In the lead up to local elections on March 5, LexObserver will be rolling out profiles of the candidates. You can find all the basic election information on the Town’s website. If you are a candidate for Town Meeting, please fill out our Town Meeting Candidate Profile form so voters can learn more about you and the issues you care about.
Unlike other Town-wide positions, which carry three-year terms, incumbent moderator Deborah Brown has to run every year.
“And, you know, that’s kind of my superpower,” said Brown.
In addition to being the “parliamentarian person who manages town meeting sessions,” the moderator is also responsible for appointing all members of the Capital Expenditures and Appropriations committees.
“If I were just loading those committees with people who didn’t click with the town, who didn’t have the respect for the town, three years gives me a lot of time to make those appointments,” she said. “So instead, I have to run every year so folks can kind of ratify that.”
Brown has run, and landed the job, every year for the past 15 years. She runs, unopposed, for the 16th time, on March 5th, but her experience in Town Meeting started shortly after she moved to Lexington in 1995. She quickly got involved, serving on a couple of town finance committees, including a stint as chair of the Appropriations committee.
The Town moderator is supposed to refrain from commenting on any issues going before Town Meeting. But there is one thing she feels strongly about.
“When I first joined Town Meeting, there were very few younger parents of school aged children that had complicated lives, complicated schedules, and childcare,” she said. “So my big issue is, how can we continue to work towards making this meeting more accessible?”
Brown said she’s pleased with the legislature’s temporary approval to hold hybrid meetings and “will continue to support that as long as [she’s] legally able to do it.”
“My feeling is folks who, because of travel, schedules for work, childcare issues, mobility issues, all sorts of issues, benefit from having the option of being able to remotely participate when the kids go to bed, or in their hotel room, they will still be full participants in our government.”
Now retired, Brown also spent her professional career in public policy work, most recently working as Legislative Budget Director for State Senator Cindy Friedman. She described how her career being “pretty outward facing” helped in making sure people “feel like they have an opportunity to make their opinions heard — and heard with respect.”
“That skill and that empathy [from] my day job, it just sort of flows naturally from me that I truly have a lot of respect for the folks who are participating” she said.
Brown said that she wants people to feel like she is “running the meeting that they want.”
“People can disagree, but no personal attacks or casting aspersions on the motives of people who are speaking,” she said. My job is to maintain order, to make sure that people feel comfortable participating, and remind people when they start to stray outside the lines of our rules of decorum.”
To maintain this order, Brown said that “it helps to really know the meeting.”
“I have enormous respect for Town Meeting and for Town Meeting members and I think they know that,” Brown said. “I feel like I’m generally in sync with them and I genuinely enjoy it. And, you know, sometimes a little humor can defuse the situation, so I’m definitely not afraid to use that.”