Hello to all iBrattleboro readers!
As some of you may have heard, last week I announced my candidacy for the Brattleboro Selectboard. I will be on the ticket for one of the two available one-year seats.
I feel that this is a good time to inject a little energy and positive ideas into our town, and I hope to be part of that effort. I think I’ll be able to bring a straightforward voice to the board, balancing the desire to try some new directions and also be firmly planted in fiscal responsibility – important to all hard-working taxpayers (like myself!).
I have lived here in Brattleboro area for almost 17 years now, and in that time have served 6 years as a Town Meeting Representative, on the Chamber of Commerce Board for 5 years (3 as Secretary), and 11 years on the BCTV Board through some tumultuous times (many of you “old timers” might remember those fun times), including serving as President of that board for my last year there in 2014.
I feel that I balance relative youth (clinging, as I still am, to my forties!) and a good amount of experience with how our wonderful little town currently works, and that will serve me and my constituents well going forward. I’ve come to love this town in the 10 years I have rented and then owned a home here – its community, its vibrancy, and yes even its faults. I want to see this town thrive and be a place that all residents can be proud of, and feel that their selectboard truly does keep all of their interests in mind while they make the day-to-day decisions for the town.
Please feel free to contact me via email at BrattleboroTim@gmail.com with any questions you might have, and I will try to keep my eye on iBrattleboro as well. For you Facebookers, I began a political candidate page earlier this month where I will be doing some polling on issues and sharing thoughts about our town, so feel free to check out http://www.facebook.com/pg/BrattleboroTim
Thanks for letting me bend your ear here and please remember to use your voice and your vote on March 7th!
Nice!
Glad to see this news.
In addition to what he says above, Tim is a supporter of community media – having done video at BCTV, radio at rfb, and writing here at iBrattleboro. That’s the community media hat trick!
Tim also runs his own video production business (disclosure: we’ve done projects together).
(Perhaps it is time to dust off the plans for a monorail in town. The next board might support it!)
Brattlebororail!
Yes! The monorail was a stroke of brilliance you had. Let’s keep it quiet for now, and if I get elected we can choose a SB meeting (near April 1 maybe?) to re-introduce your fantastic vision! So many of the young folks have never hear the plans, after all.
Thanks for your support Chris, that’s very nice of you to say.
Climate Change
Tim,
Th current Selectboard has done some things to address the town’s contribution to climate change and save the taxpayers money over the long haul – like moving forward on the landfill solar project. They have also dragged their feet or neglected to do other things, like implement the recommendations of the municipal energy audit or design police and fire stations that are high-performance from an energy-use standpoint and use renewable heating systems.
What is your view on climate change? How important to you is addressing it? What commitments have you made in your personal and family life to reducing your contribution to GCC? And how would you lead the town on this issue if you are elected?
Thanks,
Tad Montgomery
Frugality and efficiency
Thanks for your questions Tad!
I’m not fully up to date on the past Selectboard decisions on municipal projects and heating systems, but I can tell you that I would look at each future proposal on its merits, especially when it comes to proven long-term energy savings for the town.
Climate change is very real and we all have a responsibility to address this on personal, local and national levels to the best of our abilities.
If elected, I would seek to emphasize the moral and financial advantages to energy efficiency for the town in a positive way, since I personally believe a rewards/benefit attitude is more successful than a doom/gloom approach. We need to harness the natural “yankee frugality” instincts of many of our neighbors in building support for projects that may have higher ticket initial costs than traditional energy sources or plans.
That said, I will always be balancing this need to reduce our emissions locally with the very important affordability aspect of each decision. But I believe Brattleboro can be both a leader in innovative strategies to address climate change while also keeping our taxpayers (homeowners and renters alike) able to afford to live in this wonderful town.
Tim
re: Frugality and Efficiency
Thanks, Tim.
The problem, and the nuance of this issue, comes with juxtaposing your concepts of ‘proven’ and ‘long-term.’ This article on Life-Cycle Cost Analysis delves into this complex issue:
http://ibrattleboro.com/sections/town-news/cost-things
We can project out that pellet boilers, increased insulation or heat pumps would save the town X millions of dollars over 50 years, but these projections are based on the future costs of things like electricity, propane and wood pellets over a time frame that’s nearly impossible for all but Edgar Cayce or Nostradamus to see.
I had a long talk with Selectboard member John Allen last week. He went through the oil crisis of the ’70s, and watched as cordwood went from $50 a cord to $250 a cord, while air quality in even small Vermont towns suffered. “How do you know that oil companies won’t buy up our forests (and pellet industry) and the cost of pellets skyrocket over the cost of oil?” he asked me.
It is hard to argue against this kind of logic; I don’t have ready answers for him. The result of this kind of thinking is that we now have propane boilers going into the new and renovated police and fire facilities and a newish oil or propane boiler in the library. Brattleboro, with all of its civic engagement and green building expertise, will be locked into burning fossil fuels for the next 20+ years in these buildings.
Sometimes leadership requires vision, going out on a limb, making hard decisions that may be in a society’s best long-term interest, but are bitter pills to swallow and will anger a lot of people in the short-term. Socrates was right about Donald Trump (video):
Tough decisions
This stuff is hard, I agree. The prevalence always of unintended consequences alone can turn any such decision into a gut-wrenching experience.
I think an important thing to keep in mind is that you don’t have to be an expert in all areas in order to make such decisions as a Selectboard member (nor is it possible to be), but you do have to have the ability to look critically at all the data and then move forward with a direction that looks and feels correct. Without this ability, so much more time and energy (figuratively and literally) is wasted chasing one’s own tail.
We don't have to know what the oil companies will do
We obviously can’t know what the oil companies will do. However capitalist history suggests that they could buy up all the forests and sell them back at exorbitant prices. That’s why it would be good to talk about it. Maybe it makes sense for the town to begin protecting forested land. Or perhaps do so with our neighboring towns. One could carve out a 15-20,000 acre area of mostly forest in the northwest corner of Bratt and adjacent lands in Dummerston, Putney and Marlboro. That could be managed to provide all the trees we’d need for pellets for all our municipal buildings. It would have the additional benefits of protecting a large ecological area, provide a recreation area, provide some jobs and protect water supplies.
Thanks
Glad to hear Tim Wessel is running. It’s not easy to put yourself out there, and we need people to be willing to do it. Mostly so we won’t have to, which isn’t noble, I know. More than most times, these seem to be the kind where you’ll do better if you’re willing to roll with it, to some degree. It helps also to love the town.
I’ll just say, after years of knowing Tim, I think he has those qualities.
Go Tim!
Very happy to see you’re willing to serve. Good luck, you have my vote.
Thank You!
Thanks to all, both virtually here and on the streets, for your encouragement and kind words!