This year, Vermont's annual rite feels different
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Jeff Danziger |
Toolbox
By PAUL GILLIES - Published: March 1, 2009
What isn't different about this year? The economy is in a tailspin. Government is suddenly seen as the savior, where in other years it was regarded as part demon. Americans and Vermonters are in shock, having lost substantial savings in the market crash, and there is a cultural version of clinical depression engulfing almost everyone we meet. The color has faded. We live in a black-and-white world.
Town Meeting, normally a bright moment in an otherwise bleak winter landscape, can only reflect that malaise. As people's budgets are tight, they will demand that towns and schools show the same kind of restraint. No official should dare ask for an increase in pay this year. Some school budgets likely are to be defeated, if only to register disapproval of the high cost of everything, in an era where everyone must sacrifice. Alone in a booth, a voter will mark "no" out of protest. Later, that or a smaller budget will pass, because, after all, we really don't want our kids to be held hostage.
History says these dark times won't last. The president is a beacon of hope. Federal money is heading Vermont's way, and its infrastructure will be undergoing a facelift. Better times are coming, as long as we remain patient.
Patience and a turning away from excess, waste and indulgent habits are noble qualities, and this is a perfect time to simplify our public and private lives, to return to traditional values and recognize what is important. It isn't that towns and school districts ever really enjoyed fat budgets. The money never seemed to be enough to meet the entire needs of these institutions, even in the best of times. But the economy will be omnipresent at this year's meetings, and no one can ignore it.
This is not to say that Town Meeting will be an entirely sad, rancorous, traumatic affair this year. Town Meeting is the most important day in the life of a town. Something inspiring always happens when you put residents together in a room and ask them to make binding decisions about the future of the town. They coalesce. They phosphoresce. They grow bigger than their petty, everyday selves.
We are members of the community first on the first Tuesday of March. Other associations pale in the face of that connection. Town Meeting forces us out of the myopia of private life and frees us to think of ourselves as part of a larger circle, circumscribed by political boundaries and history, with a personality unique to each town.
There have been notable battles at Town Meeting, differences of opinion that seem irresolvable, but through the pace and rhythm of articles offered, considered, amended, and voted, there is always a resolution, which in retrospect always seems to be the right decision, and we move on. Debate, however spiced with irony or confused thinking, is always civil, always respectful. Town Meeting changes us. It makes us all responsible adults. We are at our best on Town Meeting.
Vermonters draw together in hard times. It's part of our makeup, engendered by that fundamental urge to take care of our neighbors, coupled with a desire to keep taxes low and government close and responsive.
The future of Town Meeting will not depend on economic cycles. If it is to survive, if towns are to survive, there must be more opportunities for service to the community. Face it, there are too many vacant spaces on the ballot for local office in recent years, and too few opportunities for voters to decide questions which selectboards and school directors too often think are too important to be left to Town Meeting.
That's plainly wrong. Town government is as close as you get to direct democracy, but if it is allowed to change into representative government it will surely collapse inward, with the state taking more of the decision-making out of our hands. We have to find ways of enlisting good people to serve, and ways of involving more people in addressing the largest problems of towns, as volunteers, as citizens.
Yes, Town Meeting will be different this year, but it will never fail to satisfy our basic human need to be part of a community. And next year, let us pray, we will look back at Town Meeting 2009 as an anomaly, a hard patch, yet still an inspiration.
Paul Gillies is moderator of the Berlin Town Meeting and town school district meetings.
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