Opinion

The Town of Brattleboro is deceiving its people.

Specifically, I note that, next week, the town will host a couple of “visioning” sessions for residents.

The lie is that these sessions are to hear what the people of Brattleboro want their town to look like years from now, so that this common “vision” can be implemented.

The truth is that Brattleboro is a member of ICLEI, the executive arm of the United Nations’ Agenda 21, Blueprint for Humanity, a self-described UN effort to control all human behavior and to impose “universal design” on what it refers to as all “human settlements.”

I have a few concerns about Pay As You Thow  implementation for our town. Although I completely agree that we all need to be responsible for our own waste, I hope we can be very careful about how we choose to create this program. Some of the selectboard members have made comments that indicate an interest in possibly removing this line item from our budget completely and passing those costs directly to our townspeople. In other posts on this site there have been comments about how this is a cost shift and that is true in a number of different ways that we really need to pay attention to. 

Currently, our municipal taxes pay for our trash pickup. It is a line item in our municipal budget, and all of the grand list is assessed the tax. That means that businesses contribute to this cost even though our businesses are responsible for providing their own waste disposal. If we go to a PAYT program that is not part of our municipal budget, we will see a reduction of our municipal tax but each homeowner will most likely be paying more since there is no subsidy from our businesses on the grand list. Businesses will have a tax reduction with no corresponding increase in costs. 

This is the unedited version on the letter that I wrote to the Reformer. (They always seem to cut a handful of sentences.) I don’t usually get involved with politics, write letters, or post things on ibrattleboro, but this issue of cutting services that will especially hurt those with limited income or disabilities was too upsetting for me to ignore.
…

In reconfiguring the Brattleboro budget, I think that it is imperative to not cut services that will engender more hardship for middle and low income people. I am especially concerned about the funding for our library.

There is a simple way to solve all of Brattleboro’s current financial problems.

We can solve our budget problem. We can solve our problems of being a hub town providing services to surrounding towns,. We can raise our Grand List and add new jobs and businesses. We can support local farmers. We can pay for the Police and Fire facilities.

It’s not even that difficult.

Please help me solve this riddle.  If the U.S. Air Force wants to base F-35 fighter jets in Burlington, Vermont because they will be close enough to New York City and Boston to protect them in the event of and attack, then HOW does bombing New York City or Boston with nuclear bombs deployed by F-35 strike fighter jets help NYC or Boston? If you bomb a terrorist in NYC or Boston with a nuclear bomb, aren’t you doing more harm than the terrorist?

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.