Hey, Hive!

As promised, I wanted to give you a quick update on the state of TownVote and how we’ll be continuing our pilot partnership with civic-tech platform VoteLight into 2024 and as the local election (April 6!) approaches.

Before we get into that, though, I want you to take a moment and mark your calendar for the first Hive Coffee Hour, to take place on Friday, December 15, from 9:00 to 10:00 AM (location TBD). These coffee/cocktail/dessert hours, open to paying Hive members and their guests, are a great opportunity for you to connect with me and with your neighbors. If you’re not available at 9AM on a Friday, don’t worry. There will be more such events, scheduled at different times so that folks on different schedules can attend. I can’t wait to see you there! I’ll let you know a location next week.

Okay, on to TownVote!

How it Started

Burlington Buzz’s partnership with VoteLight, known as Burlington TownVote, began this past summer, and you can read all about it here. The tl;dr is that VoteLight is a civic platform that allows citizens to voice their choice regarding various Issues at the national, state, and local level. You do have to sign up for the platform, as the software needs to match you to your voting locality, and after that you can vote on Issues created by elected officials, local media, and citizens like you—That’s right, you can also create Issues for your neighbors to vote on!

The idea behind the platform, and how its founders and I envision it working here in Burlington and beyond, is that constituents and local officials can use the site’s features to engage in a more two-way dialogue than the status quo currently allows. In addition to providing an opportunity for citizens to let officials know where they stand on issues, using TownVote enables voters to ask questions directly to their elected representatives regarding various issues facing our town. The platform also allows for updates to be posted as Issues develop.

How it’s Going

So far, the Buzz has created four different TownVote issues. The first, and the “best-attended,” was a question about which school configuration was best for Fox Hill. The others, posted ahead of September’s Town Meeting, asked the public’s opinion on a few different Town Meeting warrant articles. The results of these TownVotes, and the results of the official decisions by the School Building Committee and Town Meeting, respectively, are summarized at the bottom of this post, but I want to scream out a couple of caveats here:

1. There are not nearly enough votes to take anything meaningful from these data. in our election, there were 18,614 eligible voters. The most votes on a single TownVote issue was 77. So grab the entire shaker of salt when interpreting these results.
2. This feature has only been rolled out officially to you paying hive members. As a rule, this group is generally more engaged than the rest of the Buzz readers but not necessarily representative of a cross-section of town. Eventually, we hope to have a large proportion of residents engaging, and that those engaged citizens will be representative of Burlington as a whole!

We also haven’t been as consistent as we’d like with using TownVote as a tool. The more Issues we raise, the more we hope residents get comfortable with using the platform. As you know, building something great takes time, and we’re so excited to have you on board as we develop this tool into something useful and meaningful for our community.

What’s Ahead

The Buzz is committed to using TownVote to its fullest potential and will be focusing on doing that in the coming months. We’d like to see widespread use of this platform as a way for town residents to learn more about—and participate in—the issues affecting them close to home. We plan to do a few things to encourage that:

• More regular posting of issues. Our target is twice per month.
• More deliberate interfacing with elected officials and candidates for office. Look for more information about this once the local election ballot is finalized in February.
• Eventual rolling out of the Town Vote to all readers, with Hive members getting early notice to vote on issues.

What Issues Would You Like To See?

To help us craft well-thought-out questions that will resonate with Burlington residents, we need some input from you! We’ll be combing Town Meeting Warrants and municipal meeting agendas for Issue ideas, but the best source for these questions is going to be the folks who live here. So, please take a moment to respond to this email or send a note to hello@burlington.buzz and let us know what issues you’d like to see in an upcoming TownVote. Issues sponsored by the Buzz will have a clear background that addresses arguments both in favor and against each question.

We’re excited to work more closely with VoteLight and with our amazing Hive members in the next couple of months to make the best use of this offering and roll it out to all of Burlington.

As always, if you have any feedback on this initiative, please don’t hesitate to let us know!

Nicci and the VoteLight team

Summary of TownVotes Thus Far

ISSUE: Elementary School Building Project – Rebuild Fox Hill or Combine Fox Hill and Pine Glen?

The TownVote results matched the final School Meeting decision which, as reported in the Burlington Buzz, was “The only option in consideration now is the 325-student single-school Fox Hill building.”