By Neil Johnson
I have to laugh at the uproar, people complaining with the town's decisions. How many times do we have to hear, "This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity," "It's not going to cost us anything," "The money is free," "It will only cost the average voter $2.56 if they have a $200K house," and now, of all things, "They aren't respecting the voters' will."
Seriously, we've known this for decades, except now you get to wear the shoes, not us. Most town business should be discussed at Town Meeting; if it doesn't fly, work it out for next year. Instead Waitsfield has more special bond votes, special outside meetings where the public is chastised rather than taken seriously. Then you change the voting procedures for bond votes, in hopes it helps your cause.
The select board complains that voters don't attend meetings. Well, sorry on two counts; we did and you didn't listen. Second and my biggest grievance is you were elected to do your job, to use prudent judgment, follow the will of the people and show some fiscal sense. We should vote once a year, not every two months because someone didn't get their way. It would be nice to build some consensus rather than dividing this town as it's been done so many times before. Seriously, what are we sowing?
Why dysfunction junction? Perhaps our choices have led us down the wrong path. We have no fiscal town plan for running our infrastructure. (Now we don't have money to fix our road.) We do have a $1.4 million town hall that will provide space for four employees. (We could have had a town hall for less than $300K). We have a water system that is fit for a small city, which we are now struggling to pay for operating costs and it's creating more water problems than we had prior to building. (Could have been a free water system and created jobs in town, but no, we want it our way.) We have a town more concerned about increasing the bear population than concern for small business (now business has to buy special dumpsters to keep the bears out) and a zoning code where the only use by right in our industrial park is agricultural! (We lost the soap factory to Waterbury, thank you very much.) We are a town where we count people who use the sidewalk to justify our expenses after the fact. It's the same people that were walking on the sidewalk before it was redone. (The increase, if any, is clearly created by small business; don't check other sidewalk areas, probably four people per week on the sidewalk.) Oh, but wait, we need sidewalks on both sides of the road, because people of Waitsfield can't walk across the road?
It's a town where business is so good, our town administrator sends emails to get our town a free paint job but our bill of over engineering, something we can't even use, from the big dig was $900,000? And we aren't sure how it happened? We'll just roll that bill into a special septic deal for a privileged few so no one notices the big payment that's due. Wink, wink, perhaps if our taxes were lower we could paint our own house!
We're a society that worships shows that send us in the wrong direction, the comedic narcissist personalities of Big Bang, Breaking Bad and House M.D. Guess we are reaping what we sow. This dysfunction happens when we can't work together, where we don't listen and take good ideas from people and build a consensus. Personally, I think working together will give us better results.
Johnson lives in Waitsfield.
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