According to the Brattleboro Town Clerk’s Office only 71 signatures were submitted by the 5pm deadline yesterday, in the attempt to force a reconsideration of the town’s municipal budget. 418 signatures of registered voted would have been necessary.
Bob Bady
Not surprising
It’s tough fighting city hall and people have so many other things on their plates like paying bills, buying food, working two jobs etc, etc, etc.
If we had true representation neither the budget nor the police and fire project would be the issue that it is.
Anyone know?
Since the last public vote was initiated by town meeting reps, does anyone know how successful the parallel effort to collect resident signatures was? I would be curious if there was a stark drop in the number of signatures collected this time around or if they were similarly unsuccessful.
It is a shame the town meeting reps did not have the courage and integrity to put their assumption that this vote was a rejection *only* of the police/fire project to the test via a second public vote.
In any case, we will return to this next year when the budget goes up by another huge amount due to the increased bond payment. Perhaps by then we will have spent the entire 5 million dollar bond on architects and paperwork.
resident sigs
Hello-
As for the resident signatures, there were many more than the 71 that were counted. Many people whom signed were either not registered or had changed their address or gotten married with a name change.
Also, the time frame for completing 418 was way too small considering reality.
The ultimatum was that until the budget had gotten resolved, the police/ fire project was on hold and no one was comfortable with that, therefore, the budget gets the vote.
So it seems this provided leverage to ensure that the budget was passed.
check mate