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Special to the News from Jack LeMenager Nov. 21, 2023
The adjournment of the Fall 2023 Town Meeting on Thursday, November 16, also marked the wrap-up of the launch of the new Winchester Town Meeting Members Association (TMMA). Inaugurated in late September, the group’s mission is to enable well-informed Town Meeting debates and decisions by facilitating communication among Town Meeting members.
The TMMA sent emails to Town Meeting members in early October inviting them to visit the TMMA website and sign in to the TMMA discussion board. Over the following weeks, the group hosted a series of informational sessions for interested Town Meeting members and provided one-on-one technical support for those who wanted to set up a TMMA email address. During the four November Town Meeting sessions, TMMA members staffed a table in the Winchester High School cafeteria, handing out informational brochures and answering questions about the TMMA.
The effort to introduce the TMMA to Town Meeting members was successful. Membership manager Jian Liu reported that Town Meeting members were signing up, with about a third of the members signing in to the discussion board and posting comments and questions. “There were some robust discussions about the proposals to add solar panels to the Lynch School and many comments about Articles 29 and 30, which proposed changes to the Finance Committee’s re-appointments process. We’d like to see more of that kind of discussion in future Town Meetings.”
TMMA chair Lance Grenzeback said, “The comments posted on the discussion board and comments made by Town Meeting members stopping by the TMMA information table confirmed the need for more and earlier information about issues and articles coming before Town Meeting. We are going to work over the winter to get more Town Meeting members signed up and using the discussion board. And as we get closer to the 2024 Spring Town Meeting, we will host informal public and precinct informational sessions so that town boards and citizens thinking about sponsoring articles can outline their ideas, hear questions and get early feedback from Town Meeting members. We believe this will contribute to well-informed Town Meeting debates and decisions.”
The TMMA discussion board is at: https://forum.winchestertmma.org/vanilla/. Anyone can read the questions, information and comments on the discussion board, but only TMMA members can post to the board. However, town residents can ask their Town Meeting representatives to re-post residents’ emails regarding town issues and Town Meeting articles.
Current and newly elected Town Meeting members who have not yet registered with the TMMA can do so by sending an email request to Shukong Ou, TMMA’s Web Manager, at webmanager@winchestertmma.org. The TMMA’s website is at: https://www.winchestertmma.org/.
