Chris Wristen

A few thoughts on Election Day:

Our town here in Massachusetts has a form of government known as Town Meeting. In a nutshell, it’s a legislative body of representatives from nine districts who gather when needed to vote on varying issues – primarily school and local government budget stuff, maybe a zoning issue, and approving funding for some specific projects. There’s Annual Town Meeting each May, when the biggest budget issues are approved or rejected, and then there are additional Special Town Meeting gatherings to address other matters throughout the year. There are around 200 members of Town Meeting, though often there are several vacant positions due to lack of sufficient interest.

Two years ago, I noticed that our District had the least representation of any, so I wrote myself in as a candidate for a 3-year term (2023-2025). Alex voted for me, too, and that was that. I was elected to Town Meeting with our 2 write-in votes.

One of the great things about Town Meeting is that people get up and speak. They ask questions of local officials, project developers or committee members, depending on the article in front of us for consideration. Most articles are approved with minimal discussion, assuming they’ve been supported in advance by the Board of Selectmen and/or the Finance Commission, Zoning Board, Conservation Commission, or other relevant body. But not everything gets an easy pass.

During my two years so far on Town Meeting, there have been a few articles that every Town Meeting Member knew would constitute the “main event” of the night. If things went long or were going to drag into a second night, everyone knew which article would be the cause.

At the Annual Town Meeting in 2023, the hot-button article involved zoning of a parcel of land that separated a quiet neighborhood from the highway. The less than 2-acre parcel was home to mature woods that provide residents with a sight and sound buffer from the highway, as well as temperature and air quality benefits. The parcel had long been zoned as residential, but in 2021 was swept into a larger highway zoning district and changed to commercial. The article before us was to change the zoning of that parcel back to residential, which would prevent a developer from replacing the woods with a parking lot. After around 2 hours of debate, with speakers passionately making their case for and against another zoning change, Town Meeting overwhelmingly voted to return the parcel to residential zoning.

I left Town Meeting that night feeling invigorated. It was exciting to see and feel democracy at work. One of the neighborhood residents had invited Town Meeting members to visit her home to see the woods for themselves prior to voting. I took her up on the offer. Standing in her backyard, I appreciated the importance of preserving the woods for these folks’ quality of life and could easily see the negative consequences of putting up yet another parking lot (our town is home to Massachusetts’ Auto Mile, so we have plenty of pavement and asphalt already). It made my Yes vote an easy one. While I was thrilled that Town Meeting collectively stood up for the residents of this neighborhood, I also found fulfillment in listening to the folks who were opposed to the article. They made compelling cases, and I could understand their rationale even if we would ultimately vote differently. There was plenty of passion and disagreement, but there was also empathy and civility.

At the 2024 Annual Town Meeting in May, another article – this time involving the allocation of funds from a specific budget with very specific allowable uses as determined by state law – came before Town Meeting. It involved a request by an outside developer for $1 million to help purchase a building in town to convert into a home for homeless veterans. It was an extremely worthy cause that most people wanted to support, but the dollar amount – and specifically the fact that it would go toward the purchase of a building that many people thought was being overvalued at the sale price without enough proof – raised some eyebrows. There also were concerns among some Town Meeting Members that the funds might not even qualify to be used for this project. After around 90 minutes of debate and many unanswered questions, the article was withdrawn.

The developer and the town committee responsible for approving projects for consideration went back to the drawing board and put in several more months of work. On Thursday, Oct. 24, the article was brought back before us at the Special Town Meeting. There had been plenty written about this article in the local paper during the months and weeks leading up to the Special Town Meeting, and when I walked into the auditorium there was a buzz in the room. This was going to be the “main event” article, and it felt like it was doomed to fail even though the ask had dropped to $800K. When it was time for Article 5 (there were nine articles for the night), you could sense everyone bracing themselves. We were given a presentation about the project and the updated information, and then around two dozen registered speakers took their turns asking questions and/or making their case in support of or against approving the motion. Some of the same folks who spoke had been among the speakers for and against the zoning article the year before. Some who I’d disagreed with on that article I agreed with on this one, and vice versa. People were passionate and thoughtful; they attempted to educate the room, sway an opinion, or at least challenge people to consider different perspectives before voting. There were facts and opinions, and no name-calling or conspiracy theories. Of the roughly two hours that people spoke, what likely sealed the outcome was when our recently retired Director of Veterans’ Services arose to speak. He said he did not intend to tell anybody how to vote, rather he wanted to provide us with facts. At the Annual Town Meeting in May, he’d said Norwood had no homeless veterans. He wanted to correct the record. Our town has no homeless veterans “living on the street”, he said, because when homeless veterans had been brought to his attention, he and the town worked quickly to find them a place to stay. We don’t see them, but they’re here. He provided several examples (one Town Meeting Member has housed multiple veterans in her guest room at his request in recent years, including one currently). You could feel the mood in the room shift as he spoke. Suddenly, the outcome was obvious.

When it came time to vote, the article passed overwhelmingly to allocate the funding. Just as I’d done after the zoning issue the year before, I left the Special Town Meeting feeling invigorated. Once again, democracy was on display – and it was beautiful.

I bring all of this up (and if you’ve read this far, thank you) because democracy is important, and good things can happen when it is deployed in the right way by well-intentioned people. “Well-intentioned” is the key part of that statement. It doesn’t mean we’re perfect people, but intent is critical. Town Meeting is a nonpartisan body. There are no political party affiliations at Town Meeting; your affiliation is the District that you represent. When it comes to being on a particular “team”, we’re all on the same team as Norwood residents. Even when we disagree on a particular article, we’re all there working together to try to do what’s best for our community.

I hope this spirit of camaraderie, collaboration, and civility can return to our national elected bodies. Even more, I want that spirit to return to all of us in general. I’d like to think that you do, too.

For the past decade we’ve constantly been told by Donald Trump that America is “a country in decline,” a “failing nation” and “a third-world nation,” and he has done everything he possibly can to make it so by sowing distrust and division.

He couldn’t be more wrong about America. My experiences at Town Meeting show me that we can be better – that we are still better – than he wants us to believe. There are good, well-intentioned people out there who can listen to each other, disagree with each other, and still respect each other and work together in the pursuit of something good.

There are plenty of outrage salesmen out there; we don’t have to buy what they’re selling.

Kamala Harris and Tim Walz won’t be perfect, and I won’t agree with them on everything, but it was easy for me to vote for them. I hope you do, too. I believe they see the good in America, and they see the good in us. Under their leadership, I hope we get back to seeing the good in each other.