Shrewsbury Committee Hears Andover Town Manager Defend Open Town Meeting After Decade of Study

SHREWSBURY — June 1, 2026 — Shrewsbury's Form of Government Study Committee heard from Andover Town Manager Andrew Flanagan, who described how his town twice studied changing its government and both times chose to keep open town meeting. Flanagan told the committee that Andover — nearly identical to Shrewsbury in population and registered voters, and operating under a town manager act from the same 1957 era — spends roughly $150,000 annually on civic engagement improvements including a communications director, a $7,000-per-year resident text-alert program called the Andover Insider, and pre-town-meeting public roadshows, and that a UMass Lowell study found online civic participation grew 12 percent over six years as a result. The committee also reviewed a draft community outreach survey designed by staff member Tanner but deferred a vote after members flagged the need to add an optional comment field, enable email-verification to prevent duplicate submissions, and optimize the form for mobile devices. The committee said it would schedule a targeted virtual meeting within two to three weeks to vote on the revised draft, citing concern that further delay would compress the summer window for in-person community outreach.