Summer Information Meeting Highlights

Notes from Moultonboro Summer Town Informational Meeting

(Video will be available on this website in the near future)

July 19^th, 2008

Attendees

Audience: 43 (Including one reporter and photographer)

Town Officials on Stage: 12 (Included all 5 selectmen and only 1 school board member)

It should be noted that this was advertised as an informational meeting. It was unfortunately moderated as if it were a voting town meeting and as an audience member it felt as though time was going to be very limited (“we will have a short period at the end for questions”). In fact, select board chair Karel Crawford left before the last questions were even asked.

We do not think this format is very conducive to citizen participation.

Instead of a moderator, a facilitator would have been far more appropriate. Without being overly critical of Mr. Borrin, his style of moderating does not allow the audience to feel comfortable and he certainly did not encourage a two way informative conversation. He even prefaced a question from an audience member from the MCA. He inserted himself in the conversation which is not appropriate in this informal setting. We hope that Moultonboro will learn from other communities such as Meredith and their recent brainstorming session which was very open and successful.

Lastly, if this was truly an important and value added meeting as advertised  by the selectmen, we would have hoped that our elected officials had stayed the course and not left early and that more members of the school board were present. The impression of some attendees was that the elected officials did not really want to be there and with some exceptions, ( the very informative messages from  Betsy Patten, Chief Kinmond, Chief Bengston, Library  and the seniors group ) not much was really said by either board. The Master Plan presentation was thorough, but did not receive any follow up or input from the officials in attendance. A real Q&A with audience participation during the presentation would have helped the public learn more about this important project.

How to make the process better? Make people feel comfortable. This is an informal meeting, make it feel that way. Facilitate the discussions by asking for follow up and encouraging participation from both sides. Most of all, don’t rush through it as if it were a burden to be there.

MCA

Meeting Highlights

• Only 4 non voting attendees
• Town School cooperative efforts- new undertaking, no specifics. Very open to public suggestions for ideas for cost sharing. Contact the Selectmen or School Board with ideas.
• Ed Charest updated the process for the new Advisory Budget committee. Stated he is looking forward to it.....

TOP