Sara Persechino: 0:00

Yes, I try only to do public speaking once a year, you know, in front of seven other people.

Liz Canada: 0:04

This isn't public speaking. This is just you and me, chit-chatting. Nobody else listens to this. It's just us. You're listening to New Hampshire Has Issues, and I am your host, Liz Canada, and my snowblower is almost working perfectly, thanks to a little duct tape. Today's episode is all about your local elections. Participating in town meeting or your deliberative session or casting a ballot for your local community budget is the best way to participate in direct democracy. If you haven't registered to vote yet, now is an excellent time while you're snowed in to find your passport or your birth certificate, as well as any other documents you may need so that you can be ready to go to your town clerk's office or your city clerk's office to register. Check the show notes for more details. And if you need to check your registration status just to make sure you are still on there, all of those links are in the show notes to help you. If you would like to support the show, you can go to patreon.com slash nh has issues. If you have an idea for an episode, or if you are really excited because you are voting for the first time in New Hampshire this year, send me an email. New Hampshire has Issues at gmail.com. Sara has great advice in this episode about bringing a buddy with you to town meeting. Your buddy doesn't have to be from your town. You guys can just sit together. It's a public meeting. We'll talk about that in this episode. It's going to be a few weeks before the next episode comes out. So in the meantime, for those of us who are voting, good job. And otherwise, thank you for listening. Welcome to New Hampshire Has Issues. The podcast that dares to ask. Can I have a motion to open this podcast? So moved. All right. Sara, do you have a tagline for me?

Sara Persechino: 2:01

New Hampshire Has Issues, the podcast that dares to ask, why are so many people in this gym wearing flannel? I love that.

Liz Canada: 2:08

And also it could just be people watching a basketball game. Could they not?

Sara Persechino: 2:12

No. At least not in Hopkinton's gym. It's the same venue, very different attire. What does one wear to a basketball game in Hopkinton? Well, you should be wearing your team colors, don't you think?

Liz Canada: 2:24

Are you guys anti-flannel at a basketball game in Hopkinton?

Sara Persechino: 2:27

Is that what I mean? There's definitely more flannel at a town meeting. And I don't know why. I do not have the answer. I'll just put it right out there. I don't have the answer, but it's tradition and I like it. And if someone has the answer, they should write in to your pod. Send me an email.

Liz Canada: 2:43

New Hampshire has issues at gmail.com. Why are people wearing flannel at town meeting?

Sara Persechino: 2:48

I think Rebecca Rule has the answer to this, but I haven't I haven't asked her.

Liz Canada: 2:51

Well we'll get we're gonna get to hold up as they say on secret lives of Mormon Wives. All right, well, my guest today is the Hopkinton town moderator and a friend of mine. She's why are you laughing at that? Are you are you not a friend of mine? Is this how you're telling me? On my own body.

Sara Persechino: 3:11

Longtime listener, first-time caller, you know. It's great.

Liz Canada: 3:14

All right, so friend and Hopkinton town moderator, Sara Persechino. Sara, welcome to the show. I am so glad that you're here.

Sara Persechino: 3:21

I am grateful you asked me and reluctant to be here.

Liz Canada: 3:26

That's exactly how I like my guests to feel. Extremely reluctant to talk to me. It's perfect. We're gonna talk about town meeting. Specifically, you as a moderator of your town. Let me start with a simple question. What does a town moderator do? Simple question. What do you do as a town moderator?

Sara Persechino: 3:44

Okay, very simply, broadly overview. A town moderator is in charge of voting in a community. So they are elected to administer elections and to run the annual meeting in a town. So this year there are multiple elections. We have a town, a state primary, and a federal election. So there are three elections. Some years it's just the town election. So it's different year to year, but broadly we're in charge of that.

Liz Canada: 4:09

But you're in charge of it. I know. You're not gonna like that I interrupt you, but I do I am gonna interrupt you.

Sara Persechino: 4:14

I have like a whole agenda here.

Liz Canada: 4:16

I know.

Sara Persechino: 4:17

I don't know if you know, but in at town meeting, you have to be recognized by the moderator before you can speak. So this is very different, Liz. I like being in charge a little bit more. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. That's okay.

Liz Canada: 4:29

But what does it mean to be in charge? Like, I could stand up in front of our deliberative session and pretend that I'm in charge, but that doesn't actually make me in charge. Like, what does it mean to be in charge of it?

Sara Persechino: 4:40

Well, I'm in charge of a town meeting because the town elected me to do that. They elected me moderator. It's a two-year term. So every two years a moderator is elected. And so they have empowered me to do this. And so I will follow the uh laws as they are written. On a recent episode, my friend Brini asked you if you had read New Hampshire's insurance statutes. Are you following up for her to find out if I have?

Liz Canada: 5:06

I haven't. So I still still haven't. All right, there's still time. Not only have I not, but I'm actively rebelling against reading them.

Sara Persechino: 5:13

Here's an Easter egg for your listeners. Sabrina is actually the select board chair in Hopkinton. So we work together quite a bit for town meeting. I know all roads lead to Hopkinton. I've been saying it for years. So I know you didn't read the insurance statute, but I am wondering have you ever read the state statute in relation to a town moderator?

Liz Canada: 5:35

Okay. This one feels more likely that I would do. This does seem like a thing. It's a lot shorter. And yet the answer is no.

Sara Persechino: 5:42

Okay. I do think just for fun, we'll read it right now because I can do it so quick and it'll demystify the whole thing.

Liz Canada: 5:49

Congress Movement Goodlander says read the U.S. Constitution. Nick Taylor says read your zoning ordinances. Breenie says read the insurance statutes. I haven't done any of those things. Terrible former English teacher, but you are going to do the right thing, which is read it out loud to me. Is that what you're saying?

Sara Persechino: 6:07

I am. And here's the thing. I read out loud every warrant article at town meeting too, because I know maybe not everybody has done their homework in advance. And so we'll do a little read-along. Okay? Okay. So under moderator, duties. This is it. The moderator shall preside in the town meetings, regulate the business thereof, decide questions of order, and make a public declaration of every vote passed and may prescribe rules of proceeding, but such rules may be altered by the town. So that's it. Period. That's the only duty I have. That's all it spells out in the state statute for town meeting. Do you want to get into it?

Liz Canada: 6:41

I do. Because it sounds like you make public declarations, which sounds very exciting. You declare things. You make rules, but then the people of your town get to say, we don't want that rule anymore. Is that what I just heard too?

Sara Persechino: 6:53

Yeah. If a majority of them agree. Yes. I can be overruled. Okay. So the moderator is not a queen or a king. There are checks. The ultimate authority at a town meeting is the legislative body, and the legislative body is the voters. Everyone who's gathered in that space, wherever it may be in Hopkinton, it's our high school, middle school gym. So the voters who have checked in and are there for town meeting, they are the ultimate authority. So I set forth the rules that I think would help us go through the session. And then they can change them at the beginning of the meeting, at any time during the meeting. They can do a point of order and challenge a ruling that I might make. And if they get a simple majority vote, they can overrule me.

Liz Canada: 7:36

So you create the rules of the day and do you send them out in advance to every single person who lives in Hopkinton? How does that work? How do I know what the rules are when I show up?

Sara Persechino: 7:46

That's a great question. So, and it's actually something we're working on because I think demystifying town meeting and making sure people know how they can participate is super important. So, past precedent that I have been participating in Hopkinton town meetings, we have not sent these rules out in advance. They have been said aloud at the beginning of the meeting. I'm currently working with our newly elected school moderator to publish our rules of procedure on the town website to make sure people can access that before. Um, I actually will give credit to the Bo town and school moderator. So Peter Imse does this and he has provided a guide shout-out, great resource there in Bo. And it pains me to say that because I live in Hopkinton and in high school we were bitter rivals. So it is it is difficult to give Bo a shout-out. So yes, we are going to try to be more public about what the rules are because for people who've been going to town meeting for 20 years, they've broadly bend the same rules. But for someone who may be new to town, who maybe came from a community that doesn't have a traditional town meeting like we do, that might be new, and we're trying to break down the barriers to participation.

Liz Canada: 8:50

Give me an example of a rule because it sounds very strict and scary. Give me, give me one of the rules.

Sara Persechino: 8:56

It's not okay. Some of the things look like what happens at the state house. The state house operates under Robert's rules. We are not that formal in Hoppington. So we s I specifically say at the start of the meeting that we are not bound by Robert's rules. But we do have a lot of similar provisions. Who's Robert? You know, I don't know. Uh he probably wore flip flannel. It probably came from him, but I don't know. So, rule number one the moderator will not follow Robert's rules. He follows. It's rule number one. It's important. Who's gonna oppose that?

Liz Canada: 9:28

Robert himself is gonna show up and be like, now wait a minute. I made those rules and I like them.

Sara Persechino: 9:33

Here's the thing. We're actually trying to avoid getting bogged down in the legislative finaglings and parliamentary procedures that can happen under Robert's rules, which I know you've witnessed in the House session. It can get confusing. So we're trying to make it a little simpler. We've already gone over that any of these rules can be overturned. They can tell me I'm wrong and we can change them. Yep. Okay. It's how I consider the article. So the select board puts together the warrant in Hopkinton. They say, here are the articles that we're going to be voting on. And they give that to the town. They warn the town that this is what they're talking about at town meeting. And then it's my job to run through those. So I will say, we're going to take these articles in the order that they're displayed. If for some reason there is an article that I think should be taken out of order, I'll say that at the beginning. So sometimes you'll have a bond vote over $100,000. And that vote needs a secret ballot that's open for an hour. So I would say, let's do that first so we don't get to it at the end and then have to stay another hour just to make sure everyone gets their chance to vote. So sometimes we move things around without objection from the voters. That's kind of a rule that I am making. So when we go through, we're gonna go step by step. When we go through the warrant, I will announce the article number. The text is displayed in their town report. So everybody gets a printed town report if they'd like it, or it's available online. It's also displayed on a screen at the front of the gym. And as I said before, I read it out loud because I like to make sure we've all gotten on the same page. So I will read it out loud. My mouth does get very dry by the end of the night, but I think it's important. It's not required. And then I'll recognize a member of the select board or a petitioner, which we'll get into that later, to move the adoption of the article. The motion that is made by a select board member or the petitioner must be seconded. And then the member who presented it will speak to it. Then I open up debate. So anyone who is a registered voter is able to speak at a town meeting.

Liz Canada: 11:24

Anyone a registered voter in your town, yes.

Sara Persechino: 11:27

In your town, yes. There are other people who are not registered voters in the town who are given permission by the moderator to speak because they have expertise or information that is important. So a town administrator or a town manager may not live in the community where they are the manager, but it's important for them to be able to speak at a meeting. We've had presentations by the lottery commission that I think are important when people are considering articles. So without objection from voters, non-residents can speak, but it's more rare. So if you are a voter and you want to speak, we just ask that you either ask for a handheld mic to be brought to you or approach the mics that we have set up in the gymnasium to be recognized. People have to line up, single file order, very, you know, try to keep it tidy, orderly. We try, we're trying, and I will acknowledge, I will recognize the person on the member on the floor to speak. Now, voters have three minutes to speak. That is a rule that we set up. It could be overturned, but that is the rule that we set up in order to ensure that everyone who has something to say can say it without us being there through the late hours of the night, which would not help anyone. I have little cards that I hand up now, cues like a yellow card to say you have 30 seconds, you know, visual cues. Try to be polite about moving things around. And we do have a rule that you cannot speak for a second time until everyone who's wanted to say something has spoken. And that may happen at your deliberative session. Like birthday cake.

Liz Canada: 12:51

Everybody's got to get a piece before you can have a second piece.

Sara Persechino: 12:54

Exactly. You can speak again, you just have to let everybody else have their turn first. When you are recognized to speak, you have to give your name and address for the record. It is a public record. We do have someone taking the minutes that is published in the town report in the next year. And then we take the votes motion by motion. So typically it will open with like, here's the article on the budget, and someone makes a motion to pass it. Someone seconds that motion. We have a debate. Voters might ask questions. All of the comments and questions have to be directed to the moderator. So it's like, everyone's talking to you. Everyone's talking to me. And it is confusing. That's, I think, the thing I have to remind folks of the most is that this is not a back and forth debate between voters or between a voter and the select board. The questions come through me and then I identify who should answer that question. And again, it's all about trying to keep order. You'll notice the same thing on the floor of the New Hampshire House of Representatives. When people speak, they speak Mr. Speaker. Mr.

Liz Canada: 13:47

Speaker. Yes. Exactly. Mr. Speaker.

Sara Persechino: 13:49

And my first year of an in-person meeting, I did have someone ask what they should call me because Mr. Speaker didn't sound right. I was the first woman elected. So yes, we had to go over that. I'd like you to call me Lady Speaker.

Liz Canada: 14:01

Thank you.

Sara Persechino: 14:02

Lady Speaker? Miss Speaker.

Liz Canada: 14:05

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Sara Persechino: 14:06

Yes. So we did have to clear that up in Hoffkington.

Liz Canada: 14:09

First order of business. What do we call you?

Sara Persechino: 14:11

What do we call you? It's, you know, important. So it seems very dry, but you know, things get things get moving. All right.

Liz Canada: 14:18

When I had Nico Papaconcetis, who's our Exeter Select Board Chair, we talked about a few things that could be on a warrant. So uh it could be that you're trying to purchase a new street sweeper in your community. So you're saying at town meeting, you, town moderator, would read what would be on the warrant allowed to the whole gymnasium full of people wearing flannel. And then you open it up and people can go to the mic and say, I think street sweepers are incredible. Here's why we should pass it. And then somebody behind them could say, I think we should manually sweep everything with brooms. And it could go back and forth like that. That's what you're theoretically. It goes theoretically. Theoretically.

Sara Persechino: 14:59

It goes like that. I do encourage people to speak from eye feeling statements. So to share their beliefs, their questions, their perspective without disparaging others. I see my role as moderator as being a little bit of a mom. So trying to regulate that debate between siblings in a healthy way where everyone can feel heard without feeling hurt, right? Sometimes I will have to remind folks not to ascribe motive to someone else just because they might have a difference of opinion on how we get to a solution on an article or an issue that they need to brain it in a little bit. And sometimes you have, you know, just people who shout out from the crowd, that's not right, or something. And then you have to say, please stop. Please stop. You can come up to a microphone, get in line.

Liz Canada: 15:39

Thank you. Thanks for watching. Everyone can say things aloud. So after this debate around the budget or around getting a new fire truck or whatever it might be, how do you take the vote? Like you're all in this gymnasium. Yeah.

Sara Persechino: 15:53

How does it work? So if there are no more speakers, I will say, like anyone else wish to speak on this motion. If there's no one, I'll say, all right, without objection, we'll go into the voting mode. And then I will say, all those in favor of article three say aye, the ayes will speak. All those opposed say nay, the nays will say nay. And hopefully I can tell from the ayes and the nays what the vote is. If I can't, then we have options. So we could move to a standing vote or raising your hand for a vote. Or if I really can't tell, and if that doesn't work, we could also move to a secret ballot vote, which takes a little bit more time. There's also a provision in New Hampshire State statute that five registered voters who are present at the time can have a written request for a secret ballot on any article. So if five voters who are there and present think that it should be a secret ballot vote on the budget, on that street sweeper you were talking about, then I have to open up a secret ballot. Some of those things are required by statute. Like I was saying before, any bond over $100,000 has to be a secret ballot vote, has to be open for an hour. So then it changes, it's a little bit different. But yeah, instead of having a written ballot that you vote on on that second Tuesday in March, we are doing it all in person, just like the legislature does when they vote on their bills.

Liz Canada: 17:11

Okay, Sara, I live in Exeter. We don't, we don't do it like that. Like I don't want to be that person, but that's not how we do it. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Uh why? Why are we doing things differently in Exeter from Hopkinton?

Sara Persechino: 17:25

Because in Exeter, y'all adopted what is commonly referred to as SB2. So you have a different form of government where you have a deliberative session. What's voted on at the deliberative session goes on to an official ballot, an Australian ballot, I believe they call it. And then you vote on that. That doesn't sound American. What? Listen, I don't know. It's SB2. I'm pretty sure that's what it's called. Wow. Oh. It's the official ballot referendum system. Your community voted to move away from the traditional meeting and to have that SB2 voting. And so on March 10th, this year, the second Tuesday of every March, you will vote on everything. But there will have been a group of voters who got together, maybe in a gym, maybe in an auditorium. Auditorium make the final ballot. So you make the warrant final. The select board can only propose what they want, but you can adjust that at the deliberative. But when you go for the official ballot voting, it's just a yes or no, right? So at the town meeting, you can go back and forth and amend things as much as you want until you get to something that the consensus says eye on.

Liz Canada: 18:29

I am suddenly having strong feelings about which way I think it should go, whether it's the way Exeter does it or the way Hopkins does it. I'll keep it to myself.

Sara Persechino: 18:37

I think you should come to Hopkinton and check it out. It'll be great because you don't have to be a registered voter in a town to go to their annual meeting. You can just go watch the show. You just hang and observe. Because it's a public meeting. You can go. You can't vote, but you can watch. It's fun. It's fun. You'll like it. It's fun. Go to a town meeting. Town meeting. Cities don't do this. Social event of the year, you know?

Liz Canada: 19:00

Wear your best flannel or your worst. Wear whatever you want. This is uh this is very interesting because what I think I am hearing you say is that if you live in a town that has a traditional town meeting day, you don't like go and pick up a ballot and fill it out and then hand it in. That's not what you're doing on your town meeting.

Sara Persechino: 19:20

So we still have right, we still have ballot voting. So we have the ballot voting portion, articles one and two, which would be the election of officers, all of our officers for the school and town get elected on a traditional paper on that paper ballot that you are talking about. And zoning ordinances, article two, would get voted on on the paper ballot. And that happens on the same second Tuesday that you're going to go vote. But the rest of our articles are voted on at that business session, is what we call it. The business session of the town meeting. This is so fascinating. Why do we do things like this? Where did this come from? So it started, if we want the history, the first town meeting. The first town meeting was held in the 1630s in Massachusetts in Dorchester.

Liz Canada: 20:09

Oh, massing up New Hampshire with Town Meeting Day. Thank goodness. Okay. Yep. We're doing it just like Massachusetts. Yeah. Love it.

Sara Persechino: 20:18

The men were coming together, they were divvying up their land, and then slowly New Hampshire adopted this form of government. They always met in March. And can you guess why they would have met in March in the 1600s, Liz? No, I cannot. Because we were in agrarian society and the farmers weren't planting their crops yet. So they had some time on their hands, right?

Liz Canada: 20:38

Like I mean, it feels like a few other months that it could have been.

Sara Persechino: 20:42

Well, you can't do it in January. You could have two feet of snow. How are you getting a town meeting? It's tricky. So, you know, we have kept that same traditional timeline. I'm not sure there's actually a time in our month or week or year that isn't busy at this point for a society. It's very different than 1600s New Hampshire, but that has stayed the tradition. Some towns have moved away to an April or May meeting. Let's not get into that right now. Let's just stay with March.

Liz Canada: 21:09

It's too much. I like to say, generally speaking, towns vote in the spring and cities vote in the fall. Generally speaking, I'm sure someone's gonna write in and say, actually, Liz, I know. But generally speaking, springtime, town, fall time, cities. Because of the 1600s.

Sara Persechino: 21:32

Yeah. Well, you know, I know you love the executive council and talking about that. So it's, you know, similar holdovers from colonial.

Liz Canada: 21:40

That's one way to put it. What's what's on the warrant for Hopkinton? Let me hear about some examples so that we can use some here.

Sara Persechino: 21:46

The biggest thing that happens every year in a town meeting is the budget. So if you are a fan of direct democracy and having a say in how your money is spent, you want to go vote at your town meeting. Meeting or deliberative session each March, right? Because that's how the local leaders are deciding how your dollars are getting spent and you where you can have the biggest impact. So that's the biggest thing.

Liz Canada: 22:11

So you say a warrant, somebody goes up and they talk about it and they're like, actually, Madam Moderator, I want to change this. I want to amend it. How does that work?

Sara Persechino: 22:19

Yep. And that's the higher motion would be a motion to amend. If you have a motion to pass something, you can motion to amend, that would be the motion in order. And so you have to get your second again. Um, if it's a complicated motion, I ask folks to write it down. So I make sure I have it accurate for the record. But it has to be related to what's in the article because the select board is required to publicly post the warrant and properly warn all the voters of what's going to be voted on at town meeting.

Liz Canada: 22:47

Do you say warn to warn them?

Sara Persechino: 22:50

To warn them. Yes. You have to be properly warned to be notified of the decisions that will be made. Uh ask Robert. I don't know.

Liz Canada: 22:58

Warn? This is the word we use. How about we just notify? How about we just give people a heads up of what's happening? Where are we warning people?

Sara Persechino: 23:06

I mean, those are all synonyms. You're an English teacher, I think.

Liz Canada: 23:09

No, I know, but warrant has like a negative connotation. It's like, why is Jacob Marley showing up to tell you that there's a warrant article?

Sara Persechino: 23:16

Like Okay, fine. The select board is just letting you know what they're gonna talk about and vote on. So you can't change it. So you can't have a motion, or you can't have a warrant article that says we're going to vote to purchase the street sweeper. Let's go back to your street sweeper.

Liz Canada: 23:30

I love the street sweeper.

Sara Persechino: 23:31

All right, maybe someone doesn't want to buy a street sweeper. That's fine. But a motion to change it to say that the town should buy a unicorn would not, you know, you can't do that.

Liz Canada: 23:42

If that was the proposal, I would be interested in that.

Sara Persechino: 23:45

We would have a lot more people at town meeting, but you can't do that because no one knew that there would be a vote on a unicorn, right? So no. But here's the thing. Even though I say that, even though I give that advice as a moderator, if the majority of voters still wanted to change that article, remember they're the ultimate authority. So I can tell them this has no legal binding. You can't make the town buy a unicorn.

Liz Canada: 24:10

So a street sweeper warrant article could be amended to say, well, we don't want to purchase a whole street sweeper, but we do want to purchase a broom for every household in Exeter.

Sara Persechino: 24:23

And so I make a motion that I would love to hear the conversation between a moderator and the legal counsel present at that meeting about that.

Liz Canada: 24:33

If everybody just did their part and go out into the street and just sweep individuals. I've seen happen that's individualism.

Sara Persechino: 24:42

No, no comment. Um what I have seen happen is that people would add the language to vote to study the purchase of something. So, like, well, maybe bring us more information next year.

Liz Canada: 24:53

Yeah.

Sara Persechino: 24:53

That's something I've seen. Some of the more colorful debates that I've seen in Hoppington have taken place on issues related to recycling. So we had years ago, and I have been going to town meetings for years and years, but I started going as a reporter for a local newspaper, and the debate of that time, which was a while ago, was about pay by bag, a pay by bag program, which would require you to purchase a certain color bag that you would put your trash in. Hopkinton had it. And then for years and years and years after it was adopted in Hopkinton, there was a petition warrant article on the um warrant every year to rescind the pay by bag program. So that got a lot of play for more than 10 years. That petition warrant article didn't actually pass ever, but last year the town put forward a proposal to get rid of the pay by bag program because it didn't increase recycling. We have a tricky situation in Hopkinton, and this will be the most controversial thing I talk about. So, dear listeners, please know I am the moderator. I do not take a position on any of these articles, and I do not even vote at town meeting. I just don't. I'm only there to help you all though.

Liz Canada: 26:05

Sara Persechino, not a voter. Got it.

Sara Persechino: 26:07

Not a not a voter.

Liz Canada: 26:08

Not a voter.

Sara Persechino: 26:09

This is a fun fact that, like Speaker of the House, the moderator can vote to make a tie or break a tie. But I personally feel that that is the least appropriate time for me as neutral moderator trying to facilitate a vote for everyone else to weigh in. I'm not elected with a party like the speaker is. I'm not affiliated with anyone on the floor. I just don't think that would be a good, a good look for my neutrality. So I don't vote at all at town meeting.

Liz Canada: 26:37

That's the clip I'm pulling. I don't vote at all. Just that by itself.

Sara Persechino: 26:43

You do not vote at town meetings. So my little voter sticker never has the color check marks on it because I don't vote during the town meeting. I do check in, make sure everyone knows I was there. We need fourth graders to make stickers for the moderators.

Liz Canada: 26:55

And it's like, I didn't vote. I moderated. I moderated checkmarks.

Sara Persechino: 27:00

Okay. Oh. Damn. So the town actually, the select board, put forward an article last year to rescind that due to ineffectiveness. And it's tricky because the Hopkinton has a shared transfer station with our neighboring town of Webster, and Webster didn't have pay by bag. So I think there was some logistical struggles that hindered it. But yeah, so now we don't have pay by bag. But that was a hot topic every year that we talked about that. One of the other things that comes up often, and I think maybe almost every year that I've been moderator is a petition warrant article to adopt Exeter's form of government, SB2. So to move to the official paper ballot form of voting. And that has not passed, obviously, because we're doing town meeting.

Liz Canada: 27:42

I want to go back to the pay by bag situation. Oh no. Do you all now have like a fee to have your trash taken away? What do you do now? So if you don't have the blue bags as we do, what do you do?

Sara Persechino: 27:55

Well, we had green bags. Hoppington does not have curbside pickups. So you have to pay a hauler. Honey, we are a very small community. What? And trust, trust that the studies have been done and it is not financially feasible. So we have private haulers, or you bring your own waste to the transfer station. So that is how you do it. And now it's just absorbed by the property taxes. Whereas those funds were offset by the revenue from the bags. Now that whole cost is borne by the property taxpayer directly through the property taxes.

Liz Canada: 28:27

I just learned so much in this last moment of that you have to haul your own.

Sara Persechino: 28:32

Yeah, but we have a great transfer station. The folks there who run it are awesome. And there's a lovely little swap shop. You can find some real great stuff at the transfer station if you go first thing on a Friday.

Liz Canada: 28:42

I don't even know where to go from here with that information. I don't know. I don't even know.

Sara Persechino: 28:46

That's it. That's the pod. We're done. Maybe you should have someone who runs a transfer station on the pod.

Liz Canada: 28:52

Oh, I so should.

Sara Persechino: 28:54

Because trash is a bit of an issue in in New Hampshire. I it's I won't speak out of terms. I don't know a lot about it, but I've heard it's an issue. Big time.

Liz Canada: 29:01

As moderator, what do you look forward to the most for town meeting day? Do you call it town meeting day? Am I saying the wrong thing? This is like when I was talking to Nick and I kept saying zoning committee, and he's like, that's wrong, but you keep saying it wrong.

Sara Persechino: 29:15

Zoning board.

Liz Canada: 29:16

Zoning board. Zoning board.

Sara Persechino: 29:17

I don't call it town meeting day. I just call it town meeting. Town meeting. Yeah. Do you do you call it election day or just the elections? I don't know. It's election day, right? Oh, okay. Yeah.

Liz Canada: 29:28

We have that.

Sara Persechino: 29:28

But I guess I don't say it's just town meeting. We also, our town meeting doesn't happen during the day now either. Like the business session happens at night now, so it wouldn't be town meeting day.

Liz Canada: 29:39

Election after dark. What do you most look forward to when it comes to town meetingslash election day?

Sara Persechino: 29:47

Okay, I know that I said this earlier and maybe a little tongue-in-cheek, but truly it is often the social event of the year. So many community members are coming out who you may not see at other times or you haven't seen for a while. You know, getting to sit with your I I would prefer, honestly, to be sitting. I love school district meetings, sitting with my friends, observing, eating Girl Scout cookies. It's a little harder to do from the rostrum because everyone's looking at you. You know, you don't want cookie in your teeth while you're moderating, get your knitting out, sitting in your flannel. It's just like the vibes are good at town meeting, I think. It's what a pure wholesome thing to engage in, right? Where you are going and you are charting the path forward for your town. And it's truly an honor to be a part of that, even if I find it quite stressful to be running the show, so to speak. But it is, it does start to restore your faith in humanity and can get that many people with disparate opinions to work together to work through some problems, come up with some solutions. It's not a perfect system, but I do think it's worked fairly well for a few hundred years. It is the most direct form of democracy that most of us will participate in in our lifetime, right? You are the legislator, you are the ultimate authority. And that is pretty cool that you can do that. It is a great form of direct democracy, but you do have to use it, right? It's a muscle you have to use, you have to participate in, and you get what you put into it, right? Like if you want to participate, you you can. You register to vote, you go, you show up, do a little bit of homework, hang out, cast your vote, and you get a say, right? I recognize there are there are some hurdles to participating in an annual meeting in the traditional town meeting. And so certainly open to talking with folks about how we make it more accessible. In Hopkinton, we have the National Honor Society that offers childcare. We have lots of groups that sell food during the day or evening, depending off at school or town, um, to try to make it easier for folks to come. But I recognize that, like in our society in this day and age, you know, we're not all farmers waiting to sew our crops. We all have different work hours. Our kids have silly schedules that keep us out all the time. So we want to go to their sports games and there are complex. But to the extent that it is possible to be able to participate, I think is very is a very special thing.

Liz Canada: 32:06

I think when people think about elections, they think about voting for president. That's the thing that they feel most comfortable about. But we have the most impact at our local election when there may be 800 people in the room. Your vote among 800 people is extremely powerful to impact what's going on in your own community.

Sara Persechino: 32:26

And on top of that, it's not just one vote out of 800, right? You have the opportunity at that traditional town meeting to speak to your fellow voters, right? I do think that there are some people who come into town meeting, they already know how they're going to vote on everything. But some people go in there unsure how they feel on a particular warrant article and they're looking to learn. They're asking questions because they want to understand an issue. They're listening to their community members, some who may have more experience, more time in the town, to suss out how they feel on an issue. I know there are people who change their mind at a meeting, right? You come in thinking you're gonna vote yes on a budget, but then maybe you change your mind or the other way around. I think the fact that it is this living, breathing thing, you're not going into a ballot booth all of a sudden by yourself and getting to Article 2 and realizing you don't actually know what any of the zoning ordinance amendments are and trying to ask your neighbor, and then I come over and tell you to stop talking while you have a ballot in your hand, you know? You get to talk to your neighbors, you get to talk that through and do that homework on the on the ground while it's happening, which I think is is really special and very different than the ballot voting.

Liz Canada: 33:34

I think what's important for folks to know before they go to deliberative session or town meeting is that you don't have to know what's on the warrant already. There are gonna be people there. Like that's the really nice part about what I'm hearing from you, Sara, town meeting and for deliberative session is that the moderator will read it out loud. There will be people from your community standing up to talk about it. So like you don't have to know anything before you get there to be able to participate.

Sara Persechino: 34:02

If that feels like a safe space for people to jump in going into a meeting, not knowing anything, great. More power to you. But if that, like that would feel intimidating to me to walk into a room and not know anything or feel like I was prepared. And so I think the other thing that folks should know is that like we are not strangers in the community, right? Like your moderator, your clerk, your select board members, we're all listed. Like we're publicly elected officials and we are happy to answer any questions. So whenever the town clerk's office is open, if you have questions, call in, stop in. You got to register your dog soon anyway. You know, make it a twofer, ask about the meeting, you know, get some of that information and they'll tell you how to make sure you're registered to vote, when it's happening, where you can find the warrant. Hopefully, all towns make it easy to find that information on their website too. So building out the information about how you vote, how you register, how you look at what the warrant is. We put sample ballots up on the website, right? We put the warrant up on the website so that people can see that before every town meeting is different because every town is different and every town moderator is different. So the state really doesn't set out tough strictures on how a town meeting is run. It is a process that is set up by the local voters by the moderator. And so it can look different town to town. So it's so important to know what it's gonna look like when you go in there because the moderator in your town might not read every warrant article out loud. That's not required. So they may not do that. Yeah, that's true. If you were expecting that to happen and it doesn't happen, you might feel a little bit confused. I'd also really encourage you to find maybe a friend or someone you know who has gone to a meeting before and just sit with them and maybe you can ask them questions throughout, like, oh, what's happening now? You know, like totally. I got thrown into my first meeting when I was a baby reporter. I think I might have still been in high school working for the local paper. But there's actually like there's a family history. My grandfather was a school moderator, he was a town moderator in Washington. And so there's I never knew him. He died before I was born, so I never went to a meeting where he was presiding. But that is, you know, a thing that I grew up knowing. And so that service is important. And I know just from stories and just from his obituary, that like making sure everyone in his community could go vote and knew when to vote, that was the most important thing. More than how he felt the town should vote on anything. It was that everybody who could vote had the chance and knew how to do that. And encouraging everybody to get there, I think is the most important thing. I am so happy when we have a line out the door at 5.45 PM because people are checking in. It's a little stressful to try to get everybody in, but it does make my heart very happy because you know you've like set up a system where people can come and participate. And hopefully that that comes to fruition this year, too. It takes a big effort, I think is one thing that would be really, really important to stress, Liz, is that I might be the moderator. I might be tasked with being in charge of it, but it is not a one-person show at all. I have two assistant moderators who help me. We have the town clerk who helps set up, the assistant town clerk, the supervisors of the checklist are running check-in. The town administrator does so much prep work to get all of the information out to voters to get make sure that I have the information I need from the select board. We have the buildings and grounds crew at the high school and our public works department folks who help set up for town meeting. We've got the sound person that we hire who's someone I went to high school with. You know, uh, as we know from the setup of the show, sound is not my forte. I should not be in charge of that at all, but it's very important. You want to make sure people can hear. We live stream our meeting, so we've got to make sure that that is running. So if someone needs to be at home with a kid or a relative who may be sick, but they want to be listening for when it's time to come vote, you know, they can be following along at home, um, especially on those secret ballot votes and the ones that require to be open for an hour. You know, there is some time if parents need to switch off with that care. We are trying, like I said, it's not a perfect system. There are always improvements.

Liz Canada: 37:59

I never know if I say this on the podcast or just everywhere else in my life, but so much of what happens in our state, it's run by volunteers. So yes, you might get paid a few hundred bucks a year. State reps get paid a hundred bucks a year, but it's essentially volunteers. It's people who are committed, as you are, Sara, to making sure that people can vote and therefore will vote. You make it as accessible for them as possible. Vote while you can, everybody.

Sara Persechino: 38:25

Can I build off of that though? Because I had some things that I wanted to make sure I said. And I was so I want to build off that.

Liz Canada: 38:30

Yes, of course.

Sara Persechino: 38:30

So it is important to remember like all of the secret ballot counters, all of the supervisors, we are all volunteers. Yes, we might get a little bit of a stipend, but at the end of the day, like we have stepped up. Your fellow voters are there because they care about the community, right? So I think it's really important when either longtime attendees or new folks come into town meeting with very generous interpretation that we are all there because we care about the community. And there might be, there will undoubtedly be disagreements about an individual warrant article or the solution to a problem. There is space for that, but making sure we remember at the end of the day that people are not coming in here with an agenda other than taking care of each other, taking care of their community. And so I do think that might be something that gets lost. I have seen over my, you know, few decades of doing this and a decade of being an elected official and being up at the front of that room. Unfortunately, as the state and national political red rec has really devolved, I've seen that impact in our community. And it's really hard because I know everyone there cares. And I know sometimes you get very passionate and worked up about it. I try to create a space where everyone feels that they can contribute without being attacked, without being demonized, because when we walk out of that gym, we are all still community members. We're all still gonna run into each other at the coffee shop. We're gonna be on the sidelines of our kids' sports games together. And we wanna be able to keep that camaraderie in our town together. Because if we fall apart, that's not gonna be good for anyone either, right? So it's a lesson that everyone in Concord and DC could learn if we could just keep modeling that behavior.

Liz Canada: 40:08

Remember that everyone there is a person. We're people. We are all humans. We should all be treated like people. Right. And often, you know, our kids are. No matter what your background is, honestly, or anything like that. Whether you want a street sweeper or 10,000 brooms, or a unicorn. Or a unicorn. You're still a person. You should be treated as such.

Sara Persechino: 40:28

Your feelings are valid.

Liz Canada: 40:29

Human decency.

Sara Persechino: 40:30

You may not win the vote, right? You may not win the vote. And that's hard. It is hard to lose. But that's something that the big, big body of folks is deciding. They can try again next year. Great.

Liz Canada: 40:42

We're all gonna vote while we can. Towns, it's happening soon. Mm-hmm. Cities, you're in the fall, and then all of us are right back in November for all the state elections as well. So Liz.

Sara Persechino: 40:57

State elections. The state primary is in September. You can't forget the primary.

Liz Canada: 41:01

Okay. You're so right. You are so when you're right, you're right. When you're right, you're right.

Sara Persechino: 41:06

March, we've got September and then November. Okay. My opponent. Put it on your calendar.

Liz Canada: 41:12

My point was there's lots of voting to be done this year. So if you've never voted in New Hampshire before, this is your year, baby. You are voting a few times. It's gonna be great.

Sara Persechino: 41:22

A few times, I hope. Yeah. Ask your local moderator. Ask your local clerk.

Liz Canada: 41:26

Ask a moderator. Town clerk. Get to the town clerk's office. Register to vote if you haven't. Now's a good time. You did great, Sara. This is great. Do I hear a motion to adjourn this podcast? So moved. Without objection. Without objection. Let's call it.

Sara Persechino: 41:51

When I was born in, Bruce Johnson, who is sadly passed away, but he was the moderator. Immediately before me, he passed down the moderator's gavel. And I try not to use it except to like open and close the session because again, it's aggressive. It's aggressive. And I don't want to use the mod voice. I don't want to gavel. I try not to use it, but it does feel very nice to hold in your hand.