By Dakota Antelman — [email protected]
Handheld “clickers” are on the way for Concord voters this year after the Town Meeting Study Committee delivered long-awaited recommendations.
Concord’s 2025 annual town meeting will take place on June 2, later than usual due to the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution.
Once the clickers make their debut, Concord’s legislative summit could change again following a recommendation for remote participation.
Little is certain, though, and the remote recommendation is just the first step in a process that could go all the way to the governor’s office.

“It really is a frontier, and we don’t know yet if it could really work,” town moderator Carmin Reiss told the Select Board on December 2. “There’s so much work to be done to flesh that out.”
The window to submit articles for this year’s Town Meeting warrant opened Friday, January 17 and will close February 19.
Just over a month after the study committee presented its recommendations, town manager Kerry Lafleur returned to the board on January 6 with a plan to fund the inaugural clicker rental with money from the American Rescue Plan Act.
Calls for change
Town Meeting has long drawn a fraction of Concord’s registered voters. As some clamored for easier participation, residents advanced citizens’ petitions to change the meeting’s structure.
Voters backed one article directing Reiss to form the study committee. They referred three other articles to that committee.
Study committee chair Eric Moore led the study committee’s December 2 presentation to the Select Board.

Select Board members agreed the town should lease clickers for a trial period this year.
As the board reconvened for its first meeting of 2025, Lafleur said officials were still awaiting quotes from some vendors. But she said the lease will likely cost between $14,000 and $15,000.
The study committee recommended using clickers “when [they] are needed or desired.”
With the price tag in mind, Lafleur said she hopes the clickers don’t sit dormant.
“I would just hope, if we’re going to go to that expense, that we use them,” Lafleur said.
Remote participation
More questions loom about remote participation.
Concord would need approval from the state to offer the option.
The study committee is asking the Select Board to sponsor an article on the 2025 Town Meeting warrant asking voters to support a request. If the article passes, town staff could finalize the home rule petition and send it to the legislature.

Even if the legislature and the governor give their approval, Moore said it would take two years to implement technology needed to run a hybrid town meeting.
“There are many operational, usability, deployment, and security concerns,” Moore said, “and we are not aware of a complete deployed commercial solution.”
The Select Board did not make a decision on the study committee’s request to sponsor a remote participation article, instead planning to discuss the topic at a later date.
