Editorial:  Molly Colman

I will be voting against the Charter Amendment to allow for the recall of elected municipal officials that will be on the ballot at South Berwick’s polls on Tuesday, June 10, 2008. Here are the reasons I think it is a bad idea and will hurt the town.

1. We already have a way to remove Town Councilors if a majority of the voters think they are not doing the job. It is called an election. Three year terms are long enough for Councilors to learn the ropes but short enough to correct if someone is completely out of tune with any of the town’s constituencies. But talk to me some time about term limits…..

2. However, I do understand that many would like the safety valve of a recall. What is being proposed is not a safety valve but a loaded gun with the safety off. The threshold for the number of petitioners who need to sign a petition to instigate a recall election is only 282 votes, a number that allows a small group of irate voters to go after a Councilor. You can probably find 282 voters who are hopping mad over any vote that occurs. A recall provision with such a low threshold could mean that we end up with constant contentious recall elections or with Councilors who are always in campaign mode, tiptoeing around issues so as never to make anyone mad and never making any courageous or unpopular decisions. If we have a recall provision, let’s do one that has a higher threshold so that it cannot be used frivolously.

3. We have been through a very tough spring. The fact is the Town Manager resigned after a majority of the Councilors, all of whom were elected by a majority of the voters asked for his resignation. Some people think it was the wrong thing to do. Others think it was the right thing to do. Now it’s done. My concern is that this present recall petition is all about stirring up emotions and making sure we don’t move forward. If this passes, with just 282 signatures we will be caught up in one more South Berwick spat that will make for juicy headlines in the local papers, set neighbor against neighbor, and keep us from making progress on the issues that face us.

All around us towns are moving forward on initiatives that are designed to help make them more livable, more efficient, and more economically viable. Kittery is putting up a wind turbine that will power their transfer station with renewable energy. Eliot voters will be voting tomorrow to allow small, private wind generators in town so that individual citizens will be able to generate their own power. Kittery Town Council just changed land use and zoning ordinances to allow a new business park zone that allows mixed uses to foster business growth and a sense of community. North Berwick just got $200,000 of federal CDBG money to assist with clean up for the redevelopment of their mill into senior housing. Not that we would or should do any of these specific things, but we need to move ahead and stop focusing on the past. I’m tired of being the town that has to decide everything by referendum. I’m tired of going to town meetings and hearing old grudges recounted again and again. I’m tired of being a town that can’t and won’t.

Regardless of whether you think the town and school budgets that passed were fair and frugal or unfair and excessive, I think we can all agree that the next year is going to be a challenge for every family in South Berwick, every business in South Berwick, and for the Town of South Berwick. I hope we spend our time, energy, and talents talking, learning, and working together so that we can all get through this, rather than spending all that time, energy, and talent on rancorous recall elections. We need to begin tomorrow to make sure next year we have an even more frugal town and school budget.

If you’ve been reading through the discussion that’s been going on this blog, you know that citizens hold widely differing opinions and there are some citizens who are passionately angry. I also see people who care deeply about the town, who are really smart and who have good ideas. I see people who try to get information and try to understand the complexity of issues to make good decisions. I hope we can use that energy to move ahead rather than to get caught up in more strife. There are some very positive signs in town. Town Manager Orsini and the Economic Development Commission are working on coming up with a way to get community input and build consensus about how to move forward on economic development. Even though it’s been because of negative reasons, there are more people coming to meetings in town and learning about what is going on. People tell me that through this forum they are learning about the town and now would like to become more involved. Let’s use that energy. Let’s work together to make South Berwick better.

I urge you to vote no on the recall amendment. Let’s put our energy into moving forward.

–Molly Colman

Tags: so. berwick government, town council

This entry was posted on Monday, June 9th, 2008 at 10:47 pm and is filed under So. Berwick Government. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.