The voice of the people on mute

By BOB ACKERMANN

Published on July 04, 2008

In watching the last Town Meeting on ACTV, I was particularly intrigued by remarks made to Town Meeting members by a Select Board member speaking against a warrant article that requested the Select Board to schedule a town-wide referendum on whether to raise the CPA tax to its maximum of 3 percent.

The speaker clearly thought that the citizens of the town were not qualified to vote in such a referendum, partly because many of them would not be able to draw a distinction between a Town Meeting approval of the referendum taking place and a Town Meeting approval of the tax increase.

As I have a quite different impression of the abilities of local voters, I tried to follow the unfolding logic of the argument. It seemed to be that only the members of Town Meeting had the knowledge and ability to decide on the tax increase, and that they were in fact elected to make such decisions for those who had elected them. Thus, the purpose of elections is not to elect our representatives, but to elect our betters who are then expected to make decisions for us. I admit to nausea when I worked this out. It occurred to me that a continuation of this trend would mean that our sociologists and anthropologists need not leave Amherst to study life under totalitarian rule.

The tendency that I thought I spotted seems to to me be popping up all over the place. As documented in the local media, the Amherst school committees made a decision in closed sessions about school lunch services and then refused all citizen requests for a discussion of that decision and for any reconsideration of that decision when citizens expressed concern about it after it became public.

Some members of the School Committee have informed some of the lunch ladies that their misery is due more to false hopes raised by their self-appointed supporters than to the provisions of the severance packages worked out by the School Committee. It is worth thinking about the significance of "false hopes" in this context. Was it a "false hope" to think that the School Committee might respond to the views of the citizens who had elected it, or to the views of teachers and students in the system? If so, then in electing School Committee members, we once again elect our betters to whom we give carte blanche to make irrevocable decisions for us. Again, this is not my view.

I watched with considerable interest the Town Meeting of June 11, which was devoted to a warrant article seeking approval of the use of some CPA funds to purchase two lots in front of the Henry Hills mansion so as to preserve historic views of that mansion, the purchase to be completed contingent upon a state grant. The flow of rhetoric before Town Meeting members suggested that the passage of the warrant article would result in purchase of the lots, contingent upon a state grant. Not so. Although the owners had apparently agreed to sell at "market value," they had not agreed that the appraisal paid for by the town represented market value. Town Meeting was only voting on the "town portion" of the deal. None of the presenters chose to point this out, although the warrant article was only a necessary condition for the acquisition, not a sufficient condition.

Town Meeting members should assume that they are not necessarily being told everything relevant to making their decisions. They need to formulate more searching questions and insist upon coherent answers to those questions. This is necessary for the preservation of any semblance of local democracy.

Most recently, after listening carefully to local citizen views about the July 4th parade issue, the Select Board (at its meeting of June 23) voted to inform the town manager that the sense of the board was that the permit to the private parade should be granted for 2009, although no town equipment would be extended to that parade. Various options for a second parade would be explored at future meetings.

One might have thought that the issue was settled by the Select Board vote, but the town manager, although stating that he deeply respects the opinion of the Select Board, is not to be rushed into a decision for which he reserves the exclusive right to make on the basis of his explicit licensing authority.

Is the vox populi speaking through a mute these days, or do I need a hearing aid? Have charter proponents succeeded through a stealth campaign in twisting local government into a more vertical structure whose upper reaches can safely ignore cries of despair from those down below? Your pleasure in your future, dear reader, may depend on how you act on your own answers to these questions.

Bob Ackermann is a retired professor.