Charter revision nixed

Someone asked me today about my opposition to Charter revision.

So now I offer you an explanation on my opposition to Charter revision. It is fairly simple and philosophical.

The voters are the boss. The Council takes direction from the voters. And staff take direction from the Council.

But this Council does not work like that:And based on various conversations, I concluded that the intent of Charter revision at this moment was to:

1) further reduce accountability and

2) further increase power in government.

And to me, those actions are intolerable.

But for concrete examples I offered:

i) There was a desire to extend Council terms from two years to four years.

IMO, that is simply an attempt to reduce accountability.

ii) There was a desire to eliminate the elected position of Town Clerk.

IMO, that is simply a power grab. If people were really upset with the job being done by the Town Clerk, last year would've been the year for some changes. But that wasn't the case. And based on one particular conversation I had in December 2006... I know with absolute certainty that the goal of changing the Town Clerk's position from "elected" to "appointed" was nothing, but a simple power grab.

No way, no how.

I'm not particularly concerned if the Council majority is Democratic, Republican or some other party / coalition. But I strongly oppose any attempts to further erode the power of the people by shifting it to an ever-more powerful government... a government that can't even post minutes to the Town website without some truthiness to their complaints.

Tim White