The trash referendum is behind us, and it is a good moment to raise something bigger than trash. A majority of residents who voted chose no, and the Article 31 change stands only because overturning Town Meeting requires both a majority and at least twenty percent of all registered voters, a high bar our 1929 representative town meeting act set on purpose. Wherever you stood, thousands of neighbors engaged in good faith. This is not about the result.
It is about a pattern that should trouble us no matter how we vote.
In the trash campaign, advocates claimed that fees “will be imposed” on “everyone,” when the Town’s own FAQ and the ballot question itself guaranteed free curbside pickup for the baseline. Pointed out in public, and on Town Meeting email lists where anyone could check, the claim was not corrected. It was repeated.
That same debate leaned on another argument: that we had just raised taxes sharply for the new high school, so we should not add a trash fee on top. In principle, fair enough. But the tax figure carried into that argument was about 30 percent higher than the Town’s own published projection for the school, and it did not come from nowhere. During the debt exclusion campaign, some of the same advocates had put the increase at that inflated level, it was corrected in public, and it was repeated anyway. So a number already shown to be wrong became a reason to vote a certain way a second time, in a second campaign. The correction never caught up.
Town Meeting Members take no oath of accuracy. They are expressly exempt from the state conflict of interest law that governs other town officials. No law requires a campaign to tell the truth about a ballot question, and the courts have held, correctly, that government cannot police political speech. An individual Town Meeting Member cannot even be recalled. The only remedy is the next precinct election, up to three years away.
So the only accountability we have is each other. That is not a loophole to exploit. It is a responsibility. Our own Town Meeting Members Association exists, in its words, to establish the factual basis for intelligent decisions. That is the standard. Argue fiercely about fees, about a $660 million school, about how much to trust our boards. Those debates are legitimate, and we need them. What we cannot do, and still deserve Lexington’s reputation, is carry a number we know is wrong from one campaign into the next.
We can do better, and most of us already do. I am asking the few who don’t to meet the standard the rest of us meet: make your case, make it hard, but make it true. Correct the record when you get it wrong. Our neighbors cast real votes. They deserve real facts.
Jeremy Levitan
Town Meeting Member, Precinct 6