Town meetings in my town are an event not to be missed. Unfortunately 95% of the voters don’t realize this. If only my friends and neighbors were aware of what they are passing up—this is theater with the lights on. And it’s good theater—especially later in the evening due to the inverse relationship between tiredness and civility. This year a citizen suggested, no, actually directly said, that laws are made to be broken and made this utterance with a full complement of our officers in attendance. Then the presenter went on to suggest that the Supreme Court of the United States exists just so we could pass the current article and challenge current laws.
Granted theater with the lights on is not so good for necking, but it’s great for multi-tasking. A brief glance around the room and I spotted 3 knitters (who put down their knitting needles when the Supreme Court issue was raised), a baby being rocked to sleep, one crossword puzzle devotee in action, and multiple doodlers. This is an ideal environment for type A personalities—you can not only cross many items off your list, you can make your opinion known to a room full of fellow citizens, respectfully listening while knitting, stretching and doodling.
Both the script and the actors are high quality. The actors upon the stage had researched their areas of focus and brought forward well thought out and articulated arguments and, at least earlier in the evening, were very complimentary to their opponents’ presentations. Ad lib performances at the open microphones were coherent and persuasive, challenging the audience to consider both sides of the debate.
But what would a critique be without suggestions for an area of improvement? Given the intelligence and the knowledge of the presenters, I was surprised at the poor quality of the slides shown. Certainly the color choice was fine and by and large the font size was readable, but honestly, these are educators—why are they displaying a long list of bullet points and then reading the bullet points to the audience. That is precisely what we teach our students NOT to do. A budget is full of numbers, numbers can be easily graphed. Graphs can show comparisons far more effectively than a column of numbers—create some graphs people. In addition, we can be more externally focused—let’s look to other towns for best practices. Only one article, which was prepared by a concerned citizen, focused on the best practices of other communities as a model for change we could use. Thankfully several presenters showed photographs which clearly were worth a thousand words. Perhaps some of the board members took note and will improve their slides in the future.
Oh, and if any techies are reading this, can someone please create a mechanism that allows projectors to go to a blue screen (or any other entertaining interlude) rather than displaying the laptop’s desktop between slide shows. Some desktops are not meant to be publicly displayed.
So check out the local theater at your town meeting—you may be pleasantly surprised at the quality of the performance and make a difference in your town planning and governance at the same time.
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