As promised, here is another of the Selectboard Candidate Interviews, this time from Spoon Agave, who is challenging Dora Bouboulis for the three year seat. Read on for Spoon's questions and answers.

1. What made you decide to run at this time? In what ways do you think you'd be helpful on the Selectboard?

I am running at this time because the Selectboard needs a major shot of energy. For two years it has been languishing, as I characterize it, in a “maintenance” state. This is a reactive state in which the only business attended to is that which comes before them. They appear to make no effort to anticipate a problem, observe or analyze a trend or imagine the future. During this period the town’s economy continued to decline. The Selectboard is essentially just bailing the boat ever more feverishly but doing nothing to address the source of the leaks. I am not going to permit these leaks to go unnoticed. I am going to come to this board with determination and passion. How will I be helpful to this board? By picking up the oars and trying to row it out of the doldrums.

2. With regard to the budget, it has been said that if the town does not want to raise taxes, it will have to cut services. Do you agree with this assessment? If so, what services do you think should be cut? If not, what would you do instead?

Is cutting services the only alternative to raising taxes?  Not at all.  Other forms of revenue can be increased and efficiencies heightened.   For instance a municipally owned telecommunications network, where communications services like cable TV, the internet and phone service are treated like public necessities similar to water and sewer and street and road maintenance.  If we can have parking and electric enterprises we can surely have another for communications.   This would create jobs, provide better service and keep all the revenue in town.  We can also do a great deal less out-sourcing and contracting while putting our fellow citizens to work.  I point to the footbridge by the Co-op as an example.  We sent $400,000 to an out of state company to build and install the new bridge rather than build it ourselves and keep all the money here.  Public Works has in the past built much bigger bridges.

I took some time last year to ask numerous friends and acquaintances about ideas for increasing revenue and almost every one had something to add to the list.  After all my years around the municipal building I am quite aware that the only obstacle to implementing a myriad of revenue enhancing ideas is a Selectboard using its authority to repress and stifle rather than stimulate and encourage.  Rather than figure out how to make something work they spend their time straining for every reason it can’t work.  Guess what the results are?

3. In the current economic climate, people are feeling the pinch. What can the Selectboard do to make things easier for residents to get through these tough times?

To help us all get through these tough times the Selectboard has to do everything possible to provide jobs.  If it cannot bring companies to town it needs to create the jobs right here.  See #2 above for ideas.

4. What can the Selectbaord do to help businesses that are already here, as well as to encourage new businesses to start?

What can the Selectboard do to help businesses?  Create jobs and all other economic instruments to get the local economy rolling.  When people have money to spend businesses will do well.

5. Respond to the following "true or false" statements:

- The driver of Brattleboro's economy is money.
- The driver of Brattleboro's economy is people.

An economy is merely the sum total of trading.  Economics are the principles, essentially laws of nature or behavior which govern trade.  Nearly all of our economic transactions utilize money as the medium.  To a small extent we trade or barter good and services without any money involved.  Economic principles are neutral, just like the laws of physics.  They cannot be changed.  However we can apply forces to control and or direct the way they work to produce certain results.

6. Tell us about your ideas to help Brattleboro thrive despite the larger economy.

If Brattleboro is avoid being dragged down or crushed by larger misguided economic forces it must become more independent of them.  I believe there are plenty of citizens who can and will provide the impetus and general wherewithal to accomplish this.  An essential Selectboard function is to be supportive by providing the kind of “nerve center” that would enable the citizens to be most effective.  The town has a website, meeting spaces, the authority to accept grants, all sorts of equipment and tools, well over a hundred skilled employees and many other resources that it can make available.

7. Pay As You Throw — are you for it or against it, and why?

 I do not support pay-as-you-throw.  Altho I am deeply concerned with consumption and waste and recycling I am opposed to placing any further burdens on low income residents.  In fact this is the issue in general with cutting services.  The lesser affluent people cannot afford alternatives.  I am also opposed because town-wide tax supported collection is the most efficient system.  Breaking it down will create less efficiency which translates as greater overall costs.  The budget MAY reduce $300,000 but the total outlay of all the citizens MAY be $400,000.  Our economy is now that little bit weaker.

8. Do you feel it's the Town's role to own and manage certain public properties such as parks, museums, and other recreational spaces? Would you be in favor of more or fewer such Town-owned facilities in the future?

Is it the town’s role to own parks, museums, recreational spaces etc?  That’s up to all of us as citizens of the town.  They all cost money.  It is our money.  However we might examine and question how we run them.  Can they be maintained more cheaply?  Can they bring in more revenue? Are we confident that the benefits of each equal the costs of each?  I am by no means suggesting that this is entirely a monetary equation.

9. Do you currently support relicensing of Vermont Yankee Nuclear Plant?

I do not support extending the license of the nuclear plant.  At this point, with the tritium leak, it may be wiser to not wait until 2012 and close it immediately.  For the past several years the problems there seem to occur with increasing frequency and size and intensity.  Every one of those problems substantiates the builder’s assessment that the plant has only a 40 year useful life.

10. What's the most impressive thing you've read recently?

 A recent book that made a great impression is The Disappearance of Childhood by Neil Postman.  It is a marvellous insight into the way history has viewed and treated children and how these attitudes and values are changing today as well as a brilliant analysis and commentary on modern society.

Thanks for participating in the iBrattleboro Selectboard Candidate Interviews!