Town government
- Landon Curletti
- Jun 15, 2018
- 2 min read

We can all think of that one time in summer when it’s so hot we carry five water bottles with us just to keep cool, but this year that might look different. In a town meeting,Great Barrington decided that we would ban plastic water bottles. The plastic one time use water bottles ban Isgraet in all but as the son of two small business owners I see that we can't keep going further with plastic containers, because if that happened than we can’t sell iced drinks like cold brew. In the summer on a hot day, we are all just looking for a way to get cool quick.
Town meeting is both an event as it is also the legislative body of our government. The town meeting goes on for around 3-4 hours. here in new england we have something called direct democracy were you vote for yourself unlike what you have in congress or in the state house were you have the electoral college and popular vote. Anyone can go to a town meeting as long as long as they are a citizen. If you are of age to vote you can participate. When voting, everyone gets colored paper and different colors mean different things, like a yellow piece of paper could mean “yes” and red being “no”. You can also do things like amend something. Amending something means to change what people will be voting on. So you have to than vote on if you want to change what your voting on and then vote on that new thing. The moderator of the meeting than sees if there is a clear winner in colors and if he can't it goes to a secret ballot, were you write your answer on a paper, fold it, and pot in in the voting box, than popular vote wins.
On month ago in town meeting there was a ban on one use plastic water bottles. A lot of people are happy with this change but some already want it gone. Town meeting started and a group of girls came up and argued the point on the one use plastic water bottles. In order to have your thing on the agenda, you have to get ten people to sign it. They got the ten signatures and went to town meeting and got there way and now plastic bags and one use plastic bottles are banned from Great Barrington.
The town manager of Great barrington, Jennifer Tavican told me that the plastic water bottle ban will most likely not progress into a full on plastic bottle ban. Even if it did get the ten signatures in needed it probably would not get passed town meeting. That would mean that people could not buy little ice creams at robin's candy shop would not be possible, seeing as the ice cream is served in plastic cups.
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