By Andreas Lehner
If you like the big government proposal to consolidate the Washington West school districts under Act 46, you will love this proposal to consolidate the six towns.
Currently Duxbury, Fayston, Moretown, Waitsfield, Warren and Waterbury each have their own nearby town office with their own elected clerks, treasurers, listers, select boards and planners attending to the needs of their communities. They operate their own road departments with close knowledge of the town’s highways and byways. They pay to maintain, power and heat six different town offices, one in each town. Each town has to develop its own annual budget to address local priorities and each must organize and operate its own Town Meeting, where the voters can discuss, modify and vote on those local plans and budgets.
Clearly, there is some inefficiency, duplication and waste in this setup. Some paid staff positions could be reduced or eliminated. Road departments sometimes have overlapping equipment and routes. Consider how much more efficient it would be to have the six towns governed by one master select board, deciding what’s in our best interests and setting our budgets and tax rates for us.
Like the Harwood School Board and the proposed new consolidated district school board, the master select board would have a representative from each of the smaller towns and several from Waterbury, with voting proportional to population. Waterbury would have the majority vote.
Town Meetings could be dispensed with. Like the current Washington West school board, the important decisions could be made by the master select board without the inconvenience of voter participation. Many citizens can’t be bothered to participate in the governing of their town and some would argue that local control is overrated and unnecessary, given the unchecked wisdom of a bureaucracy.
Thus, we could expect that consolidating the six towns into one collective community would offer greater efficiency and savings in salaries and operating expenses, although we don’t know how much. Wouldn’t it be so much better if we didn’t have to bother with independently managing our own town?
Here’s a suggestion: Make a list of all of the supposed benefits of school district consolidation and consider how they would also support town government consolidation.
And now make a list of all the drawbacks to town consolidation and see how many are reasons not to consolidate the school districts.
As a localvore, I will be voting no on big government school district consolidation. If it ever comes up, I will also vote no on any proposal to consolidate our six towns and, for that matter, no on any proposal to consolidate the New England states.
Andreas Lehner lives in Waitsfield where he is a justice of the peace and the chair of the Waitsfield Board of Civil Authority.
