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“Survey Report for the Brattleboro Representative Town Meeting: Summary
Survey team (alphabetically by last name): George Carvill, Millicent Cooley, David Miner, Rick Morton, Kate O’Connor, Gary Stroud
Summary report completed August 19, 2021
Overview
A survey titled ‘Brattleboro Town Meeting: Your Opinion’ was conducted starting July 9, in order to get feedback on what annual representative town meeting (RTM) attendees and participants think about their experience with the Brattleboro RTM.
The objective of this survey is to hear opinions about what people want changed or want preserved in our town meeting process, so that the RTM Steering committee can be better informed and can take this opinion into account, in our work.
The RTM proposal that was adopted for the Steering committee states: “…to review the rules, procedures and structure of Representative Town Meeting for the purpose of enhancing the effectiveness and efficiency of the body…”
The survey invitation was sent to all RTM members, posted on the town website and on the Brattleboro Facebook page. The survey was anonymous, so that the survey editors cannot see the answers made by specific individuals, unless they opted to share their name for the sake of being reached for clarification (those names are not shared in the report and not available to those who are not one of the two main survey editors).
The survey consisted of 25 questions that blended multiple choice and free form text answer formats. There were 108 survey responses, including two from people who have never attended an annual town meeting, either as an observer or as a participating member, leaving 106 responses from people who have attended an RTM.
We have completed the first round of survey analysis, and are now in the process of sharing these results with RTM members, and with the public via the town website (RTM page). This first analysis round includes charts of multiple choice answers, comments, and tags that the survey editors have added when reading those comments. The purpose of these tags is to identify comments that express a specific opinion multiple times, and then to allow us to count how often a given opinion appears. We are not sharing the names of people who gave us their name in the survey.
We are asking for people who review this tagged survey data to send us questions, so that we can consider these questions as we complete our final round of analysis. During that final analysis we expect to dig more deeply into the data, and may decide to reach out to respondents for some clarification in their answers. For example, we may want to ask how new RTM members answered similarly or differently from those with more years of RTM experience.
How to read the survey data located at https://tinyurl.com/BrattleboroSurvey
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If you get only one page, please reload your browser window.
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The survey data includes charts that display the answers to multiple choice questions. Starting with survey question #7, these also include optional comments from survey respondents. And the last few survey questions, starting with #18, ask for comments with no multiple choice options.
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The survey editors have added tags (such as ‘Robert’s Rules problems’) when they observe multiple instances of the same issue described in comments.
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When you read “See Above” as a respondent comment it does not refer to the preceding reply but to the preceding question.
Key Insights
RTM survey respondents said that they value RTM because it gives them what they consider to be a unique opportunity to participate in democracy in action, as citizens. They think that engaging, learning, discussing different views and making decisions about community issues with fellow citizens, strengthens the community. Members say that it is meaningful and important to have the chance to collectively influence our community’s future through the RTM process.
There were many answers and comments indicating that the RTM meetings are too long, and this did not surprise us. The somewhat more surprising finding is that the most frequent single complaint in the comments is that a small number of members abuse their role by dominating speaking time in forwarding a narrow personal agenda that is not representative of the interests of the whole.
“It goes on way too long. I’ve thought of not running for membership because of this.”
“…people come to the meeting with agendas and seemingly attempt multiple ways to accomplish them not accepting the opinion of the majority.”
The third most cited issues concerns Robert’s Rules, including (a) the complaint that these rules are so complicated and lacking in guidance that this ends up excluding a large number of people who don’t understand how they may express themselves in the meeting, and (b) a complaint that Robert’s Rules is not itself a good tool for finding consensus and compromise in group decision-making.
“Roberts Rules/the code and culture of conduct making it really difficult for new people to understand how to get involved and feeling intimidating. People seem excited to have new folks serving but the space itself is not exactly inviting to new energy and perspectives and it seems there is a strong preference for folks who “know the ropes”…”
And finally, we learned that 29% think that they have no legal right to place a new ordinance on the RTM agenda without the approval of the Select Board, 29% are not sure whether this right exists or not, and only 43% correctly understand that they do have this legal right.
Survey participants
Among the 106 people who responded, and who have attended an RTM:
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A roughly similar number of respondents came from each of the three districts. Two people do not know what district they are in.
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25% have attended 1 or 2 annual town meetings, in total.
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46% have attended 6 or more annual town meetings.
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78% have attended at least one of the recent RTMs on Zoom, in addition to prior in-person town meetings. 21% attended a town meeting that was only held on Zoom.
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31% are members of one or more official town or RTM committees.
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RTM members stay updated about town affairs through a variety of print, social media or personal sources, and the most frequent sources are the Brattleboro Reformer, The Common, and chats with friends.
Additional Findings
80% say they can follow RTM meeting proceedings and 20% say either that it could be clearer or that they are confused by the proceedings.
While 32% are very familiar with Robert’s Rules and terms used during RTM, the majority (57%) are somewhat familiar and 11% are mostly unfamiliar and can only understand the rules and terms when they are explained.
52% have never made a motion or an amendment to a motion. 32% have done so once or twice, and 10% have done this several times or more.
71% say they usually attend the informational meetings that occur prior to RTM, and 29% either attend sometimes or not at all.
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Of the people who usually attend informational meetings, 63% say these meetings are very useful, 33% say they are somewhat useful and could be improved, and 4% say these meetings are not useful.
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Of those who attend this meeting sometimes, 18% say they are very useful, 73% say they are somewhat useful, and 9% say they are not useful at all.
The majority (57%) are somewhat familiar with the Town Charter, while 17% are very familiar and 26% are not familiar at all.
Although there is a legal process in the charter that allows residents to place a new ordinance on the RTM agenda without the approval of the Selectboard, if petition requirements are met, thereby influencing the RTM agenda that will be voted by the body, only 42% are aware that they can do this.
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29% think that this right does not exist, and 29% do not know whether or not this right exists.
Regarding the question “Does RTM, as currently practiced, allow us to address all of the issues that the town needs addressed?” – 40% answered Partially, 24% answered Yes, and 31% answered No.
68% of respondents say that RTM is longer than it should be. Opinions are approximately split regarding the total number of days that should be allotted for RTM.
The moderator received a number of compliments for thoughtfulness, skill and grace, along with a few comments that some individuals who are abusing the attention of the group should be reined in more assertively.
Thank you for reading this summary, and if you have any questions or comments about this summary or about the survey data at https://tinyurl.com/BrattleboroSurvey, please direct those either to Millicent Cooley millicent.cooley@gmail.com or to George Carvill george@carvill.net.
After we have received any questions from you or from members of the public with whom the survey data is also shared, we will do further analysis and share that, as well.
More findings may come from the second round of analysis.
