Milton Town Moderator proposes consent agenda for May 2018 Town Meeting

Town Meeting – New Proposed Consent Agenda Rule May 2018

CONSENT AGENDA

At least five business days prior to the opening of the first session of the Annual Town Meeting or any Special Town Meeting, the moderator shall propose to all members a “Consent Agenda” listing all articles which, based on the records of recent town meetings, the Moderator deems to be non-controversial. At the first session of the meeting, at the request of any five members present, any article shall be removed from the Consent Agenda so that it can be debated and voted upon in accordance with the provisions of Town Meeting’s Rules. All articles remaining in the Consent Agenda shall then be voted upon by a single 2/3 vote without debate.

A note from the Moderator:

This year, I am proposing to introduce to our agenda a new procedure called the Consent Agenda that has been adopted by Town Meetings across the Commonwealth. I described this procedure to you at our October 2017 Special Fall Town Meeting. The purpose of the Consent Agenda is to save your time by dispensing with the reading of and voting on individual articles that can be expected to pass overwhelmingly and instead, voting on them all together with one vote.

In selecting articles for the Consent Agenda I have used the following criteria:

1. The article must be a routine article that has appeared regularly in recent years.
2. The meaning of the article and the recommendation of the Warrant Committee must be clearly explained in the Warrant.
3. It must be reasonable to expect that the Warrant Committee recommendation for the article would pass with no controversy.

At the beginning of the first night of Town Meeting, The Moderator will read or summarize each article on the Consent Agenda. If a Town Meeting Member has a question about the article or believes that a separate debate or vote on a specific article is necessary, they shall call out “Remove”. The Moderator will then ask for a show of hands, and if five (5) members raise their hands, the article will be removed from the Consent Agenda and dealt with in the normal way when we reach its number on the warrant. A member can call out “Remove” for any reason, they will not be asked to explain their request and a request for removal is not debatable. When we reach the end of the list, The Moderator will call for a single vote on the remaining articles on the Consent Agenda. If 2/3 of the members present vote aye, all articles remaining in the Consent Agenda will be considered passed.

The proposed Consent Agenda is included below and is available on the town web site.

Bob Hiss
Town Moderator
April 23, 2018

View the May 2018 Warrant:

The Proposed 2018 Annual Town Meeting Consent Agenda:

The Town Moderator proposes that the 19 Warrant Articles listed below be included in the Consent Agenda of the 2018 Annual Town Meeting.

A full description of each article may be found in the 2018 Warrant.