No worries, this’ll be over in an Ipswich minute

Don’t be offended: “Gasbag” is just a figure of speech

After a 5-hour Town Meeting, including an interminable 90-minute debate on the question of adopting Section 3A zoning, some Ipswich residents are still recovering.

And thus it has been, for 390 years.

At this rate, we’ve put in a cumulative total of 5 years, 4 months, and 3 days in annual Town Meetings. This doesn’t even begin to account for those “Special” Town Meetings, which became a yearly event sometime around Richard Nixon.

No wonder people staggered out of our most recent municipal marathon muttering about changing our form of government to something less time-consuming.

Five hours! Someone in the back row could go into labor, give birth, apply for the baby’s Social Security card, and still have time to vote on Article 17.

Of course there are many who cherish Town Meeting’s primary feature, the open debate. Ipswichers are incurable bickerers — going all the way back to John Winthrop Jr. talking Masconomet out of the land — and Town Meeting plays to this strength.

But let’s face it: Town Meeting takes a chunk out of your life — a 5-hour meeting is 31% of your waking day — just to make sure you have a chance to talk some sense into your neighbors’ heads before they cast some foolish vote on an issue that’s perfectly clear to you and should require no conversation whatsoever.

And to what end?

Take this very simple survey and we’ll learn how effective Town Meeting debates really are at changing the minds of intelligent, well-informed people:

How often has the debate at Town Meeting changed your mind about an issue? Choose one:

¨ Absolutely never.

¨ Maybe once in the past 50 years, but I forget which issue.

¨ Only that time I accidentally clicked the wrong clicker button.

¨ My spouse and I had a fight about an issue, so we were going to cancel each other’s vote anyway, but then during the debate I changed my mind, but then so did she, so: Once.

¨ Always. I never pay attention to the issues before Town Meeting, so the debate changes my mind from a blank slate to a vote in support of whichever speaker has lived here the longest.

¨ Never. I go with whoever’s cutest.

It doesn’t need to be this way. Instead of sitting through endless jabbering, we could require voters to submit their comments online, 2 weeks in advance. The Town Moderator could dutifully wade through the pile, synthesize similar viewpoints, and release a list of bullet points a day or two prior to the gathering.

Statistically, silent reading is 57% faster than speech. The Moderator will put in a little over 2 hours reading what would have been 5 hours of blah-blah-blah.

Or, he could dump it all into AI and get bullet points in about 10 seconds.

Another approach would be to switch to the system I grew up with, which is how they do government in the city of Chicago.

This is not really as far-fetched as you might think. When you examine it in detail, there are quite a number of parallels between life there and life here.

For example: Here in Ipswich, we have 4 precincts. Chicago has precincts too. The fact that Chicago has 1,290 of them should not scare anybody off.

In fact, it could be the other way around. A Chicago precinct has only an average of about 2,100 people. Ipswich precincts have an average of 3,446. A Chicagoan couldn’t be blamed for fearing that our local government is enormous and unwieldy.

(Each precinct in Chicago has a precinct captain. Do we have precinct captains here in Ipswich? We do not. Maybe we need to think about choosing precinct captains, to take the reins and guide us, because our precincts are so bloated with people.)

In Chicago, the precincts are ganged into wards — 50 of them, citywide. Each ward elects what was long known as an alderman (now officially an “alderperson”), who represents your ward in the Chicago City Council.

This is a wonderfully effective form of governance, proven by the fact that since I was in high school, only 38 aldermen have been found guilty of any crime.

That’s less than one conviction every 17 months. Pretty good.

In between corruption trials, your alderman is totally available to talk with you about your concerns, and faithfully represent your views at City Council.

That august body meets once a month, sometimes for as long as 5 hours or more. Keep in mind this is themmeeting for 5 hours, not you, which is a huge bonus.

(And according to my research of the minutes, each City Council meeting involves an average of nearly 2 full hours of actual business.)

Overseeing it all is your kindly Mayor, a leader every bit as competent and good-looking as any Ipswich Town Manager or Town Moderator. Ignore the corruption scandals: No Chicago mayor has ever actually been indicted.

Plus, if you don’t get the service you want, you can vote the Mayor out at the end of 4 years. Can Ipswich do that with its Town Manager? No, they rarely last that long.

Switching to a mayor-council government is not unheard of in Essex County. Eight of our neighbor cities have done it — Beverly, Gloucester, Haverhill, Lawrence, Lynn, Newburyport, Peabody, and Salem — each one a jewel in the crown of the Commonwealth.

But assuming we can’t summon the energy to make the change, and we stick with the 5-hour Town Meeting, I offer one final suggestion for surviving it:

Cash bar.