As Paris citizens are asking questions and working to understand what went wrong and where do things stand now, Sunday 2-14-10, Paris voters have an additional opportunity. We have an opportunity to work in tandem with voters in Norway to assess what is working - or not - in the implementation of an interlocal agreement that Paris and Norway voters approved in June 2009 to operate a solid waste management program.
Today the Norway Paris Solid Waste board held their regular monthly meeting, this time at 3 pm at the Norway Town Office. As the board of directors were about to go into executive session to discuss the board's legal rights as interpreted by counsel, one of the directors, currently in exile at the whim of the board, pointed out that the presence of an attorney, either in person or by phone, was required for such a session to be legal. Failing in that effort, she attempted to attend the executive session, and was escorted from the room by 2 Norway police officers.
[editor's note: Executive session, according to Title 1 MRSA sec.405(6)(e) , requires either a lawyer to be present, or one to be on site via a conference call by phone MMA's interpretation of case law. The NPSW board had neither of these today.]
Fifteen or twenty minutes later, the executive session ended, the door opened to the public, and the exiled officer who had been removed was returned to the group; everyone went back in to continue the meeting.
All business continued lickety-split; questions were put out by the chairman or treasurer; and voted on in lockstep, neat and tidy, all hands up, all eyes on the table; no discussion required.
Except: in the silence following a motion that had been seconded and approved to have an inter-account transfer of $10,000, the chairman seemed compelled to ask the board members, "Doesn't anyone want to know why [there was a transfer] ?" There was another minute of silence; then, as if picking up the cue, one board member finally said, "Yes, I want to know." The treasurer then took great pains, and went to great lengths to explain why it had always been done this way.
The reason for this little staged activity was...?
...Then back to lockstep, before, during, and after.
"Any questions? All in favor? Unanimous," says the chairman.
The audience wonders: Where did any discussion happen? Are we to assume that everybody on the board already knew everything? As opposed to the tax payers sitting in the audience who knew nothing? So, of course the vote was unanimous? Every time?
If a nugget of intention could be derived from the proceedings, it might very well be that, in defiance of the interlocal agreement, the NPSW board threw down the gauntlet: they intend to ask their attorney (a local attorney, not either town's attorney) to correspond with the Town of Paris regarding whether there has been... a breach?...of agreement? of contract? of what, seemed not too clear.... and how it should be resolved.
In defending a decision made in keeping with the new bylaws for the board, drafted by them for them, in favor of them, they cherry-picked a piece out of Section 7 of the interlocal agreement (the agreement they have long declared unacceptable)): the piece that says if there is a dispute that cannot be settled, then an arbiter needs to be brought in.
Did you get that? Good for you. Most everybody in the room this afternoon was left in complete confusion, not to mention dismay.
Thursday 2-18-10 at 6 PM at the Norway Town Office, the selectmen and town managers of both towns will have another go at it.
Our money, our resources, our responsibility. And their mismanagement. Come and watch. There might be a slim chance of asking a question.
[editor's note: On the board of the NPSW: Norway: Bruce Cook; Eric Grondahl; Dundee Pratt; Paris: Joe Bracey; Bruce Hanson, treasurer; Al Atkinson, Ch.; Janet Jamison, in exile.]
