Thankless Hometown Duty
10/20/08 | 3 comments

Thankless Hometown Duty


Senators and representatives to Congress earn about $170,000 annually, enjoy generous health care benefits and, if they stay in office long enough, receive a generous federal pension. Maine’s selectmen and city councilors get paid pennies on the actual hours they work, may be handed an aspirin by a town clerk for the headaches they get after long, contentious meetings, and when their service ends, get a plaque expressing gratitude — if they’re lucky.

Serving the town or city you love in local government is thankless work. It’s also increasingly difficult, and demands skills that border on the professional. Gone are the days when selectmen would gather around a table in a farmhouse kitchen to work out the town’s bills.

The same is certainly true of serving on a school board. Members often lug home reams of paper from reports, memos and budgets. A trip to the grocery store might mean long conversations with concerned parents, or an unpleasant confrontation with an angry taxpayer.

Two election dust-ups in Maine illustrate how hard it is on democracy’s home front.

In Trenton, a former town employee has led the charge to expand the town’s board of selectmen from three members to five. The work at the municipal level has indeed become more demanding, as she says, justifying the change. Spreading the work among five instead of just three elected officials seems reasonable. The question will be on the Nov. 4 ballot.

But critics of the proposal charge that the former town employee is less concerned about the work burden and more concerned with seeing “alternative points of view” on the board, as she told the Mount Desert Islander newspaper.

Local voters are capable of sorting this out, but it seems as if the move is designed to change the make-up of the board by adding members with views different than those of the incumbents.

A similar effort to remake an elected board is on the ballot in Belfast. Two city councilors are targeted in a recall vote on Nov. 4. Their offenses? The two councilors voted to change the zoning on a parcel of land from allowing big box stores to prohibiting such development.

One of the proponents of the recall had a financial interest in the proposed big box property.

In both the Trenton and Belfast cases, patience is a more prudent response for those unhappy with the current make-up of the boards. Changing course in a community in Maine is, thankfully, a lot easier than remaking Congress or even the State House. Those unhappy with elected officials in Trenton and Belfast should rely on the good old-fashioned American way — wait until the incumbents face re-election, then work to defeat them.

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Comments
3 comments on this item
On 10/20/08 at 2:33 AM, Johninphilippines wrote:         Repeated separate thumbs down will cause comment to be hidden

Has not anyone got the message yet? The higher up the ladder you go, the easier the job is, the more "perks" you get, the shorter the working hours are, the longer the lunches and evening parties are, and the pay is fanstastically high, and the benefits cannot be matched anyplace. The work is vote whichever the way the wind is blowing, get "earmarks", "pork barrel" pocket money, transportation, and almost everything else at discounts or free of cost. Especially in government. Delegation is the rule...of every day. Don't do any work...delegate. All you do is go to your office, make an appearance, and go off the rest of the day. Not all the time, as a rule, but whenever you try to talk to your congressional or senatorial electorates...they are "busy" or "out". See it for yourselves. It's those at the working level who have the problems. They are at the "grass roots". They are the working ants of this world. Not the queens!

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On 10/20/08 at 11:59 AM, MaineMarine wrote:         Repeated separate thumbs down will cause comment to be hidden

So easy ???? you do it!

Do you really think its easy listening to hundreds of people every day, and keeping your cool, doing the right thing in so many peoples eye's day after day. and learning the issue at depth so you make the right call, and then only to hear crap in articles like this one where these people have no clue what they are talking about and think that they vote which ever way the wind blows,,, its just not true, while most stay up very late making very hard choices for you the people, and work very hard hours traveling all over the state and flying not because they want to but because its the job. I have been with and followed a "Politician" let me tell you it was a full day. and while I got to go home after, he did not, he was up first thing 430am and at it all over again. SO before you spew stupidity all over the place, see what these men and women have to do daily and how they got there, they didnt get there by dropping out of school, or making bad choices in life. Many actually worked very hard to be where they are.

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On 10/20/08 at 3:55 PM, Johninphilippines wrote:         Repeated separate thumbs down will cause comment to be hidden

MaineMarine...I've been there and done that before. Unless you personally know me, you cannot judge my life, or my work. I guess some politicans do work hard, and they work hard when there is work to do. You should know what I mean...they work when there is election season, they work on certain projects, and state issues...but it is not a continual work-in-motion position. Back in the late 1960's to the mid 1970's, I also worked with politicans at the State House in Augusta...and all I saw them do is what I described, above, and most of the time, they had it easy. I'am sure many worked hard to be where they are, but let's do a time study and see then, just how things fare our trendwise, okay? You just generalized in your report.

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