Last year I missed our annual town meeting. My wife attended. She represented us while I stayed home with our offspring. This year I made the trek to the high school to sit and listen in the auditorium. As I drove over there I admit I reminisced a bit about the days when my wife and I went together, in a different town than the one in which we now live, and shared the experience. I miss that–experiencing it together and then processing it. Last night, however, I passed on what happened after I got home.

The school board meeting was first on the agenda. That used to be on a different day but moved to the same evening as town meeting recently. While the town meeting itself filled the auditorium, the school meeting offered plenty of empty seating–about 40 people were there, including the school board and the co-principals. We are shifting to a regional school system–several towns are merging to share resources and to save money. That was discussed, plus some positive school outcomes. It was helpful to be there.

The first big issue to be discussed at the general town meeting was whether the town would support a bond to fund a new town garage. That discussion got a bit sidetracked when someone asked how much debt the town has. While that answer is in the town report (at least as of the end of the last fiscal year) there was lots of discussion about how to interpret all the numbers in the report. Learning math pays off. No one really questioned the value of a new facility, just taking on more debt to do it.

We also discussed whether to help fund a project to try to eradicate Eurasian Milfoil from our local lake. This has been a problem in many places. This invasive plant will clog a lake, it is so prolific. It grows like, well, a weed. After attempts to remove it manually last year, the proposal is to use an herbicide to target the Milfoil to suppress it. Naturally, this created some interest in the topic and some folks had some things to say. Someone called for a paper ballot (rather than the usual voice vote) so this article took some time. In the end, it passed by what you might call a narrow margin.

I headed home in the rain, feeling that I was a little more a part of the town. I voted on the articles presented. I listened to what my fellow residents had to say, although I did not offer any words myself. I like that I get to see and hear from other people in town directly. This is a pretty small town, but still, there are plenty of people I just don’t encounter much, if at all. So it gives us all a chance to be part of something together, as a town, as a community, whether we all agree on things or not. I find some satisfaction in that.

This morning I made my way to the town hall to vote–for school board members, for selectboard members, for the high school budget, for new school buses, for that proposed town garage. I said hello to a few people. I thanked the town clerk for her years of service, and the volunteers for helping us all out. I grabbed a donut hole on the way out and headed back to work, civic duty done for now, feeling just a little more connected to my town. These days, I need that. I think we all do.