Proctor
Proctor is a town in Rutland County, Vermont that boasts a population of 1,741 people (as of 2010). Based on data collected by an inter-collegial team of students, here are our findings regarding its Town Meeting process.
2018 Town Meeting
Summary of Findings
In his book Real Democracy, Dr. Bryan discusses Proctor’s history as a mining town with strong union membership and a stronghold of the Proctor dynasty from which four of Vermont’s governors came. In the long term data, Proctor came in dead last on the Real Democracy Index. Dr. Bryan shows that the male dominated structures of the mining union and the power dynamics of the family owned mining business contributed in a large part to the low score. Additionally, they hold their meeting at night which hurts their score a lot. This was true for the 2018 meeting as well. Proctor had the lowest Real Democracy score of the towns we studied. Only 42.8% of attendees were women with only 30% of participants being women. Unfortunately, we do not have data on which articles each person participated on, but participation was also ow overall with less than half of the participants engaging more than once.
Major Data Points
| Year | Peak Attendance | Attendance Rate* | Participation Rate | Real Democracy Score** | Population | Meeting Duration |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2018 | 63 | 5.32% | 15.87% | 21.19 | 1741 | 1:26 |
| 2002 | 115 | 10.06% | 26.09% | 36.15 | 1143 | 2:08 |
| 1998 | 72 | 6.02% | 22.22% | 28.24 | 1197 | 0:59 |
| 1992 | 99 | 7.57% | 19.19% | 26.76 | 1308 | 1:38 |
| 1988 | 94 | 7.20% | 19.15% | 26.35 | 1305 | 1:20 |
| 1984 | 145 | 10.73% | 19.31% | 30.04 | 1351 | 1:44 |
| 1983 | 81 | 6.14% | 27.16% | 33.30 | 1319 | 1:07 |
| 1982 | 103 | 8.01% | 24.27% | 32.28 | 1286 | 1:40 |
| 1980 | 112 | 8.02% | 19.64% | 27.66 | 1397 | 0:53 |
| 1979 | 246 | 18.10% | 14.23% | 32.33 | 1359 | 1:40 |
| 1977 | 203 | 15.53% | 17.24% | 32.77 | 1307 | 2:38 |
| 1971 | 252 | 19.70% | 21.03% | 40.73 | 1279 | 2:45 |
*Attendance Rates are calculated using the number of registered voters and peak attendance numbers.
**Real Democracy scores are calculated using attendance and participation numbers. For more infomation on them see the Data Overview Page
Student Involvement
Students help gather data and produce videos on town meeting. Lunch and mileage is paid for.