From the March 2014 edition of nhmagazine:
One enduring government ritual is the traditional or open town meeting — not to be confused with the New Age phrase “town-hall-style meeting” used by stumping politicians who want to appear folksy on national television.
These roots go deep — the first recorded town meeting was in Dorchester, Massachusetts in 1633.
Town meetings are traditionally held on the second Tuesday in March, a tradition that has its roots in agrarian society when the end of winter was a suspended animation time for farmers who could neither reap nor sow.
It’s at these town meetings that all the year’s town business and elections are voted on by citizens in town halls and community centers around the state. And while cities with municipal forms of government and the passage of Senate Bill 2 (SB2) in 1995 have meant fewer traditional town meetings, there are still 161 communities — way more than half of the 224 towns in the state — that still have traditional town meeting.
In addition to having the power to vote on every seat of every board, every cent of spending and borrowing, and every word that is changed in the law, any citizen can get their own warrant article added to the ballot with only 25 petition signatures.
Here is Hampton’s 2018 Town Warrant. Click on the image to see the whole thing.
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