Petitions are floating around Egremont and the other school district towns to have school committee members elected rather than appointed by the selectboards. Good or bad idea?

It's reported that the Egremont selectmen are in favor of electing school committee members. Their rationale is apparently based on what I'm told happened in Sheffield: Some or all the Sheffield-appointed committee members weren't in favor of backing out of the expense sharing arrangement, so the Sheffield selectboard replaced them with members who were in favor. That eventually led to the big increase in Egremont's share of the school budget.

But would electing school committee members be better? Shouldn't a town's committee members be doing what that town's selectboard wants? What happens if some group with its own particular agenda works hard and gets its own folks elected? That's happened in some midwest school districts that then voted to put creationism in the curriculum.

In New York, the school district is an entity, separate from the towns in the district, that has the power to govern, assess and tax. There it makes sense to have the school board members elected, and consequently beholden to all the voters in the district. But in Massachusetts, the school district isn't separate from its constituent towns, each of which has to separately vote on the school budget. So why shouldn't the school committee members represent their respective towns (and hence their respective selectboards)?

Sounds to me like this petition effort is a knee jerk response to Sheffield's unfortunate (for Egremont) action. Maybe we should all take a longer range look.

And the Egremont selectboard apparently doesn't see the irony in supporting election of school committee members within a year after supporting appointing, rather than electing, the board of assessors. You can get good people and you can get bad people on boards and committees. At least if they're appointed, it's easier to get rid of the bad ones. If you have the guts to do it.

Town meeting and town election are not far off. Who is thinking about running for the selectboard? One of our three current selectmen is a town employee and another is married to a town employee. It would be nice to cut that to one out of three: Since the selctboard generally votes pretty much across-the-board employee raises, I think those two selectmen are conflicted and ought not to vote on raises, leaving only one selectmen to make the decisions. Do you agree?

I had a guy from DirectTV out to look at my problem again. The problem is this: I and everybody else has to move to HD TV this year, and for us poor Egremonters who have to rely on satellites, that means getting a new bigger dish and reorienting it toward the HD satellite. For many Egremonters, that's no big deal. But for those with tree and mountain problems, it is. Seems the old dish could look through at least some tree leaves and other minor obstructions, but the new ones are more sensitive. Worse, the dish needs to look at 5 satellites, not just one, and those satellites are lower on the horizon than the old satellite. So the DirectTV guy stood on my deck and pointed to an area that had to be clear of obstructions for the dish to be able to pick up the signals. It was a pretty big area, a lot bigger than what I need now, and not quite in the same place as the area I use now. So I counted the trees, some of them pretty good sized, that I'm going to have to take down: about six of them.

Other Egremonters must be dealing with this problem. Any info you can add by commenting on this entry would be appreciated by all.

When the town voted to take over the water company that serves the south village, voters were told is wasn't the town that would be the owner but rather an "enterprise fund" that would be separate from the town, so the taxpayers would never have to pay anything, only the users would pay. Sorry, folks, but that was wrong. In Massachusetts, if an "enterprise fund" can't pay for itself, the shortfall must be made up by the town. That's what's been happening for several years now. At the annual town meeting we vote one appropriation for the next year's water company budget, being assured that the users will actually cover that amount, not the taxpayers, but then we separately vote on another appropriation to make up the last year's shortfall.

Apparently the state doesn't like that little subterfuge. The state thinks voters should be told upfront - if it's true as it has been for many years - that the water company is going to cost more than what they're going to charge the users, so that taxpayers know they're subsidizing the users. The state may insist we do that at this year's annual town meeting.

I'm told the water company could pay for itself without taxpayer money if it raised its rates by about 30% to 40%. That kind of increase may sound high, but it's is in line with what people in other towns hereabouts have been facing on their water and sewer bills. Most of us in town have to maintain and pay for our own wells and pumps. Should we have to subsidize the water company users? And should we think about electing water commissioners who have the guts to raise the rates to cover costs, rather than going for that good old money that grows on trees?

When I went to vote yesterday, I was surprised to see a number of names listed under "town committee" on the Democratic ballot. How did they get there? Was this some sort of palace coup?