Note there are actually three elections, the town of Thornton, the Thornton Central School District, and the Pemi Baker Regional High School (PRHS) District. If you know voted, you know this because you had three separate ballots.
Election results are here: https://www.townofthornton.org/sites/g/files/vyhlif5081/f/pages/election_results_3.12.24_0.pdf
You will notice the PRHS ballot is different than the other two. On this one, there are the warrant articles included. Why are warrant articles included there but not in the other two? The answer is that there are actually two different methods of voting for warrant articles in the state.
- The traditional method is what is used in the town and the TCS school district. With this method, the governing body puts together budget and warrant articles then, step one is a public hearing to present them to the public. At the public hearing you can ask questions (and hopefully get answers, but not always) but you cannot modify the articles. Step 2 is the annual meeting where each article is presented and discussed and can be amended from the floor and then voted on by the people in the audience.
- PRHS uses what’s called “SB2” named after the Senate Bill (hence SB) in the early 90s. With this, after the governing body puts together its budget, step 1 is a “deliberative session” where each article is discussed and can be amended from the floor. The public does not vote on the article at this meeting, rather, the warrant articles are voted on on the ballot at the election. The big difference here is that, whereas the annual meeting may have a couple hundred people in attendance voting, the election routinely has 400-500 voters. SB2 is more democratic method because it involves more citizens.