Debating for boys

by William Horton Foster

All of said committees shall be nominated by a nominating committee consisting of seven citizens elected by the Town Meeting. The Moderator of the Town Meeting shall designate one member of each of said committees to act as chairman thereof.

10. The Moderator shall appoint a committee of five to be known as the Committee on Ways and Means, who shall prepare for the consideration of the Committee on Budget and Appropriations an estimate of the probable expense of the Town Meeting for the current season. When such estimate has been considered and ordered by the said Committee on Budget and Appropriations, the said Ways and Means Committee shall extend the taxes necessary to meet said budget over the Town Meeting and appoint all officers necessary to collect, care for and disburse the same in orderly and regular fashion.

11. Before said Committee on Budget and Appropriations shall finally appropriate any sum for the support of the Town Meeting in its various functions it shall report its estimate to the full Town Meeting, and no such report shall be adopted unless approved by a vote of two-thirds of the members present at a regular Town Meeting.

12. All measures intended for presentation by any citizen shall be presented to the Clerk on paper furnished by the Clerk. The Clerk shall read all measures by title and the Moderator shall then refer them to their appropriate committees, before the order of the day has been considered at each Town Meeting. They shall be given a consecutive number by the Clerk and shall thereafter be referred to by number, title and by the name of the citizen introducing the same. The committees to whom said measures are referred shall consider the same as promptly as may be and may in said consideration call before them the original sponsor of such measure or any citizen who is in favor of or opposed to said measure. In addition thereto said committees may, if they shall so elect, call before them any person, whether a citizen of the Town Meeting or not, whose evidence or arguments might, in their judgment, be valuable to the committee or to the Town Meeting in their deliberations on the particular measure under consideration.

Said committees shall, as speedily as possible, report to the Town Meeting, their conclusions upon the matters referred to them, giving in concise form the reasons upon which said conclusions are based.

PETITIONS AND REPORTS OF COMMITTEES.

13. Petitions, memorials, remonstrances and papers of a like nature, and reports of committees shall be presented before the Town Meeting proceeds to the consideration of the Order of the Day, and the Moderator shall call for such papers.

PAPERS ADDRESSED TO THE TOWN MEETING NOT PETITIONS.

Papers addressed to the Town Meeting, other than petitions, memorials and remonstrances, may be presented by the Moderator, or by a citizen in his place, and shall be read, unless it is specifically ordered that the reading be dispensed with.

14. No bill shall be acted upon by the Town Meeting until it has been reported by the committee to which it has been referred: provided, however, that the Moderator may call upon any committee to report a bill before it, if in his judgment said report is unduly delayed. No bill shall be put to a final vote without having been read three several times.