By JEFF TIRRELL
(ORANGE) — It appears the town of Orange will hold its annual Town Meeting in the parking lot of Mahar Regional School due to ongoing pandemic. The meeting would ordinarily be held at Town Hall, but the town’s health agent, Matthew Fortier, said Covid-19 protocols have made that plan impossible.
“We met at Town Hall upstairs on December 1 to determine how many people we could fit upstairs socially-distanced, six feet apart, and we figured out we could fit about 110 people,” said Fortier. “One of the concerns is that we would have too many people show up at the Town Meeting, and if that happens, we would have to postpone the meeting. You can’t keep people outside unable to vote.”
The Orange Selectboard voted to hold the meeting drive-in style at the high school parking lot. The meeting is scheduled for January 7, and officials are finding out if the lot will be available that day.