Report Excerpt:While the article raises several valuable ideas for increasing engagement with Town Meeting Members and securing certain privacy interests; on balance, the majority of the Select Board believes creating Town-administered email addresses for Meeting Members poses significant challenges that can be addressed with greater autonomy and customization by Members themselves. There may be some Town Meeting Members who do not make themselves accessible via email, but in the Board’s experience, many if not most Members establish a “TMM” email address for Meeting business separate from their personal or work email addresses. Some members of the Board expressed interest in exploring the issue further, including whether or not “alias” addresses would be technically feasible.
However, as Town Meeting knows, Meeting Members are not “municipal employees” in the same manner as town staff, other committee and commission members, or elected officials. The conflict-of-interest and open meeting laws do not apply to Town Meeting or its membership. In a similar vein, public records laws do not necessarily apply to Meeting Member communications while using personal email addresses. Using a Town administered email address could make communications between members or members and precinct residents public records. Moreover, providing Meeting Member Town email accounts would not require Meeting Members to necessarily utilize them, and may require significant tech support. Thus, the Select Board is not convinced that the benefits of this Article’s proposal outweigh new issues created by it.