Aquinnah lowered its quorum for its upcoming special town meeting on Dec. 19 from 43 registered voters to 10, in an attempt to make a meeting inside the town hall possible.
At Tuesday’s selectmen meeting, chairman Jim Newman said the special town meeting will deal with articles that are essential for the town to pay its bills in a timely manner.
“Our normal quorum is 43 people, and that is a lot of people to have for a meeting. We are trying to reduce that so we have a handful of people, so we can basically do housework and pay bills,” Newman said, and continued to stress that no major matters will be taken up at this meeting that impact the town or the tax rolls.
Selectman Juli Vanderhoop added that the lower quorum will only be for this upcoming special town meeting, and the number will go back to the original 43 registered voters.
Prior to taking the vote, selectmen had planned on having a special town meeting on Nov. 14, but had to postpone the meeting due to a concurrent rise in confirmed COVID-19 cases on-Island.
Town moderator Mike Hebert said he hadn’t realized the quorum was being reduced for just this one meeting. “I thought it was an attempt to lower the quorum for all meetings going forward, but I’m fine with reducing it for just this one,” he said.
Town administrator Jeff Madison said the state statute that deals with quorums allows selectmen, in concert with the town moderator, to reduce the existing quorum to no less than 10 percent of the normal requirement. “In our instance, that would be five people,” Madison said.
Hebert said he would be more comfortable with a requirement of at least 20 or 25 people, but because there are no major issues being taken up at the meeting, he would be amenable to reducing it to 10.
On the morning of the meeting, Madison said fans will be placed in each one of the town hall windows to circulate air. If more people come than anticipated, Madison said, a backup plan could be to move folks out onto the tarmac in front of the fire station.
“We postponed the last meeting because we felt we couldn’t have 40 people on the tarmac of the fire station. I don’t know that 20 inside the town hall is going to be doable either,” Madison said.
But Hebert stressed that lowering the meeting quorum will not necessarily disallow registered voters from showing up. “I don’t know if lowering the quorum requirements is going to achieve what you want to achieve,” Hebert said. “I personally have no issue with lowering the quorum to any reasonable number, as long as we are not trying to keep anyone out who wants to attend.”
