Canton Select Board

Loaded: Select Board minutes (called the Board of Selectmen until 2020) from January 9, 2018 through August 25, 2026, from the town’s Laserfiche records archive, which holds Select Board minutes back to 2002 (MassVoter has loaded 2018 on). The town has not posted open-session minutes for 62 meeting dates from 2021 to August 2026 that are listed in its Agenda Center (most of them from June to December 2021, February to December 2022 and February to September 2023, plus three in 2024, six in 2025 and two in 2026), or for any meeting after August 25, 2026. For 27 of those dates the town has posted only the executive-session minutes; we load those as the record of that meeting and say so. Joint meetings with other boards are included, but only the Select Board’s own votes. The minutes are scanned pages with a text layer; ten 2021 files had no text layer, so MassVoter read them with text recognition. Canton’s minutes give the mover, the seconder and the count for almost every vote (“Motion: Mr. J. McCourt Second: Ms. T. Boyden Vote: 5-0”), and split votes name the members who voted no, abstained or stepped aside in brackets (“Vote: 3-2 (Ms. Harrington and Ms. Boyden opposed)”). Remote meetings in 2020–2021 and executive-session votes use roll calls listing each member’s vote. When the count matches the members present, or every member answered in the affirmative, we show every member present as voting yes; when the minutes name the members who voted no or abstained and the count adds up, everyone else present as voting yes. Where the minutes give a split count without names, a roll call leaves out a member who was there or names one the attendance line does not show, or the count does not match the members present, we show the count only and add a note. Motions written down with no vote are shown with the result only. Two members named Connolly (John J. and Christopher J.) served together until 2023; where the minutes say only “Mr. Connolly” we do not guess which one. Members who stepped aside (recused), had not yet arrived or had left are left out of that vote. We will ask the town to confirm any noted vote.