Windham officials might scrap their traditional town meeting-style government, calling the meetings inefficient for a town that now boasts around 20,000 residents.

The meetings would be replaced by a referendum, held at the same time as the annual school budget referendum.

The issue was discussed in depth at a Town Council meeting on Saturday, July 8. The council questioned whether the town meeting’s traditional open-floor discussion and secret ballot process, which is required by town charter to approve the municipal budget each year, should be replaced with a referendum process. This would constitute an amendment to the charter, and require a public hearing held by the council, as well as a public vote that requires that participation of at least 30% of those who voted in the most recent gubernatorial election.

Town Manager Robert Burns said the 2025 town meeting ran for nearly five hours after voters rejected crucial parts of the proposed municipal budget. While the 2025 meeting had good turnout, most town meetings in recent years have had a very low number of attendees relative to Windham’s population, and even several 2025 attendees, who left before the end of the long meeting, felt that their votes weren’t being adhered to.

Within the Lakes Region, the model Windham is considering is currently in place in Gray, where residents vote on the town budget as part of a ballot question during the June elections. However, they do still hold town meetings if important parts of the budget are voted down at referendum, as will be the case in early September.

Town Council Chair Jarrod Maxfield asked how they would get around Section 1 of the town charter, which says the town meeting must be held on the first Saturday following the second Tuesday in June. Town Attorney Benjamin T. McCall explained that there are two sections of the charter that need to be amended: Section 1, which talks about when the town meeting is, and Article 8, which talks about the budget being approved and has language about the majority present in the town meeting being needed to approve. McCall suggested that the date of the new “town meeting” be changed in order to line up with school budget validations, which Councilor David Nadeau supported.

The council was divided on how the warrant items would be presented on the ballot, with some hoping that the town would vote individually on each item, as in previous town meetings, or merge the entire budget into a single item with information underneath in terms of categories. Councilor Nick Kalogerakis wants the ballot to be presented in a way that can be easily understood by all voters, and that, if written as all one item, it would be more likely to get voted down. Meanwhile, McCall said that the one-item vote would work in the same way that the school ballot situation does, which adds an explainer.

Ultimately, the council decided to put the question of whether to move away from town meetings on the November 2026 ballot, out of concern that 2025, being an off-year election, would not meet the turnout numbers required to change the charter.