To the Editor:
GB voters: Please come to Town Meeting Monday May 4th at 6 p.m. at Monument Mountain Regional High School. Please. Our town budget, the school budget and a whole bunch of zoning, environmental protections and other decisions are on the warrant.
The school budget passes every year because education is important to the majority of taxpayers of GB, but it can be a close vote. Most years there are about 400 people in the room so your vote really does count. There is free on-site childcare so if you are a single parent or a two-parent family, everyone can come and vote. Don’t leave a vote at home.
For me, voting for the school budget is automatic. Educating children is expensive but not optional. It gets more expensive every year, like everything, but there is no waste in the school budget. People who assert there is waste have been unable to point to it. I’ve invited them many times.
But if you need a more selfish reason to vote for the school budget, think about the value of your home in a town that rejects education. If you have young children or had them when you moved here, or if you’ve ever tried to sell a house to someone else, what was the second question asked after the price of the house? Was it “how much are the taxes?” or “what are the schools like?”
In addition to financial and zoning questions, there a number of citizen petitions we will be asked to consider (Articles 25-31) at the end of the meeting. I’m voting against all of them.
Mostly, they just waste the time of the citizens who show up at Town Meeting. None of them will change anything whether they pass or not.
They all sound reasonable but every one of them proposes something that has already been done, is being done, or would require changes in state law or actions by another town that are beyond our power. They offer “solutions” to problems that don’t exist.
One calls for strategic planning for the schools. Who could be against that? No one, that’s why we already do it, in every school and at the district level and always, always with the input of any member of the pubic who shows up.
Another asks that citizens be allowed to speak at meetings of local boards and committees. Who could be against that? No one, that’s why they are always allowed to speak. I’ve attended most meetings of almost every committee, board and task force and I’ve never seen someone refused an opportunity to speak.
I’m voting no but it doesn’t matter how the vote comes out. It doesn’t matter whether we vote yes or no because Articles 25-31 have no force of law. They don’t call for bylaw changes; they don’t actually do anything. They just make noise.
I hope you come to Town Meeting, no matter how you plan to vote. Democracy is amazing.
Ed Abrahams
Great Barrington
The writer is a member of the Great Barrington Selectboard.
