To the Editor:
I am a very new member of the Nobleboro Budget Committee, and we just concluded four Monday evening meetings reviewing every budget item, from the removal of three trees to the multi-page – and amazingly complex – school budget.
A recent editorial here in the LCN urged citizens to get involved in town affairs by participating in the process and mentioned the budget committee as just one possibility. As a numbers person, I have found this experience fascinating.
I have long asked myself why there isn’t more participation – just as that same editorial touched upon. I know why I didn’t in my earlier years and perhaps many of you feel the same:
1. Town affairs seem so very complicated. Few have the time to follow it all when you are so busy working, raising children, putting food on the table, and surviving. When I was in my thirties, I was a single mother who worked full-time. Now in my sixties, I wonder how we managed.
2. We elect people to handle everything. Let’s just pay our taxes and let them manage the day-to-day stuff.
3. Yes, we know taxes are killing us – local, state, federal, food, gas – you name it.
4. We know our schools are way too expensive for small towns like ours, but who has time to work on a fix for that?
5. It’s too hard to get even the most basic information, and we don’t have the hours it takes to dig into any of it anyway.
Luckily, we live in a complicated age, but we also live in the electronic information age. My husband, Clete, and I strongly believe that the only ones able to put on the brakes are the citizens themselves. Boards, committees, and elected officials face pressure from many sides and have definite limits.
We’ll be proposing ideas in the near future to make it much easier for you, the members of the public to educate yourselves rather quickly about the way your tax dollars are being spent.
Stay tuned. Things could get very interesting.
