This Monday 4-26-10 at 7 pm Paris selectboard will meet. Town office? Fire station? Better call to verify. For several months now, selectboard meetings have been held at the fire station, even though the audiences have become smaller and smaller since March; meetings have been long and uneventful.
One would almost think it's safe to go back in the water....no worries, no controversy, no crisis to bring the numbers out to watch.
Like the still calm sheen of the lake surface. Not a ripple...anywhere... it would seem....
A new board, a different mix of people, a changing of the guard that involves learning the ropes for some, and relearning the ropes, for others. A time of adjusting and re-adjusting how one feels about what people think; of discovering who to trust and who to question.
This adjustment period also brings out the naysayers - who want to capitalize on finally having someone to harangue; the hopeful - who are easily disillusioned by perceived missteps; and individuals who have their own agenda, and wish to scout out a source to get them what they want.
But the waters will roll and ripple, and eventually settle down, and the matter of getting this town going again must prevail. Or else the struggle of the last 10 months will have taught us nothing.
At Monday's meeting, a question waiting to be answered might be:
When the hue and cry is how bare the coffers of Paris are about to be any minute, what do you have to tell us to justify bringing town Atty. Hole up from Portland last Tuesday for 2 1/2 hours, or longer, at $250 an hour, to sit through a 60 minute discussion - plus or minus - that Chairman Glover finally agreed to rearrange the schedule for if it only lasted 15 minutes?
[editor's note: the executive session was originally scheduled first (so Atty. Hole could leave and the meeting continue without him), the revisited item, the purchase of a sidewalk sweeper, second.]
The use of Atty. Hole's time covered more than the executive session. His expensive time was extended by listening to - and ultimately volunteering an opinion on - the heated discussion of whether proper procedure had been followed in having a prior item on an earlier selectboard agenda reopened. Fingers were pointed angrily; and outside, on the streets of Paris, fingers continued - and still continue - to point, and tongues wagged - and continue to wag - passing on misinformed rumors.
Was this particular extra $250 well spent? Useful to the citizens of Paris? (OK if useful; but, not OK if things simply escalated because of a preplanned, not-totally-factual presentation that was based on misinformation and misinterpretation. )
The integrity of the entire board was impugned by this misinformation. It is good to question; to ask for clarity. It is pointless and unprofessional to attack based only on hearsay and innuendo.
The tiny segment of voters present noticed.
Atty. Hole was brought up to consider, with our 4 selectmen, any possible settlement out of court for the Jackson Rule 80 B appeal. Or not.
This is what we are really waiting to hear about Monday night.
[edtior's note: possibly NPCTV may rebroadast the segment of Tuesday's session on the item of the sweeper if they can find a spot before Monday. The broadcast time will be posted here if so.]
