2) Officials often publicly ask for more involvement from others as they end conversations. They ask for more people to attend meetings. They ask more people to come to town meeting. They ask for more people to run for positions throughout the town. They ask for more people to run for office. This would help our town, but those very people know the town and how difficult it is to get people involved. Not having enough involved people is not a new problem and it is hardly restricted to our community. Townspeople can add to the conversation and add ideas, but it is the elected official who is responsible for translating that into measurable progress. I’ve seen people step up to the plate and try to be a part of the solution only to be battered by fellow board members, stifled by their inflated egos, stalled by opposing personalities, or bullied into not speaking up. It’s one of the drawbacks to the system we have in place and unfortunately it keeps many people from donating time and energy to serving on boards. I don’t know how some of the board members can stand to sit on the boards they serve on. After townspeople come home from working several jobs, or working  thankless  jobs, like those in the service industry, I would think they  would have to have very compelling reasons to help. I’m not sure they see compelling reasons.  They watch the meetings on TV, read the minutes, or attend a meeting and are left wondering why they would want to be a part of that process. I’ll tell you a story. I was at town meeting one year. I was behind a person who sits on a town board. They were bragging to another person how they enjoyed using the silent ballot(a perfectly legal option for any townsperson), because it held people longer, beleaguered the process,  and forced people to get up and vote instead of voting while seated. I wasn’t surprised, but what if I was a person new to the process? What if I considered serving on boards and was on the fence? That’s the impression I’d have of a public servant in our town. In the future I will serve on other boards I’m sure. I can tell you honestly though that I would not choose to serve on the three most important boards in town for the reasons listed above. Actually, if I’m being completely honest you could pay me three times what my corporate salary was and I wouldn’t be interested.

   3)  Our PR issue. Yes, I feel we have one and I feel it is enormously underestimated.  To make this matter worse we really don’t have anyone dedicated to trying to change how our town is perceived, presented, and reported on.  There is no one to spin the negative Fosters article or better yet make sure the twelve great things that happened that day are out where everyone can see them. How people in our town view it and how other people view our town plays into everything from revenue generation, to community spirit, to being the deciding factor on whether someone wants to move here from somewhere else or wants to come back home after college. Since we really want people to move here and we obviously would like more revenue sources why aren’t we putting more effort into this arena? Planning how a building will be replaced or how a new one is built and how that will look is just as important as banks and landlords owning so many buildings in town and not caring about how they fair or who lives in them, if anyone lives in them at all. Again, these  are problems that didn’t creep up overnight, the situations that led to them happened over decades, so they won’t be solved quickly, but we do need to be working on them if we are to stabilize our public persona. We’ve had two town surveys while I’ve lived here, asking what townsfolk would like to see. I know I’m not the only one finding it hard to match up what we put in the surveys and what we see going on around town.  Our elected officials are dropping the ball somewhere or the message we are sending is being mistranslated. In either case I think it makes townspeople feel like they aren’t being listened to or worse that they are just being treated as irrelevant. I wouldn’t  feel I could say that if we had high turn over on our boards, but we don’t. Same people different day. Just like town meeting. Same people different day. Or voting day. Same people different day. Very few new faces. I think our own town folk have begun to believe what everyone else says about our town. We need someone working on changing that too.

  4)   The last thing that weighs on my mind in this conversation is that sometimes decisions seem to be made by passing on the buck to another time or place or issue. I looks like we’ve been doing that collectively as a town for some time.  The transfer from an industrial town to a bedroom community was not kind or without long term consequences. Many of the old families are gone and the wealth that once was standard in our community has left with those families. It would have taken a gigantic effort to replace those investors and benefactors and that just didn’t happen. Maybe people didn’t see it coming. Maybe people just didn’t care. That’s what I’m most concerned about. I’m approaching my mid forties now, almost half way through the cycle of life, if I live as long as my grandparents did. I’m particularly concerned that some of the board decisions that push off action, commitment, and revenue generation into the future, endanger the twilight years of people my age and younger by creating situations where we will not be able or even want  to live here, as if every person really has that choice. I wonder sometimes after seeing decisions at meetings if my future here is being pulled from under me. Enacting cuts or not pursuing revenue now, will have serious consequences in thirty or forty years as the problems compound. Whether by death or affluence, many won’t  be here, so it doesn’t matter to them. It is great to save the day this year, but I have to look out for forty or fifty more years.