How to actually change something in Dracut

Step one

Find the body that actually decides your issue.

This is the step that makes a project work. A real problem lands best in front of the people who have the power to say yes to it, so find that room first.

• 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 local budget: open Town Meeting and the Board of Selectmen, working with Town Manager Kate Hodges.
• State law, and anything about the age you can do something at: your State Representative and State Senator, not anyone in local government.

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.

Dracut 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 it is worth knowing before you start. 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 978-453-0951 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 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 concern is where a project starts, and turning it into one specific request is what lets a board act on it.

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.