I posted on ibratt, a couple days ago under the title “Taking a Deep Breath” a recommendation to the Selectboard that it might be wiser and simpler, and probably get their budget passed at this point, to remove the $261,000 for the project and let it go at that. Altho, to be sure, it is the project that has pushed the budget over the top and catalyzed the vote the overarching issue is the full spectrum of low income, high taxes, insufficient livable wage jobs…the stress and strains of a bad economy with a bleak future. Slicing and dicing the budget may save a hundred or hundred and fifty bucks a year but worsens our daily living experience without at all addressing the underlying causes. The defeat of the first budget has made a very loud noise.

I have worked at Brooks Memorial Library for 7 years and these are my own observations about the value I see in this local library and the undermining of that value by the current town budget discussion.

The most dramatic library cuts are up for discussion this week but my whole tenure at the library has been under level funding at the best points and cuts at the worst. The current proposal is to cut two full time positions from the library, a ⅓ of library staffing reduction.

I am not going to go into detail about the general value and history of public libraries. I will just mention that I got a Master’s in Library and Information Science because I believe that the cornerstone to a functioning democracy is an informed and empowered citizenry, regardless of money, race, religion, gender, or location, and free public libraries are the providers of that cornerstone.

I’m in another town as I read the Reformer article about the skatepark being on the chopping block, again. This town I’m in, no less hilly, and more trafficked, offers something of a feeling of salvation to me as a longboarder with this as my primary way of getting around.

Here, people in cars yield. They seem to be in less of a hurry. Whether that’s true or not, the prevailing attitude, which is so firmly in place as to be the norm, is to fully allow ALL elements of the road- pedestrians, skateboarders, bicyclists, et. al. – to exist, and move at their own pace.

More than anything else I hope, maybe a lot of people hope, that the Selectboard can come to function as a unified body.  Not that they all need to have the same beliefs and opinions about everything.  Unified in the sense of a mutual desire to listen to and bring out the best in each other.  A body that can consider matters in such a way that, even if they don’t entirely agree with one another they know they have reached the best possible conclusion they can.

Tradition dictates against that.  The modus operandi of the Selectboard, as I have observed it for the twenty-five years I’ve been in town, is five separate people vying to prevail.  The result is that they quickly tire of their own “deliberations” long before anything is fully discussed or analyzed.  At that point, having grown impatient and irritable, one of them calls for a vote and whichever three find the same solution least disagreeable determines the final decision.