Town Meeting

Mayor Goode fields a question from one of roughly 50 people who attended a town meeting at the Mount Moriah Pentecostal Holiness Church in Germantown. The session was one in a series of meetings Goode is staging to explain the proposed city budget. The mayor also presented his five-year financial plan for the city, and listened to area residents express their concerns.

Mayor W. Wilson Goode will bring his five-year financial plan and all his powers of persuasion to a town meeting, where he will meet the public, at the Eighth Police District headquarters on Jan. 31. Eleanor Dezzi, executive director of the Mayor's Office of Neighborhoods, said the meeting would be the third in a series of similar gatherings to be scheduled around the city during the next three months. "The mayor would like to go into each neighborhood, meet the leaders, discuss with them the details of his five-year financial plan and answer questions," Dezzi said.

Bucks County's NAACP president says that Bristol Township police and residents of the Venice Ashby housing project should hold a town meeting to ease hostilities over drugs and other problems that led to a melee in July. Allonia C. Boles, president of the NAACP chapter, said in an interview that a preliminary investigation into the melee found deep-seated tension between the predominantly black population of Venice Ashby and the mostly white police force that patrols the area. Boles said the tensions had been amplified by the area's crack-cocaine problem.

Whenever there is a threat of residential development in the tightly knit communities of Upper Darby's second ward, Councilman Nicholas A. Micozzie pulls out what he considers a winning formula. President Reagan has "Star Wars. " Middle Eastern militants take hostages. But Micozzie, a member of council since 1971, calls a town meeting. "Whenever there is a zoning controversy, I bring the residents of that area out in a town meeting," Micozzie said. "In the last 15 years," he said, "there has been at least one controversial zoning plan a year.

Imagine a new beginning to the election of presidents. Just before the primary season a group of voters from across the nation could meet with the candidates for several days, face to face. These citizens would reflect the nation's diversity in terms of race, age, ethnicity, urbanization, economic class and region. They would be given briefing materials on major campaign issues and the candidate's positions. After several days of small-group dialogue they would be polled on their views of the candidates and what positions they have taken on issues.

The halls of John F. Kennedy Junior High School were covered with posters urging residents to come to Willingboro's town meeting. Despite the cheerful advertisements, the turnout Saturday was disappointing - fewer than 100 residents attended, and only one of the winners of the poster contest showed up to receive his savings bond. But at the end, speakers were optimistic about the likelihood of a revitalization of town spirit. The gathering was modeled on traditional New England town meetings, where residents can talk about problems in the community and plan for its future.

Halloween is still two weeks away, but there was no shortage of horror stories Saturday at a town meeting on the Philadelphia Parking Authority. Some motorists told of malfunctioning parking kiosks; others said that their cars had been towed because of clerical errors, and that they had been charged hundreds of dollars to get them back. Two women said the parking authority had confiscated and sold their cars over violations they never committed. The meeting, organized by a citizens group, the People's Choice Movement Coalition, attracted a diverse crowd of about 35 to the Berean Institute at 19th Street and Girard Avenue.

Come the first Tuesday in March, just as the winter-weary begin to think about snowmelt and the farmers about planting or sugaring, this small community in the southeast corner of this rural state gathers to conduct its business. It's town meeting time. Classes dismiss for the day, and residents assemble in the cafeteria of the Guilford Central School. The room can seat about 175 people, but 200 or more of Guilford's 1,000 registered voters usually attend. With a copy of the town's annual report in hand, they consider such budgetary items as whether to "vote the sum of $4,127 (of which $640 is to paint the building)

Camden City Council has scheduled a town meeting at 6 p.m. today to discuss adoption of the Cramer Hill redevelopment plan. The meeting, expected to draw hundreds, will be held in St. Anthony of Padua Roman Catholic Church, 28th Street and River Road. Council is to take a final vote Thursday on the plan, which would displace nearly 1,200 households and create 6,000 new homes. A state Superior Court judge ordered another vote after the project became snagged in legal entanglements earlier in the year.

HONEA PATH, S.C. - Four years after the summer of rage that fueled the tea party movement, the political circuit is much quieter - even in Republican bastions like this. It's not clear whether conservatives who rallied against President Obama's health-care overhaul during raucous town hall meetings are tired, wary, complacent, or simply saving their strength for a big push in next year's elections. Whatever the reason, the more muted tone was palpable as conservative lawmakers in South Carolina fanned out across their state to meet with constituents last week during the first congressional break since the disclosure that the Internal Revenue Service targeted conservative groups for extra scrutiny.

STAFFORD TOWNSHIP, N.J. - They began on stages, in front of small crowds, and starred a new governor selling his tax policies to constituents. Nearly three years later, Gov. Christie's town hall meetings are theaters-in-the-round with soundtracks, videos, and huge audiences. They are communications juggernauts that have helped propel Christie from rookie leader of a medium-sized state to potential Republican presidential candidate. On Wednesday at his 100th town hall meeting, held in a church gymnasium in this Ocean County town, Christie served up many of the same jokes and the theatrics that audiences in all 21 counties have experienced since February 2010.

State Sen. Diane Allen (R., Burlington) was backstage Thursday afternoon with Gov. Christie as he made his way into the gymnasium of the Mount Laurel YMCA for the 96th town hall of his term. "She saw the dazed look in my eyes. She goes, 'Governor, it's Thursday, and you're in New Jersey,' " Christie recounted in his opening remarks on stage. The Republican governor had just returned to the business of gritty New Jersey politics after a two-day swing through Ohio for GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney and six weeks of on-again, off-again campaigning for U.S. Senate and gubernatorial candidates in eight other states.

Gov. Corbett was repeatedly interrupted by protesters during a town-hall meeting Wednesday night at the Philadelphia Museum of Art organized by a talk-radio host. WPHT's Dom Giordano ended the event a half-hour earlier than its planned 90 minutes when it became clear that Corbett could not answer questions without being shouted at inside Van Pelt Auditorium. Police removed more than 10 people from the meeting. At one point, protesters interrupted the program for seven minutes.

DENVILLE, N.J. - The crowd was familiar and friendly, and Gov. Christie seemed to soak up the energy. Speaking in a charter school's packed gymnasium, the governor bragged that he had Democrats fighting with him not over spending money, but over cutting spending. "To have Democrats arguing with me about which taxes to cut, I feel like I have died and gone to heaven," the governor said at his town hall at Morris County School of Technology in his home county. He noted that despite cutting education money, test scores in the state remained high overall.

Medford Mayor Chris Myers, plagued by allegations of a sex scandal involving a male escort, cited "work commitments" when he resigned Monday. He did not elaborate about those commitments in the letter he submitted to the town clerk and manager. Shortly after the scandal broke in late October, Myers stopped returning calls for comment and began missing town meetings. Myers, a Republican and a family man, was vice president of international business development at Lockheed Martin's Moorestown campus before being placed on administrative leave last month.

Consolidation of towns is needed to control property-tax growth, Gov. Christie said Tuesday in Princeton, where voters agreed this month to a merger with Princeton Township. Such decisions should be made locally, Christie said at a town meeting at the public library. "It's about making choices: We can't any longer think we can sit around and have everything we want and pay for it," Christie said during the 90-minute meeting. "We can't try and govern in a way that makes everyone happy.

The interest rate on municipal bonds and the structuring of redevelopment deals are subjects that generally send the small crowds that attend municipal government meetings running for their cars. But at a town-hall meeting in Collingswood on Wednesday - two days after Moody's downgraded the borough's credit rating to junk status - close to 100 residents turned out to pepper officials with questions about the borough's financial health. "I don't mean to be obtuse, but who are you paying this money to?"

JIM THORPE, Pa. - They had to leave the protest signs outside. As about 250 people settled into their chairs for a town hall meeting last week with Sen. Pat Toomey (R., Pa.), a staffer laid down the law: No cursing. No noisemakers. No chanting. Please respect others' rights. For good measure, five uniformed state troopers patrolled the edges of the oak-floored auditorium at Penn's Peak resort. As controlled as the situation was, at least Toomey was putting himself in position to take guff.