Survey Results: For Annual Town Meetings, the survey says we prefer weekday evenings

 

 

 

On 10/16 the Select Board briefly looked at the results of a survey about Annual Town Meeting day and times; residents seem to prefer our current Annual Meeting day and time.

Lancaster has met for Annual Town Meeting on "Monday at 7PM" for as long as I've lived in town; we have a bylaw that sets the day as the first Monday in May "no earlier than 7PM."

Town Bylaw 180-1 specifies our  Annual Town Meeting day

Towns do have flexibility in when to meet though: some towns meet on weekends, some schedule multi-day meetings.  It's pretty common around town meeting time to hear people state a preference for a weekend meeting.

Last night at their meeting the Select Board looked over the results of a survey about the towns preference for meeting.  You can watch the discussion in the meeting video here at 2:02:00. 

This was a survey that was distributed at the May Town Election, and then continued in an online poll afterward.  Ultimately 219 people completed the survey.

What day would we prefer?   Of those who completed the survey, most preferred a weekday at 7PM: 143 of the 219 respondants picked that as their first choice.  The next preference was for a 5PM weekday meeting.

Survey results, snipped from page 29 of the boards 10/16 meeting packet

 

I was a bit surprised that among the alternatives Sunday was preferred over Saturday.  The Saturday options were the least popular.

The "multiday meeting" option was very unpopular, with 146 of 219 indicating that they would not be more likely to attend that type of meeting.

The Select Board didn't really discuss the quality of the data, but I think there's some reason to be concerned.  Initially the survey was printed and distributed at the Annual Town Election.  My wife and I voted in the morning, and didn't encounter the survey there; we weren't alone as 1,214 residents voted in the election and there were only 219 responses to the survey.  After the election the town continued the poll via paper surveys and with an online poll; the survey was available in town buildings and sent via at least one town distribution list.  (I received a survey via a library distribution list.)

The pool of residents who were likely to receive and respond to the survey was probably constrained by the way it was distributed, but the results do seem to show that -- at least for the people surveyed -- the meeting day in our bylaws is the one we prefer.