| Subject: Town meeting.. that was interesting.. |
Author:
Shawn
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Date Posted: 02:59:53 06/08/04 Tue
The place was packed.. I assume that's not normal.
I think that the work to get people to go to the meeting (done by everyone) was successful in this regard.
The budget was the key issue that people were concerned with. I also assume that this is always true as well.
From where I was sitting, I could see where the vote was going. The school committee did a fair job asking for more, but the town did a better job saying that "there was no more.. and where do we cut?" The gentleman from the fire department did an excellent job describing the situation, while Ms Espindle just confused everyone (I had no idea, when she was done, how many cuts and layoffs there would be and where they would come from). She kept emphasizing some fact about the info not being presented to the school committee yet.. but the people in the seats didn't care about that.
And of course, everyone around me was still angry at her personally over the contract issue (that will never seem to go away). The issue seemed to be more about her than the budget itself.
I was glad to see the moderator (with Dennis support) stop Mr Maraganis when he kept trying to attack the town officers.. does this guy ever stop? Why didnt the moderator tell him to sit down and stop walking around in front of other speakers?
The main issue, in my mind, after watching the joint finance meeting last week and this town meeting, is the "us vs them" attitude throughout the town. This is just wrong and must be ended.
The schools are an integral part of community, and their services and support to families tie directly in the safety departments. A cut to services to kids in need creates more dropouts, leading to more fires, dui's, breakins to businesses and homes, drug use and drinking. Cutting a school budget now means increasing safety spending later.
I have encouraged May Paquette to find some new structure where members of the school committee can meet regularly with members of the town selectmen so that everyone can get to know each other better, and maybe learn to compromise and support each other when things get tough.
In private enterprise (where most of us work), weekly or monthly meetings of the department heads are held so as to keep everyone on track and in communication with each other. We dont split the company in half and meet separately (where you naturally start creating an atmosphere of what are "we" going to do to succeed, and how will "they" get in our way).
Breaking this "us/them" attitude must be a focus of all the members of our town government for the near future.
Warren had some recommendation last week on his show that sounded structural, but I didn't understand it all yet. I hope we find that the people are willing to get to work on this.
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