Uniquely Medfield
DeSorgher: It’s the Only Game in Town and it Decides Your Future – Town Meeting
On Monday, April 30 at 7:30 p.m. in the Medfield High School gymnasium, residents will participate in the town's 361st Annual Town Meeting. Here's a look at the history of Medfield Town Meetings.
The critics are out there. It is inefficient some will say. Others say it is boring and the seats are too hard. Critics of the institution claim that, in practice it is not the purest form of democracy. They point to low turnout of registered voters, and the alleged domination of the meetings by special interest groups. James Madison, a critic of town meetings, wrote in The Federalist Number 55, "In all very numerous assemblies, of whatever characters composed, passion never fails to wrest the scepter from reason. Had every Athenian citizen been a Socrates, every Athenian assembly would still have been a mob." They are all talking about Town Meeting. Accept or reject the criticism, the fact remains that it is the system we have in Medfield…
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