It’s the desire to tinker, after all, that makes town meetings such a cussedly frustrating, yet blessedly enduring part of the Maine landscape.

After dog-weary selectmen and school board members slog through uncounted hours of budget meetings, finishing their homework to defend their positions, the sometimes uninformed, but always opinionated folk turn up on a fine Saturday morning or a snowy evening once a year and have their say.

Whether it’s panning the definition of a tree for the zoning ordinance — as voters did after 20 minutes of discussion in the town of Mount Desert recently — or making draconian cuts in the school budget, the town meeting is a plucky, albeit worn, survivor of small-town life in Maine.

“It’s an institution that is unique to New England,” Tom Taylor, chairman of the public administration department at the University of Maine, said recently. “And it is remarkable it has held up as long as it has in small communities.”

While many small communities in neighboring states have moved to a representative form of town meeting, a step before a town council, more than 430 towns in Maine, the vast majority, still hold open town meetings.

Praised as the “perfect exercise of self-government” by Thomas Jefferson, a Virginian who never lived under the system, the town meeting form of government is truly an exercise in democracy that continues to evolve after 300 years.

The problems

But it’s the ragged edges of grass-roots democracy that has some pundits wondering if town meetings can survive — even whether they should.

Apathy and low attendance head the list of problems. Although residents tend to turn out in good numbers when the issues are hot, attendance drops right off in less controversial years.

Voters may show up at the polls in decent numbers, but far fewer are willing to sit for two or more hours at open town meeting. In the town of Lamoine last year, 400 voters turned down a tax cap at the polls; the next morning, only 90 showed up for the open town meeting to vote on the school and municipal budgets.

A common lament is that special interest groups — such as parents of school-age children — can show up in full force to push through their one-issue agenda. An emotional speaker can sway votes at the last minute. The less-than-gifted speaker, or one easily intimidated, will not be heard or won’t speak up, others argue.

Finally, with the myriad state and federal mandates, funding requirements and snarls of red tape, the issues are decidedly more complex and difficult to boil down into rational discussion and decision-making in only a few hours’ time. Some say only the most well-informed can make good decisions about the convoluted matters facing towns today.

Some solutions

All those concerns have led some Maine towns that traditionally have held open town meetings to forsake the format in favor of the secret ballot. The town of York, with a population of about 10,000, has been settling all issues by secret ballot since 1993.

York Town Manager Mark Green wrote last year in the Maine Townsman, the magazine of the Maine Municipal Association, that the secret ballot not only allows for more resident participation, but also “does away with charges of rule by minority and special interest groups and rule by intimidation.”

Admittedly, the process was rocky at the beginning, as 27 percent of the municipal budget articles were voted down the first time around. Since then, York selectmen have held televised public hearings and a call-in show and used videos and mailings to educate the public about the issues. Last year, York voters faced a 95-question ballot behind the curtain on voting day.

According to the Maine Townsman, some other southern Maine communities have turned to the secret ballot for some of their most important budget decisions. Lebanon (pop. 4,263) put its municipal budget decisions on the secret ballot last year; Lisbon (pop. 9,457) has put major municipal budget decisions up to a referendum vote for two years.

Even in the small community of Tremont (pop. 1,324), some residents are calling for an end to the traditional town meeting. Voters will decide this spring whether all matters will be decided by secret ballot vote beginning in 1997. Selectmen say townspeople are likely to be uninformed if they vote on budget questions by secret ballot; petitioners say people are afraid to speak up and vote their conscience when it’s all done in public.

In neighboring Bar Harbor, a selectman there has advocated for the survival of open town meeting, even though attendance continues to decline in his town. “To those who argue that referenda draw more voters into the process, I argue that they are overlooking the importance of the `tempering’ value of the open town meeting,” Ron Beard wrote in Maine Townsman.

The issues are not simple ones, Beard argued. “Many beg for the open meeting where voters have the opportunity to listen, to clarify, to probe for reasons why, to discuss alternatives and the consequences.”

A growing number of towns — at least 125 — already have their school budgets decided by secret ballot, particularly those communities in school administrative districts. Some say the loss is in public debate and local control, while others argue more people end up voting on the big-ticket item.

Effect of growth

Population clearly plays a role in whether the town meeting process can work. Taylor, who co-authored a book called “Maine Politics and Government” with Kenneth Palmer and Marcus Librizzi, said the town meeting process can be difficult once communities reach the 3,000 to 4,000 population range.

According to the 1990 census, only a handful of Maine towns with fewer than 4,000 people in 1980 exceeded the 4,000 mark by the end of the decade. One was Lebanon, that has made changes to its town meeting.

While change is slow, the authors of “Maine Politics and Government” say population growth in the state’s four metropolitan areas and along the coast is “changing political traditions and landscapes.”

“Growth has meant more diversity in town government as natives and newcomers often `square off’ for more extended debate on town councils or at traditional town meetings,” they wrote.

Taylor said the state may one day ask whether it needs 495 communities. Nationwide, small towns are dying, he said, unless they can “reinvent themselves.” If a town grows too fast, struggles to hold on to town meeting will be difficult, he said. The alternative could be more town councils, or even regional forms of government.

Yet within Maine, in the heart of a town-meeting culture, the small towns still hold on to their traditional form of government, tinkering with and fine-tuning the system as the people and issues change.

“For some towns that are vibrant and a relatively small size, the town meeting still makes sense,” Taylor added. “For small towns with 2,000 people, more or less, I expect them to continue on.”