More than anything else I hope, maybe a lot of people hope, that the Selectboard can come to function as a unified body. Not that they all need to have the same beliefs and opinions about everything. Unified in the sense of a mutual desire to listen to and bring out the best in each other. A body that can consider matters in such a way that, even if they don’t entirely agree with one another they know they have reached the best possible conclusion they can.
Tradition dictates against that. The modus operandi of the Selectboard, as I have observed it for the twenty-five years I’ve been in town, is five separate people vying to prevail. The result is that they quickly tire of their own “deliberations” long before anything is fully discussed or analyzed. At that point, having grown impatient and irritable, one of them calls for a vote and whichever three find the same solution least disagreeable determines the final decision.
At Tuesday’s meeting all five Selectboard members arrived with clear pronouncements about how to move forward from the budget defeat the previous Thursday. They had not, to my knowledge, spent even a minute together as a group discussing the situation. Thus every assessment sounded incomplete and unconvincing. Donna MacComber appeared to be the only one willing to acknowledge the uncertainties. Though all the members accepted that the Police/Fire project drove the voting only MacComber and Schoales refrained from drawing further conlcusions tho both could have made just as many presumptions as the other three.
Yes it is about the project. That is the catalyst. No it is not the project. The problems are much broader.
For reasons unknown the Board chose to give themselves only one week to figure out the best way to go forward. (Actually I am pretty sure I do know why they agreed on just one week but that for another post). If the budget is defeated in the first week of June for a second time there will not be time to have a finished budget for the new fiscal year. Since there are temporary remedies for that the Board might have just as well given themselves two or three weeks. A little less haste might improve the results and increase the chances that the budget will pass. In setting their deadline at one week there is a suggestion that in their minds they know the situation is so large and complex that one or two or even three extra weeks is not going to make a dent in the problem. They may be right but if so that should suggest that they go with the simplest decision for now.
The simplest decsion: pull the $261,000 out for the project and let it go at that. If they can speak convincingly to the public that they are responding only to the immediate issue and intend to use the next year to dig much deeper and broadly into the taxes, economics and finances of both the citizenry and the municipality I believe they will get a budget passed.
Thank you for writing a
Thank you for writing a concise (and, in my mind) accurate description of the SelectBoard right now. Obviously a week is not nearly enough time to come up with a comprehensive and fair budget. Even if they met as a group every single day that couldn’t happen And, I’m sure they aren’t meeting that often. My fear in this -in their rush to make a decision- is that they are going to go to the far extreme; Making every possible cut to programs that aren’t deemed vital to the town; deciding to not go forward with the police /fire project (which I don’t think they should) but not making good decisions on what of the most critical renovations can be done with whatever is left of the original 5 million dollar bond; that they feel overwhelmed and unsure and maybe a little resentful that they have to do the whole budget “thing” again and so they’ve given themselves only a week to accomplish this herculean task because they just want to get it over with. There are no doubt significant sums of money that can be carved from the town’s current expenditures but those solutions aren’t going to be found in a week’s time. I can’t imagine that any decisions made in this much haste will have long lasting,positive effects on the town. What’s the rush?
Cynical, but accurate.
Thanks Spoon!
My hope is that they don’t try to punish the town by cutting needed services such as the Parks and Library.
irony
A few days ago the Reformer printed an opinion from David Schoales. It was a bitter lament that when the Selectboard went to Montpelier to talk about rearranging regional municipal taxation they found state leaders only interested in discussing school taxation. Mr Schoales seemed angry that they weren’t listening. I suspect Mr Schoales would also be angry if someone were to say that rather frequently the Selectboard doesn’t appear to be listening.
In the opening post to this thread and other places and times in the past I have written about what might improve the functioning of the Selectboard and by extension its ability to build trust and effctiveness. Leadership, in a nutshell. I’ll point to something very specific. Listening. What does it mean to listen? How do others know they are being heard? What does one actually say and do that reassures others that they are listening? For instance, there is a term called ‘active’ listening. What does that mean? How does it work? How many other techniques are there?
Listening
How we all hate to listen!
This is an excellent point. For the benefit of us uninformed, can you give us a short tutorial?
Tai Chi Push Hands Lessons
A well known teacher put it simply:
You can’t talk and listen at the same time.
Very short tutorial
One of the most basic of listening skills is to be able to repeat back what you heard the other person say.
Example: If I say “I feel like you aren’t listening,” a response that shows you are listening would be “I hear that you feel as though I am not listening.”
I think this board makes an effort to listen. The question is, listen to whom? Some people say one thing, and others another. How does one decide?
I think anyone can give the
I think anyone can give the appearance of listening – the proof is what they do with what they’ve heard after the fact. To say that you’re listening to what someone says -which should mean that you’re fully understanding what they are saying and why it’s important to them -and then to act in a manner that is the total opposite -often without any rational explanation -is not really listening. It’s pretending to listen so you can move on to what you actually want to do. I think the Selectboard is very good at pretending to listen. I doubt if they -as a group -could repeat back what many of their constituents have said at any Selectboard meeting.