that and are respectful of each other’s point of view – there are no fistfights! It’s a small place; everyone has to live together. There are factions but people try to get along.”

Voting for town positions is done using secret ballots dropped into a basket during a roll call. People often don’t declare candidacy until meeting day. “There’s no lawn signs, let me put it that way,” says Leo. The state requires the town to fill more jobs than there are people willing to take them, so people play multiple roles. Leo is moderator, chairman of the harbor management committee, and justice of the peace on Naushon.

Leo, forty-eight, has lived on Naushon, the largest island in the chain, since 1982, when he married into it – the only way to get there other than being born into the Forbes family, which owns it. He is a consultant for a firm that designs “green” buildings as well as bike paths and city centers. He and his wife also have mainland houses in Milton and Princeton, where they run a cut-your-own Christmas-tree farm.

Leo remembers going to the Cuttyhunk Town Hall in the early 1980s and seeing a garbage can full of unopened mail. He asked what it was and was told that anything that came from Boston was thrown in there before it was even opened. “I think Cuttyhunk’s troubles started when they began opening the mail from Boston. They ignored us if we didn’t engage with them. Once we started filling out those forms and sending them back to Boston, everything got complicated. It’s too bad that we started opening the mail.”