Things are changing in the landscape - it's greener, brighter, softer looking. Winter has officially ended and spring has actually begun and is on track.
The ending of a thing, the beginning of the next thing that either replaces or continues. So, too, for Paris. For good or for bad.
Norway Paris Solid Waste - a topic of so much conflict and ill feelings and concerns about management. The existing board of directors dissolved; questions for how best to facilitate a need that must be met, somehow.
An ending.
Wednesday the 14th Norway and Paris selectboards met together, with the respective town managers. To guarantee no lapse in serving the community, a board of directors will be reconstituted for NPSW, for now; options and ideas will be considered and studied for the future.
A beginning.
The Jackson Rule 80-B Appeal - stemming from a situation that had no good beginning, and so far has hardly even a middle; a sad gathering of mostly endings, that feel, in general, totally incomplete.
Almost no one has heard - or looked at - a complete story from start to finish. The 80-B Appeal is only part of the story. There is the "why?" of it; and there is the "who-is-this-person-anyway?" of it.
This coming Tuesday, April 20, in an executive session at the Paris Town Office, the Paris selectboard will meet with Paris Town Atty. Geoff Hole to discuss the most recent offer for settlement out of court. [Editor's note: This will be the 3rd offer. One came , by phone, in October and was not passed on. Another came in December and was rejected 3-2 by selectboard. This same offer was discussed again by the current selectboard, in March, and not accepted as offered. A final offer for settlement will come on the 20th.]
This Tuesday has the potential for at least a loosely acceptable middle and end, to a festering situation of madness and vendetta that erupted in June 2009, and didn't stop then.
Unfinished. Needing an established beginning - also a middle.
The Paris Town Budget Process - a recurring process that becomes solid ground in June at Town Meeting. The budget committee's job was to consider and approve the figures brought to them by the town manager, whose figures come, by and large, from the various department heads and are then fit into the manager's framework. Their hearing was April 8. This work in progress was passed on to the selectboard, and was approved April 12..
Some new faces in the process this time, and though everyone worked diligently, the firm guidance and experience of former chair Forrie Everett (recently resigned and off to Florida) was missed.
Unfinished. The ending - or official continuance - comes in June when Paris citizens vote on the carefully prepared budget for the following year.
