(Host) Commentator Dennis Delaney is a former Republican State Senator.
And he’s looking forward to what he expects will be a passionate debate
at Charlotte’s town meeting this year.
(Delaney) Town meeting
has now slipped into the forefront of Vermonters’ thoughts. Our debates
on local issues, and occasionally some that go beyond the local, will
soon take place in town halls and school gyms across the state. Mighty
or modest as the arguments may be, they’re the simple yet powerful
dynamic of a free people gathering and deciding.
And sometimes
the debates truly do transcend the mundane. I’ll never forget a town
meeting some 30 years ago, when my little town of Charlotte had an
advisory item on the warning seeking citizen support for a nuclear
freeze. Those were Cold War days and the descriptive acronym was MAD –
mutually assured destruction. In addition to Charlotte many other towns
and villages had the same item up for debate.
Although at the
time Charlotte was still a decidedly Republican town, the vote was
lopsidedly in favor of the resolution. In most other towns and villages
the result was the same. The message from Vermont to the country and the
world was: Stop the madness. It was thrilling to be a Vermonter at town
meeting that year.
This year however, the coin of debate has
flipped to the side of the very local. For us the current hot debate is
not about Armageddon, but the proposed construction of a short span of
sidewalk, not more than a few hundred meters long, in the west village.
I
think it’s to our town’s credit that the selectboard and other leaders
have decided to forgo any available federal or state help. Projects like
sidewalks offer the perfect excuse to apply for a government grant. But
the money comes with serious strings attached in the form of endless
regulations. No thanks.
It’s not hard to imagine how the debate
will go this town meeting day because the script has already been
written and vetted at past selectboard meetings and even at a previous
town meeting where it received scant support. The arguments will be the
same: modern Charlotters who cherish all things "safety" will be pitted
against traditional folk who will say that we don’t need a sidewalk,
never had one, and that we don’t need to further burden the tax rate in
order to buy one and then pay the
maintenance.
While I can’t
predict the outcome I can tell you that the sidewalk’s passionate
opponents have already won a few rounds. The selectboard wanted to slip
the cost into the budget as a line item. No, said the opponents. We want
a separate item on the warning. A compromise was proposed and it too
was argued down. The opponents now have a separate item on the warning.
It will be debated and voted upon as such. Stay tuned.
I look
forward to town meeting. Free people in a small Vermont town will argue
vigorously about what matters most to them. Then they will go home again
– friends and neighbors still.