It’s town meeting time again.
Between now and June, Lincoln County residents across the county will have a chance to have their say in how their town is governed. Given the recent hullabaloo about local control, we think it’s only right to point out that the annual town meeting time is the ultimate in local control.
In other parts of the country, the town meeting has gone the way of the dodo. In many states, the county is the local government and bureaucrats and professional politicians at that level hand down decisions affecting resident towns.
The annual town meeting is the time when residents are called together to act as their own legislative body. Sure, there are usually a few special town meetings called throughout the year, but those are generally sparsely attended, primarily because they deal with the minutiae of fine tuning the town government; amending an ordinance here, tinkering with the budget there.
The annual town meeting is the time when everything is on the table, the multi million dollar school budgets, new municipal buildings or fire trucks; what have you.
These are the decisions that set the town mil rate, elect local leaders and decide what, if any, regulations are adopted or amended. It comes down to politics the old fashioned way, the way our legendary oft-referred founders did it; through debate and decision in an open forum.
In recent years some towns, notably Wiscasset, Jefferson and Waldoboro, have adopted a referendum style town meeting with everything decided on the ballot. While it seemingly takes a little wind out of the democratic sails, there is still a public hearing beforehand where the business of the town is hashed out.
The bottom line is you need to get involved. If you want to have a hand in your own destiny, this is an easy way to do so.
The vote may not go your way. You may not like the outcome, but that’s the ugly beauty of democracy. Unless “local control” is really shorthand for “rejecting anything you don’t like,” that that should taste pretty sweet.
