In
New England
New England is a region comprising six states in the Northeastern United States: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. It is bordered by the state of New York to the west and by the Canadian provinces ...
, a warrant is a document issued by the
Board of Selectmen to call a
town meeting
Town meeting is a form of local government in which most or all of the members of a community are eligible to legislate policy and budgets for local government. It is a town- or city-level meeting in which decisions are made, in contrast with ...
.
Warrants essentially list an
agenda
Agenda may refer to:
Information management
* Agenda (meeting), points to be discussed and acted upon, displayed as a list
* Political agenda, the set of goals of an ideological group
* Lotus Agenda, a DOS-based personal information manager
* Pers ...
of items to be voted on by those present. In towns with an
open town meeting
Town meeting is a form of local government in which most or all of the members of a community are eligible to legislate policy and budgets for local government. It is a town- or city-level meeting in which decisions are made, in contrast with ...
, those present would consist of any and all registered voters in the town. In towns with a
representative town meeting
A representative town meeting, also called "limited town meeting", is a form of municipal legislature particularly common in Connecticut and Massachusetts, and permitted in Maine, Vermont and New Hampshire.
Representative town meetings function ...
, anyone may attend, but only
town meeting member
A town is a human settlement. Towns are generally larger than villages and smaller than cities, though the criteria to distinguish between them vary considerably in different parts of the world.
Origin and use
The word "town" shares an ori ...
s (elected representatives) are allowed to vote.
Items on the agenda generally vary significantly, from the annual
operating budget The operating budget contains the revenue and expenditure generated from the daily business functions of the company; see .
Edriaan Koening (N.D.What is Corporate Budgeting? chron.com
It concentrates on the operating expenditures, i.e.: cost of go ...
of the town to adjustment of
by-law
A by-law (bye-law, by(e)law, by(e) law), or as it is most commonly known in the United States bylaws, is a set of rules or law established by an organization or community so as to regulate itself, as allowed or provided for by some higher authorit ...
s, and anything else that may legally come before the meeting.
In
, residents may place articles on the warrant without approval by the Selectmen by petitioning to insert the same. Petitions to insert an article on the warrant for an Annual Town Meeting require ten signatures. Petitions to insert an article on the warrant for a Special Town Meeting require 100 signatures or the signatures of ten per cent of the registered voters in the town, whichever is less.
New England
Local government in Massachusetts
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