BRISTOL — Residents of the Bristol Police District on Monday voted to move their annual meeting from its traditional May date to instead coincide with the March town meeting.
The change also means that voters will be moving from a meeting format where they can debate and change the proposed annual budget on the floor to one where the budget is warned and voted up or down by Australian ballot without the opportunity to tweak it at the meeting.
Despite significant opposition to the annual meeting’s reformation, the vote to change the meeting won by the slimmest of margins: 15-14.
“The discussion that you’re having tonight is a classic Vermont discussion,” Town Administrator Bill Bryant said to police district residents. “What is the best and highest form of exercising your democratic rights? An Australian ballot versus a traditional town meeting is just probably one of the best debates we have about democracy in Vermont.”
Editor’s note: See a complete wrap-up of the police district meeting in Monday’s edition of the Independent.