2023 Annual Town Meeting Preview

 Greetings, and welcome to Town Meeting 2023!

First, I want to express my gratitude to the residents of Precinct 10 who voted to return me to Town Meeting on April 1.  It is a great honor to serve you, and I appreciate your support.

Town Meeting will be back in-person starting tomorrow night, April 24.  I will continue writing my notes on Town Meeting as I have done in the past, but there might well be some changes.  In my experience, in-person meetings go quicker, so there is less "downtime" during the meeting to take notes.  There also hasn't traditionally been a screen showing the name of speakers.  Both of these issues will make it more difficult to be an active participant in Town Meeting and document the goings-on.  I apologize in advance if my notes take longer to come out, are not as complete, and if some opinions are improperly attributed.  Please kindly let me know, and I will make edits.

Your Arlington will have a reporter covering Town Meeting, so I hope they are able to provide the kind of coverage that we all deserve.  Among all the local press outlets, ACMi and Your Arlington appear to be the only ones consistently reporting on the activities of our local government.  I appreciate their commitment to local reporting.

I encourage everyone to follow along and reach out to their Town Meeting members.  The place to start is the town's Town Meeting website:  <https://www.arlingtonma.gov/town-governance/town-meeting>.  The Annotated Warrant <https://www.arlingtonma.gov/town-governance/town-meeting/2023-town-meeting-warrant> has a link for each article.  Those links go to additional information on each article including links to town reports, proposed amendments, proposed motions, and additional resources.  It is a great resource; don't forget to scroll to the bottom.  You can also check out the Town Meeting Progress Tracker <http://arlingtonma.gov/TownMeetingProgress> which will provide information on which articles have been discussed and what votes have been taken.

Here's to a thorough, expedient, and successful 2023 Annual Town Meeting!

Christian