Police Budget

A prior post talked about a BIG increase in the police budget due to the union contract "negotiated" with the union. Well, it's not as big as I first thought. The data I was looking at included an accounting change that lumped several police accounts into one, making the increase look bigger than it really was. Sorry!! I'll try to do my homework better in the future. (But there's still a big increase in the police budget.)

Town Elections

The caucuses were held Saturday. Alas, only 18 people showed up at the Republican caucus, a better - but hardly robust - 41 people at the Democratic. And same old, same old generally prevailed. Both parties (hmmmm!) chose the following as their candidates:

Selectman: Bruce Cumsky
Town Clerk: Margaret Muskrat
Tree Warden: Jimmy Olmsted
Library Trustee: Keila Sheldon
Planning Board: Eileen Vining
Planning Bd. Assoc: Bill Wood
Water Comm'r: Chuck Ogden
Cemetery Comm'r: David Campbell
Assessor (3 yr. term): Robin Goldberg
Assessor (1 yr. term): Florence Browner

The Democrats named Jim Lamme as their candidate for Moderator; the Republicans had a tie for that position so named no one.

More on all this later. In the meantime, you can start posting your comments about who is good, who is bad, and why.

Charges are flying back and forth regarding Millard Road, which runs north from Prospect Lake Road to the border with New York. Some of the property owners on Millard have put an item on the warrant for the town meeting seeking discontinuance of the portion of Millard that extends to the state line. The controversy apparently arose because of plans of the owner of the last piece of property before New York to divide it into a couple of lots, which could increase the traffic on Millard and maybe require more expensive road maintenance. But that owner says a discontinuance would give her a claim against the town for taking away her access. I don't know much more than that. Maybe some of the protagonists will post comments urging their respective positions. They're welcome to do so.

I'm confused. Last year the selectmen were pushing for doing away with electing the assessors and instead having them appointed by the selectboard. That, they said, would result in having more qualified folks as assessors. But a month ago or so, when Karen Cumsky resigned, creating an assessor vacancy, the selectboard decided not to appoint a successor and instead to have the voters pick one at the next town election. The most logical explanation for that flipflop: our three selectmen don't have the courage of their convictions. If there's a different explanation, I hope the selectmen will let us all know what it is. They're always free to comment right on this blog.

The republican and democratic "organizations" in town hold caucuses every year about this time to endorse candidates for town offices. Both organizations have some new blood this year; the democratic group had a complete turnover of people in what amounted to a revolt. It will be interesting to see if the new blood results in any changes. In the past, both parties made a few inquiries about who was contemplating running for office and then put the names on a ballot voted on at a caucus (usually on a Saturday), the winner getting the nomination. (Unless the people running the operation didn't like a candidate, in which case they'd leave that name off the ballot; so much for democratic principles.)

Government in Egremont has suffered for many years as a result of not reaching out to townspeople who are qualified but need a bit of encouragement to run for town office. You'd think the function of a party would be to do that reaching out, not just stick with the same old, tired volunteers, many of whom don't have the slightest qualifications for the office they're nominated for. Do you think the new blood will make that kind of effort? Don't bet on it.

I've submitted a citizens' petition to be included in the warrant for the May town meeting to amend the town bylaws by increasing the quorum requirement for town meetings from 60 to 150. The petition describes the reasons for doing so as follows:

"There are roughly 890 registered voters in Egremont. Only 60 of them have to show up at a town meeting to constitute a quorum. And most matters at town meeting require only a majority vote. That means 31 voters – 3.5% of registered voters – can make legally binding decisions for all of us. Even where our bylaws wisely require a two-thirds vote for important matters – like borrowing money or changing zoning requirements – a mere 5% of the voters can make those decisions and we’re all stuck with them.

Egremonters usually aren’t hurt by that low quorum requirement when it comes to routine matters. But when an important matter is on the agenda, the low quorum requirement all too often results in a small group of voters “stacking” the meeting, producing a result that the vast majority of Egremonters may strongly disagree with."

To those who object on the basis that we can't get that many people to come to a town meeting, I would reply that I recall at least three times in recent years that we have gotten more than 150 people to attend. And in all three cases, the decisions reached were far more representative of what townspeople really wanted than at meetings with only 60 or 70 attendees.

More on this later.

More on the police budget:

According to research Craig Elliott did several years ago, Egremont spends more per capita on police than all but a few towns in Massachusetts. Do we really need to spend so much? And are we getting value for what we spend? Now our selectboard has "negotiated" a contract with the police union (yes, we have a police union, and there are several people who should be tarred and feathered for that) that I'm hearing will result in a 35% increase in police employee costs. (I've got some tar and feathers left if anyone wants them.)

This has to stop. But there seems to be no one out there willing to propose how, certainly not our selectmen. That probably reflects the fear of being thrown out of office if you so much as whisper that police costs are too high. (That happened several years ago; all three selectmen were dumped for suggesting that we didn't need round the clock coverage.) Rena Orner made a great proposal at a town meeting a couple of years ago: She moved that we cut the police department budget by 5% and let the powers that be figure out how to implement the cuts. Somebody should do that at the May town meeting.

That's probably a bit less draconian than my proposal: Eliminate the police department for one year and see if it results in any increase in crime. If it doesn't, do it for another year, and so on. If there is an increase, you then have a measurement of the benefit and can judge whether that benefit is worth the cost.

I'm hearing rumors about a BIG increase in the police department budget, resulting from the new contract "negotiated" by the selectboard with the police union. I put that in quotes because I have serious reservations about both the ability of the current selectboard to negotiate and because a selectboard containing one town employee and the spouse of another town employee isn't very incentivized to cut employee costs. Let's see how the selectboard explains their action and how they propose to get the police budget under control.

By the way, one prospective candidate for selectman spoke passionately at last May's town meeting in favor of higher employee pay. I don't plan to vote for someone who has that kind of spending philosophy. There are many Egremonters who can afford a spend, spend, spend mentality. But there are many others who can't. They're the ones who stretch to pay their property taxes and who we drive out of town when they find they can't afford to live here. But we don't want them here anyway, right? Let them move to Hillsdale. Keep Egremont small and beautiful (and exclusive).

The great early twentieth century satirist H. L. Mencken once said "The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." Could he have been talking about our Board of Health and Emergency Management Committee?

Elections: For selectman, I understand Mary Brazie, Bruce Cumsky and Steve Schoenfeld have taken out papers. Richard Burdsall is still considering.