Splinters

The 2015 Annual Town Meeting kicked off last night. I'm running a bit behind, and haven't prepared the tables I'll use to report on what comes before us and how I've voted. I'll get that taken care of soon (I hope).

In the meantime, be sure and visit the Town Meeting page on the town's website.

There you can find the warrant, reports made to Town Meeting, and when electronic voting was utilized, the individual votes of Town Meeting members.

Last night we made it as far as Article 11, the establishment of a Community Preservation Committee, which is having amendments hung on it like it was a Christmas tree. The formation of the Community Preservation Committee is a result of the vote taken last Fall when Arlington passed the Community Preservation Act. This committee will prepare a plan and make recommendations to Town Meeting on what it recommends doing with funds raised under the act.

I anticipate we spend a good portion of Wednesday's meeting working through amendments, all generally concerned with who appoints the 4 members not already determined by state law. There are going to be 9 members total, 5 of whom must come from designated committees concerned with the different areas that are eligible to receive CPA funds.

As proposed by the Board of Selectmen, the 4 "extra" potential members will be screened by the Town Manager and a member of the Selectmen, and ultimately approved by a vote of the Board of Selectmen.

The various amendments would split this up, in a variety of different ways, between the Finance Committee, the Town Moderator, and the Capital Planning committee.

Watching this play out is a bit like watching a pack of jackals fighting over a bone, except that bone doesn't have any real meat on it, and is actually just a stick that fell out of a tree. By the time everyone is done, there may be nothing but splinters left. And that's the real potential for harm here: a splintered selection process means that members aren't selected based on how they will strengthen the whole. You want to pick members that compliment and strengthen each other, which you can't as effectively do when members are added so disparately.

This morning I thought this post would be about the depressing displays of petty fights carried out under the guise of our democratic process. The various instances of behavior that has been characterized as "petty, ugly, and vile." I've come to consider the issue that this sort of behavior represents to possibly be our greatest challenge in Arlington. This morning, I don't really know how to write about it. I just wish people would either grow up, or get the counseling they need.

Hopefully though the bulk of that sort of thing is behind us now, and we spend the rest of Town Meeting serving Arlington rather than exercising our individual vendettas and displaying our individual personality disorders.