Running for a town office is a labor of love and serving as an elected town officer is not much different. The pay is lousy, the perks don't exist and the hours are not great.
At Town Meeting next week on March 6, when considering which select board candidate or school board candidate or lister or cemetery commissioner to vote for, consider the motives of these candidates.
No one serves on these boards for personal glory or gain because there is none to be had in these positions. There's just work and service to the town.
They all deserve credit for running, for going through the effort of gathering signatures on a petition to run, for announcing their candidacy, for participating in forums, for going door to door. That's a lot of effort for these volunteer positions. Regardless of who wins in any given race, it is fortunate that people still want to run for office and that they want to serve.
Heed the warning
Vermont Emergency Management services, not an agency known for histrionic 'sky is falling,' has issued two very serious directives in the past week.
The first urges property owners, municipalities and anyone with a plow to refrain from dumping snow in Vermont's rivers and streams. Vermont Emergency Management (VEM) acknowledges that towns and private landowners have no space to store the snow but points out, rightly, that dumping the snow in the waterways will increase the possibility of spring flooding.
Ice on the rivers and deep snow, coupled with another big storm predicted for the end of the week, mean more runoff, direct or indirect, into Vermont's rivers and streams and that means more possible flooding.
VEM is also urging landowners in floodplains to get flood insurance now because it takes 30 days to go into effect. Spring flooding cannot be predicted, but the signs have raised the concern level of some generally unflappable people at VEM.
Their advice is probably worth heeding.
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