Text Alert Draws Voters to Town Meeting for Budget

A text message prompted Westborough's March 16 annual town meeting to draw voters for the budget discussion -- only -- which undermined "the integrity of the meeting," Advisory Finance Committee Chairman Edward Behn said Tuesday night.

Behn, Town Moderator Joe Harrington, selectmen and Town Manager Jim Malloy had their annual post town meeting discussion.

“I think whenever the integrity of the meeting is undermined, it hurts us all," he said in prefacing his remarks.

Westborough residents need to discuss “how do we do a better job of getting people to stay for all the meeting so that we don’t have people coming for one issue," Behn said.

“That’s what the heart of our government is about: it’s that legislative ability," he said.

Behn said he learned that “someone, and I don’t know who it was, actually put together a system whereby people could be alerted by a text message when it was time to do the budgets. I think it was particularly toward schools, but that was my understanding. It wasn’t the school committee or anything."

“As soon as the budget was done,” Behn said, “at least 100 people” left town meeting.

Selectmen Vice Chairman George Barrette said he got a copy of the e-mail second hand.

“It worked beautifully and it was completely legal and I found it as objectionable as you do, Ed," Barrette said.

“We have a problem. It’s a big one. It’s not going to get better. The next day in church, (someone said) ‘I saw you last night. I came in to vote on the school budget, then I left.’

"To them, they did a perfectly normal thing. Someone told them to go vote on it. They went down and they voted on it, and then they went back to whatever they were doing. Unfortunately, it’s going to continue, unless we change that.”

Behn said in some towns, a lottery decides the order that warrant articles are discussed on town meeting floor; the town clerk picks the numbers randomly.

“It may be something we should start to talk about as a town,” Behn said.

Harrington said he can follow up on this.

Selectmen Chairman Ian Johnson said he would like the topic placed on a future selectmen’s agenda.