Crowd Crunch Postpones Marblehead Town Meeting

MARBLEHEAD, MA — In an era when many towns struggle to get enough residents to town meeting to fulfill a quorum necessary to conduct official business, Marblehead on Monday night had to postpone its town meeting and move the venue because of overcrowding not seen in more than four decades.

Moderator Jack Attridge said that, after no more than 850 residents had attended the "open" town meeting in any year since 1983, there were more than 2,000 residents who attempted to get into Monday night's meeting. After a 45-minute delay to try to accommodate crowds — as well as contend with a voting machine glitch related to the hardware — Attridge announced that everyone should leave and come back to the high school field house the next night.

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"Nobody wants to do this meeting more tonight than I do," Attridge said. "Especially after all of the hoops that we jumped through to get here. ... To say it's been a long day is an understatement.

"But I have people in the gym who are coming over here and saying that it's unfair that they can't see from where we have them seated right now and I can't run an unfair meeting."

Attridge had intended to push through the voting machine issue — noting town meeting had existed for more than a century without voting machines — but the increasing crowds became the tipping point concern at the Veterans Middle School performing arts center and gymnasium.

"As much as I am overjoyed at the participation, we have a capacity issue," Attridge said, "This is sort of a moderator's worst nightmare where he gets a lot of people to show up but we might not have the capacity. ...

"The last thing we want to do is send everybody home."

Driving meeting fervor are three key articles, including zoning changes related to the MBTA Community Act, and tax override requests for bonding of capital improvements to Marblehead High School ($8 million for a new roof and HVAC system) and the Mary Alley municipal building renovations.

The meeting was rescheduled for 7 p.m. on Tuesday at the high school field house.

(Scott Souza is a Patch field editor covering Beverly, Danvers, Marblehead, Peabody, Salem and Swampscott. He can be reached at Scott.Souza@Patch.com. X/Twitter: @Scott_Souza.)