The following is written for people who will be attending Town Meeting for the first time. If you're a regular . . . feel free to read on, but you could probably write a lot of this yourself!

Any registered voter in the Town of Wareham can attend Town Meeting. Things will probably make the most sense if you arrive by the 7 p.m. call to order on May 3. But, if other obligations intervene, you are welcome to arrive at any point during the meeting - on that night or subsequent nights. Town Meeting will undoubtedly continue to May 4, perhaps longer.

The "agenda" for Town Meeting is the "warrant." There will be copies at the Meeting. If you want to read up on the issues beforehand, there is lots of information on our website, www.WarehamVillageSoup.com. But don't be deterred from attending if you have not studied up beforehand. Pretty much no one shows up knowing a lot about everything.

Individual items on the warrant are called "articles." The Town Moderator runs Town Meeting and will generally take the articles in order.

The exception to taking things in order is likely to be the "consent agenda," in which the Moderator groups a lot of non-controversial articles that need to be routinely approved by Town Meeting. If no one objects to any individual article's inclusion on the consent agenda, one "yes" vote can get a lot of the routine stuff out of the way.

A motion on an article is made by a member of the Finance Committee, although the "Fin Com" may defer to the Planning Board or a member of the Community Preservation Committee (CPC) for articles submitted by those committees. A motion is for one of the following:

n  Approval

n  Further study. This generally means, "This might be a good idea, but it needs more work or we need more information." It can come back to Town Meeting at a later date if the motion includes what is desired for further study.

n  Indefinite postponement. This generally means, "We don't want this to happen." Most articles that have been indefinitely postponed can come back to a later Town Meeting. Indefinitely postponed zoning articles cannot come back to Town Meeting for two years.

After a motion is made, anyone at Town Meeting can stand up to talk about it or to make an amendment. You have to be recognized by the Moderator to begin speaking.

Amendments can get tricky. Depending on how the vote on an amendment goes, "yes" and "no" in the final vote may mean "yes" or "no" to the article as printed in the warrant or the exact opposite. If at any time you are unsure about what you are being asked to vote on, ask!  Stand up, shout out "point of order!" and , when recognized by the Moderator, ask your question.

(You will hear a lot of "points of order." When used correctly, a point of order is a request for clarification or a question about procedure.)

After debate has gone on for a while, someone may stand up and "move the question." That gives Town Meeting a chance to decide whether to continue the debate or take a vote. The Moderator can disallow the motion if all sides have not been heard. Realistically, a question is usually moved after every side has been heard from several times.

Most votes at Town Meeting are "voice votes." At the moderator's prompt, those in favor say "Yea," then those opposed day "No." That often seals the deal as one side or the other is near silent.

If the vote is close, the Moderator will move to a "hand count." The "yes" voters are asked to hold up their cards, then the "no" voters. There are no secret ballots in Town Meeting.

One final note of caution: Be prepared to hear a lot of people using a lot of fancy legal language. Some of it is necessary. Some of it is people liking to use fancy language. Don't let it throw you. At some point, both sides of everything will probably be explained in plain and simple English. If at any point you don't think that has happened, just stand up and ask. You are as valuable a part of Town Meeting as every other person in that room!