How to actually change something in Cohasset

Massachusetts law says you have to do a civics project. It does not say it has to be pretend. Every lever on this page is real, it is written into state law, and it works in Cohasset specifically.

The law is Chapter 71, Section 2 of the General Laws: every public school serving eighth graders, and every public high school, must provide “not less than 1 student-led, non-partisan civics project for each student.” That is the assignment. What follows is how to make it land somewhere real.

Step one

Find the body that actually decides your issue.

This is where most projects go wrong. Students take a real problem to the wrong room, get a polite nothing, and conclude that nobody listens. The truth is duller and more useful: they were talking to people who did not have the power to say yes.

In Cohasset, roughly:

Your school building, your classes, your school’s rules and budget: the School Committee. They hire the superintendent and adopt the school budget. They do not run the police or the roads.
Streets, sidewalks, parks, local police and fire, the town budget: Select Board, working with the town's executive.
State law, and anything about the age you can do something at: your State Representative and State Senator, not anyone in town.

Match the issue to the body first. The rest of the project gets three times easier.

The lever

Ten voters can put your idea on the warrant.

Cohasset runs on open town meeting, where any registered voter may attend, speak and vote. The warrant is the list of every article the meeting will actually vote on, and state law says who can add to it.

For the ANNUAL town meeting, the law is short enough to quote. The selectmen must insert in the warrant every subject requested in writing by “ten or more registered voters of the town”. Ten signatures. That is the entire threshold, and it is the most direct lever an ordinary resident has anywhere in Massachusetts government.

For a SPECIAL town meeting the threshold is different, and this trips people up. There the law requires one hundred registered voters, or ten per cent of the town’s registered voters, whichever number is the lesser. So if someone tells you “it only takes ten people,” they are talking about the annual meeting. Ask which meeting you are aiming at before you start collecting signatures.

Massachusetts General Laws, Chapter 39, Section 10.

You do not have to be old enough to vote to write the article, gather the people, do the research, or stand up and explain it. You need registered voters to sign it. Most students know more than ten registered voters: they live with two of them.

Call the Town Clerk at 781-383-4100 and ask two questions: when is the next annual town meeting, and what is the deadline to submit a citizen petition article. The Clerk’s office answers this question all the time. Asking it is itself the civic skill.

What to bring

Ask for one specific thing.

“Do something about the buses” is not an ask. “Move the 7:10 stop on Washington Street two hundred feet north so it is not on a blind curve” is an ask. A specific request can be said yes to. A general complaint can only be agreed with, which is not the same thing and does not change anything.

Bring three things: the specific ask, who it affects and how many of them, and what it would take to do it. If you do not know what it would take, say so and ask. Officials are far more willing to help someone who has clearly done the reading.

Every ask lands somewhere specific, and there is a template for each one: a board, a records request, your legislator, your local paper.

Find the seat, then write

Who to ask

The most useful phone call in local government.

Town Clerk: 781-383-4100. This is the single most useful phone number in local government. The Clerk’s office knows when every body meets, what the deadlines are, and how a resident gets on an agenda. They will tell you. It is literally their job.

We deliberately do not print meeting times or agendas on this page. They change, and a page that sends you to a locked building on the wrong Tuesday has taught you the wrong lesson about civics. Call and ask. The answer you get on the phone is current; the one on a webpage might not be.