Op/Ed

Something unusual seems to be happening. Through an odd combination of circumstances, what amounts to an open town meeting on the FY15 budget is breaking out.

How? A necessary number of Town Meeting representatives petitioned to have a town-wide referendum on the budget. Informational meetings prior to the vote had low turnout. The budget was voted down. 

The Selectboard then held a special meeting and proposed cuts that provoked the citizenry into turning out in great number at a second special meeting, causing one of the best attended Selectboard meetings in years. 

Tonight I attended both the library trustee meeting regarding the proposed budget cuts and the Selectboard meeting.

Well, I tried to attend the Selectboard meeting but apparently  -even though the 2015 budget and the proposed cuts to the library and parks and recreation -not to mention the police/fire bond- have been discussed endlessly and passionately and even though ibrattleboro and the Reformer FB page have been filled with discussions and comments for 2 weeks and even though the Selectboard has received numerous letters from voters wanting to share their opinions and displeasure…even with all of that going on-the Selectboard apparently never concluded that perhaps there would be a larger than usual crowd at the meeting tonight.

To the Brattleboro Selectboard:

This is to express my strong concern that it would be a serious mistake to cut library or parks and recreation services from the town budget. It would be a false economy, rendering Brattleboro far less attractive to both existing and potential homeowners, at a time when we do not want to see our grand list shrinking.

Police and fire facilities and well-maintained roads are crucial town services. A library, a parks and rec department, good public education, and other “quality of life” expenditures are also crucial. These expenditures go a long way to attracting good citizensand sustaining community strength. A strong community will weather hard economic times relatively intact.

In reviewing the vote at Representative Town Meeting, the results of the Australian ballot and the April 22 Selectboard meeting, a fair conclusion so far might be that there needs be a process to ensure the broadest possible input on those budget items on which there is some discretionary judgment.

To that end, I propose to the Selectboard that, in drafting the the Article for the the next Representative Town Meeting, that information be inserted in the warned Article which lists:

• The amount of the budget that constitutes other than fixed expenditures (i.e. negotiated items, debt service, etc.)

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.

Since Vermont is one of the 17 states to (finally) decriminalize possession of marijuana, one could say that the Legislature and governor should be patted on the back for doing the right thing.

But wait. Not so fast.

Is decriminalizing marijuana really an admission of guilt and culpability in criminalizing people who were not criminals before?

Hey folks, this debate on the town budget and property tax rate has spurred me to register here and join the conversation, as my schedule does not permit me to attend meatspace meetings at this time.

Let me say first off that my fiance and I, as well as every friend and neighbor in town that I’ve talked to about the issue, voted and/or reads the budget rejection not as merely a repudiation of the police and fire project, but rather as an outcry against the exhorbitantly high tax rate in Brattleboro in general.   There seems to be some debate on whether the rejection of the vote was asking for a scalpel to excise the police and fire project or a wider issue.  

This was posted on the Reformer Face Book page tonight.

SELECTBOARD CONSIDERING HALTING POLICE-FIRE PROJECT.
The board met for 90 minutes Tuesday to consider making cuts to the FY 2015 budget. The board is asking interim Town Manager Patrick Moreland to investigate a range of cuts, including cutting positions in the library and Parks and Recreation Department. The board is also considering halting the $14 million police-fire project. The board is going to meet on April 29 to make final decisions about the budget.

Note: This was the text I had composed and sent to the board prior to being scheduled to appear.
…

It is fair to say that Brattleboro has asked about as much as it can of its citizens from property taxes. There is, however, another route to gaining more resources. It does not include taxation or fees. Rather, I am suggesting that the town take advantage of some key but under appreciated qualities it enjoys and raise money from contributions over and above the property tax. I am suggesting that Brattleboro do what many, if not most, charitable organizations do: invite, or appeal for, charitable contributions from those who appreciate the community and its services.

I have not yet met Steve Gordon, the new CEO of Brattleboro Memorial Hospital, but after I wrote to him about a problem I had experienced at a BMH physician’s practice, the problem got resolved.

This was refreshing. It was the first time since the Reformer ran my Oct. 5, 2007 op-ed, “Hospital’s complaint process needs reform,” that I felt a glimmer of hope. In that piece, I had written:

“Patients are naturally vulnerable, and rely on the hospital staff and administration for kindness and protection. To prevent lapses, there must be a trustworthy complaint procedure.”

FCC, the Federal Elections Commission, is using 1950s Jim Crow Laws that were created by the U.S. Congress to keep Negroes out of political candidate debates, but they are STILL using them today, even in 2014, to keep independent candidates from participating in Vermont Public Radio general election debates.   (Bernie Sanders runs in the Primary in the summer as a Democrat and takes millions of dollars from them and their PACs, and then switches at the last minute in the general election for November to “independent” so he is not a “real” independent.) 

I have noticed that our lovely town has a fire problem. The big fire, before I arrived, was on Main St. where the Paramont theater once stood. I waltz down memory lane: I am sure there are house and apartment building fires I will have missed. But here is a list of fires I have witnessed:

Wilder block, Lawrence block, Sam’s, 214 Elliot, 107 Elliot, 119 Green St., 72 Green St., Brooks House-

Some say the fires are because Brattleboro has so many old wooden buildings. I am sure part of the problem is that the buildings are not sprinklered. Cigarettes & cooking grills may have contributed. I’m sure that’s one of the reasons we are seeing a move towards smoke free housing.

The Palestinian problem has been an enormous thorn in the relations between Israel and the greater world. This has prevented a capable Western styled government from bringing the full fruits of its democracy to the Middle East. With the constant niggling and debate of rights, it is time for Israel to assert its full historic right to the full and final occupation of Greater Israel from the Mediterranean to the Jordan River to Lebanon and south to Sinai. We can stop the illusion and fantasy of a Palestinian state in the West Bank. Historically, this land was Israel, with stretches of time occupied by every power in the region. Though we had a period of Diaspora and left the area for two thousand years does it matter whether it was two days or two thousand years? Of course not.

On March 22nd Brattleboro’s Representative Town Meeting defeated the 1% optional sales tax and approved the FY15 budget, which includes the first interest payment on the second police/fire facilities bond.  So, what happens next?

First let’s state the obvious:  Brattleboro is in a bind.  It took many of us to get it there, myself
included.  We initially approved the police/fire facilities project and then rejected cutting the overall budget
enough to scale it back.  Meanwhile, we defeated the 1% sales tax multiple times.

Ever since I’ve moved to this town, I’ve noticed that virtually all except those I’ve conveyed the following sentiment to who call me on the phone employ the most miserable phone etiquette I’ve encountered in the many states and provinces I’ved lived in.

When I was a child, I lived on the Upper West Side in a communal situation that had three women (including my mother) under 30.  It being NYC and Ma Bell being the only game in town, it was standard practice for women to only give their first initial and last name when listed in the phone book.

Representative Town Meeting members repeatedly tried to “send a message” to the Brattleboro Selectboard at their most recent meeting. Throughout, representatives also stated that they didn’t think the Selectboard was getting that message.

As an outside observer, the message was simple: Taxes are too high. If you are going to cut something, cut additional Police Fire bonds and not the Library or Recreation and Parks departments. The bonds can wait.

I eavesdropped on ibrattleboro’s excellent coverage of your town mtg, & was pleased to see the discussion about the ill-conceived proposal from the legislature to kill our local school boards.  I believe the Vt legislature originally met for much shorter sessions, and like so many institutions has grown bigger just because there was time available for it to do so. This proposal suggests they have too much time on their hands and are inventing fixes for things that ain’t broke.

Sure, we can always use improvements to our public education system, but abolishing our citizen school boards seems misguided, especially since they cost almost nothing to maintain (in Guilford, for example, just over $2,000 a year in a school budget of some $2 million!)