iBrattleboro.com - PAYT Letters to the Reformer

PAYT Letters to the Reformer | 7 comments | Create New Account

The following comments are owned by whomever posted them. This site is not responsible for what they may say.

We Are No Longer Talking Trash

Authored by: pjmelton on Tuesday, March 30 2010 @ 02:45 PM GMT+4

Dear Editor,

Last night I sat in disbelief as three Selectboard members expressed apparent fear - fear that if they honored a petition for referendum filed by citizens of the town, they would be opening the town to a lawsuit. But when, in all the history of the world, have citizens sued a governmental body for the crime of allowing them to vote?

The Selectboard's fears were vague, and could not be articulated fully upon questioning - perhaps because they were too eager to get on to their proposed remedy. The Selectboard suggested they would "stop the clock" on the referendum deadline (already passed), re-write the petition wording themselves, and have the petitioners re-sign to assent to the change in wording. Instead of language calling for a referendum on the $328,000 involving trash disposal, the Selectboard's own language would call for a referendum on the entire budget. They suggested offering petitioners two weeks to assent to the new wording.

If anything is vulnerable to legal question, surely it is this proposal, and not the original petition. Where in the Town Charter is the Selectboard given the power to "stop the clock" - let alone go back in time, as the clock has already run out? Where in the Town Charter does it say the Selectboard can write petitions for citizens to sign? Where in the Town Charter does it indicate that the Selectboard can randomly choose a fourteen-day period for signing the petition? I'll tell you: nowhere.

Because we are the one and only town in Vermont that has representative Town Meeting, our Charter permits us to petition for a referendum when an action of Town Meeting may not reflect the will of the people. Actions like those taken at last night's Selectboard meeting - made on the flimsy excuse that they fear legal action if they allow voters to exercise their rights - fly in the face of common sense, of logic and of democracy itself. The word "absurd" was invented for just such occasions.

I urge voters to write to Selectboard members Jesse Corum, Dick DeGray and Martha O'Connor requesting that they convene a special meeting and reverse their decision denying voters their right to a referendum. By using the fear of legal action as a rhetorical maneuver, they effectively begged for legal action from disenfranchised citizens. This isn't about trash anymore. This is about the Selectboard trashing our rights.

Paula Melton
West Brattleboro

---
"Economic laws are not made by nature. They are made by human beings." -- FDR

PAYT Letters to the Reformer

Authored by: annikee on Tuesday, March 30 2010 @ 05:29 PM GMT+4

Dear Editor;
In three days of last week, 546 Brattleboro citizens signed a petition to put PAYT to a Townwide vote. Our Town Clerk counted and verified up to 254 signatures. 250 verified signatures were all that was needed to pass it through to the Selectboard.

Our Town Charter states:

"If within said five days a petition, signed by not fewer than two hundred fifty (250) votes of the town, including at least fifty from each district, containing their names and addresses as they appear on the check list, or signed by not fewer than fifty town meeting members, be filed with the selectboard requesting that the question or questions involved in such vote be submitted to the voters of the town at large, then the selectboard, within fourteen days after the filing of the petition, shall call a special town meeting, which shall be held within ten days after the issuing of the call, for the sole purpose of presenting to the voters at large the question or questions so involved. "

But when the Selectboard called the meeting to address the petition, they rejected it. They have refused to follow the Town Charter. Instead, they offered another petition, composed by themselves and the Town Lawyer, and they said should be signed by the same 254 they'd counted, except that nobody knows who was counted. So everyone should start all over.

This SB version of the petition changes the language, saying nothing directly about PAYT. It says merely to reject the whole budget, which would then require another budget be drawn up by the Town Manager and another Representative Town Meeting be called to vote again. This merry-go-round version of the petition is designed for failure of the cause. Our Charter leaves room for citizens to petition for redressing what was done at Representative Town Meeting. The entire purpose (and the spirit of the Charter) is to create a vote which leaves the final decision in the hands of the voting townspeople of Brattleboro, not to go back around the same circle that gave us the result we're contesting.

I, and many others, await the decision of the Court on our original petition, and on the SB to call a townwide vote, as is required by our Town Charter.

Laura Austan
Brattleboro

PAYT Letters to the Reformer

Authored by: Mosski on Wednesday, March 31 2010 @ 11:54 AM GMT+4

Editor,

We would like to respond to the "offer" from the SB Monday to circulate a new petition on the PAYT referendum -- there will be no new petition circulated.

There are several commanding reasons for this decision.

First and foremost, the original petition signed by 546 citizens of Brattleboro and turned into the Town Clerk within the 5 day deadline required by the Town Charter has no problems. The Charter on referendums is clear, the petition language is clear, and they are in complete agreement with each other.

Secondly, the SB has no authority to extend the deadline, or set a new deadline, for a new petition to be handed in. The deadline has passed and we accept that.

Thirdly, SB's petition, not ours, would ask the voters of the town to defeat the entirety of Article 9 (the town budget). Aside from PAYT, the SB did a great job on the budget and we see no need to throw out the baby with the bathwater.

Fourthly, the SB's concocted idea of a town-wide vote on the entire budget, if successful, would send the budget back to a new Representative Town Meeting. The sole purpose of the Charter's section of Referendum is to give the voters a vehicle by which they can reverse a town meeting decision.

The Selectboard, as stipulated by the Charter, has 14 days from when the petition was submitted to call a special town meeting to put the referendum's questions to the voters of the town by Australian ballot. That day is April 8th. Until then, we wait.

Moss Kahler

PAYT Letters to the Reformer

Authored by: Maus Anon E on Wednesday, March 31 2010 @ 01:04 PM GMT+4

***The sole purpose of the Charter's section of Referendum is to give the voters a vehicle by which they can reverse a town meeting decision.***

Moss, that seems like the town's position - that the the charter only allows you to "reverse" Town Meeting representatives' actions, which, in the case of the budget, was to approve an ammended version of the it. If you "reverse" that decision, you have an unapproved budget - which they say must then be approved by representative Town Meeting since voters may only reverse an action of Town Meeting representatives, not provide a remedy. Town Meeting representatives didn't vote for PAYT, it was already in the budget, so you can't "reverse" that, you have to alter the budget under.

The charter doesn't say "reverse," it says "The voters of the town may petition for a referendum, by Australian ballot of all voters of the town, on any action of the Representative Town Meeting." To me, that suggests that voters can petition any referendum, even one that *alters* an action of representative Town Meeting to suit their desired outcome. And that seems, to me, to be what the petitioners are asking for: to alter the budget to include $328,000 for trash removal.

Maybe I'm just being picky about the language?

---
Slán abhaile

D'oh!

Authored by: Maus Anon E on Wednesday, March 31 2010 @ 01:06 PM GMT+4

"the it." should be either "it" or "the budget."

---
Slán abhaile

D'oh!

Authored by: Mosski on Wednesday, March 31 2010 @ 01:40 PM GMT+4

Look for my comments under "Selectboard Meeting Notes:...." so we can keep this thread just for letters to the editor/SB/ect.

PAYT Letters to the Reformer

Authored by: ESchwartz on Tuesday, April 06 2010 @ 02:12 AM GMT+4

I sent this Open Letter to the Selectboard members. I didn't send it to
the Reformer because I want to get a letter published this month on
another issue.

An Open Letter to the Selectboard:

I urge you to reconsider your decision taken last Monday to reject the
petition for a referendum on Pay As You Throw. The 500+ citizens who
signed the petition were asking you, as our elected Board, to set an
election that will allow each voter to vote yea or nay on Pay As You
Throw. Our charter clearly states that the citizens have this right in
regard to any action of the Town Meeting Representatives. The intent
of this rule is to ensure that citizens can vote directly on any action
about which they feel that the Town Meeting Representatives did not
represent the sentiment of the townspeople. We do not yet know the
will of the majority. The only way we will know that is by holding the
referendum requested in the petition.

Those of us who gathered signatures on the petition did so within the
guidelines of the Town Charter, complying with the 5-day rule and
submitting well over the required number of signatures. On the one
hand, you are telling us that our petition is illegal under the Charter,
but then as a Board you are proposing action that is nowhere granted
by the Charter; namely, the arbitrary setting of a new date for a new
petition.

Furthermore, you are recommending that we ask for a referendum
vote on the budget as a whole. But the budget as a whole is not the
issue. Other than Pay As You Throw, I am pleased with the budget you
sent to Town Meeting and have no desire to vote it down or to ask
others to do so.

Over five hundred voters of Brattleboro have asked for an opportunity
to vote directly about Pay As You Throw (not about the budget as a
whole). We deserve the right to have that vote, and you, as our
elected Selectboard, have the responsibility to make it possible.

Sincerely,
Ellen Schwartz