Did Moving Town Meeting from this Weekend Back to April Increase Attendance?

This Saturday has traditionally been the Annual Town Meeting in Hamilton. And last Saturday would have been Annual Town Meeting in Wenham. But not this year.

In 2011, voters in both towns approved a move to hold the annual meeting a month earlier in April, largely in hopes of increasing attendance by putting it on a date where there are fewer other activities occurring in the two towns and the weather is not as nice. The move was also designed to put the Annual Town Meeting in both towns on the same day (Hamilton in the morning and Wenham in the afternoon) so shared committees and staff could spend one weekend day devoted to Town Meeting work. It also moved Hamilton Town Meeting from Mother's Day weekend.

So did the move increase attendance?

By our calculation, not really. At least not this year.

The move was approved in both towns in fall 2011 and was effective for the annual meeting in spring 2013. Hamilton also has a fall town meeting each year and Wenham also often hosts a fall town meeting too. Those dates were not impacted by the move.

This year, turnout was 6.1 percent for Annual Town Meeting in Wenham, with 176 voters. That's slightly lower than last year and the lowest for the past five years, when turnout was as high as 466 voters in 2008, according to numbers from the Town Clerk's office.

In Hamilton, turnout was 2.4 percent this year - or 142 voters. That is also the lowest voter percentage going back to 2008. The highest turnout during that time was in 2008 when 915 voters were at the springtime Annual Town Meeting.

This year, there were some debated topics in Wenham, but Hamilton's meeting breezed through the warrant articles largely without much debate. The school budget - always the largest single section of the budget - is often a source of debate but this year was uncontested. The School Committee's budget had the support of the Finance Committees and Boards of Selectmen in both towns. The school budget was not debated at the Annual Town meeting in either town this year.

So the question is: Are the topics on the Town Meeting warrant more of an influence on voter turnout that the date?