Last year, Michael Crowley campaigned to unseat longtime Moderator Mike Widmer, falling short in the April election.
Now, Crowley is running for moderator again. With Widmer now retired, Crowley is facing longtime Select Board member Mark Paolillo for a chance to lead Town Meeting.
The California native spent his career in various federal government roles before retiring and moving to Belmont in 2015. He was quickly involved in local government, serving a stint on the Warrant Committee as a Town Meeting member and School Committee member.
“The way in which Town Meeting runs, the way in which we prepare budgets, the way in which we involve, or don’t involve citizens in those discussions, I just want to help,” Crowley said. “I want to make Belmont a better place for everyone.”
According to Crowley, he is interested in the role the moderator plays in making committee appointments, particularly to the town’s Warrant Committee. There is, he said, room for greater transparency in the way those appointments are made.
He’d also like to see greater competition for seats as a Town Meeting member.
“Last year, the races weren’t very competitive, “ he said. “If you got your name on the ballot, in most precincts, you more than likely were elected.”
The elections, he concluded, almost didn’t matter.
As moderator, Crowley said he would work to solve that issue through education and outreach. He would use the same time to work on improving the diversity within Town Meeting.
“My concern is we don’t have enough diversity to be able to assert that Town Meeting and its decisions represent the views of residents,” he said.
There has been improvement in the makeup of Town Meeting, but there is much work to be done, he said.
There are, in Crowley’s opinion, ways forward to improving the situation, the primary among them is the formalized adoption of a hybrid Town Meeting.
“I think there’s a recognized need for hybrid Town Meeting,” he said.
According to Crowley, a hybrid meeting allows participation from young parents, people who need to work early the next morning, people with mobility issues, or even those who want to dial in from a distant business trip.
Crowley believes that participation in Town Meeting could benefit from easier access to the often-daunting volume of information generated leading up to Town Meeting.
“I also think the moderator could do more to push out information, neutral information, about the issues facing the town,” he said.
He would also bolster the amount of training available for new and returning Town Meeting members, including how to debate, amend, and even propose articles. And it’s a process that, in his mind, goes both ways. Crowley talked at length about creating a Town Meeting advisory board to discuss and recommend various courses of action to the moderator.
“I’d like to bring in other, experienced Town Meeting members as part of this effort, and I think that we can have a much better Town Meeting if people know the scope of what they can do,” he said.
According to Crowley, the moderator is a vital position, one person making myriad crucial decisions impacting day-to-day life in Belmont.
“I’m a big believer in participatory democracy, so I would like to find a way to involve Town Meeting members more in the decision-making,” he said. “Because one person can’t possibly know everything.”
