In my humble opinion

So Town Meeting is wading through a budget that has been painstakingly crafted over many months and countless hours, countless meetings of every relevant department and committee, countless agonizing compromises and calculations, all to balance a $4.7 million deficit. Through the diligent work of the Town Manager (actual and interim,) the Finance Committee, the School Committee, the Library Board of Trustees and the Select Board, we have before us a balanced budget recommendation with near unanimous support, excepting a few very small differences recommended by the Select Board majority and minority.

Let me emphasize again how much time and effort and big-picture balancing, cooperation, compromise and painful cutting created this budget recommendation. Lots. Get it? A ton.

So at Town Meeting, our job should be simple. Learn as much as we can or care to about this resulting budget recommendation, ask good questions to further our understanding, appreciate the heck out of all the work that went into its creation, and then pass the damn thing.

Instead, we’re getting ad hoc policy and spending recommendations from the floor: I think we should do this. I don’t like this – why don’t we do this? Why do we do this anyway, when we should be doing this?

Umm, a little late, folks.

To me, the idea of 200-ish people weighing in on different ways to distribute our spending at this point in the process is frankly nuts. Could we as individuals or as a body have a better sense of all the contingent factors of each allotment than the Finance Committee? Do our personal opinions take into account all the future financial and community effects? Do we think that we have more information or better judgment than the Finance Committee?

Of course not.

Those who want to influence the town’s spending priorities in different ways need to make themselves part of the budget process very early on. Get all your information together (because an opinion is not the same as information.) Talk to the experts. Go to the meetings. Spend the spring making your case. That is how to effect change in the budget. If the change you are sure we need is important enough, then it is worth the time and effort that will take. The budget is not created in a cavalier seat-of-the-pants fashion, nor should it be altered that way.

This really gets to the heart of my philosophy about committee recommendations. Basically, I tend to trust them. I believe that the Finance Committee has the most expertise about the town’s finances. I believe the Planning Board to be the most expert entity in dealing with the town’s planning/zoning situation. I believe no one knows more about the realities and needs of our schools than the School Committee. And who better than the Shade Tree Committee . . . nah, I won’t go into that one again.

“We’re not just a rubber stamp of approval!” is the cry echoing from every corner.

To that I say: Why not?

Unless you doubt their facts, their competence, their process, their motives or their integrity, then why would you doubt their conclusions?

The point of all of these entities is the specialization enabled by division of labor. Their purview is complex, and they become the experts in their areas so that the rest of us don’t have to. And there is vast opportunity for each of us to weigh in with our personal questions, concerns and ideas as part of the long and deliberative process that precedes and informs the recommendations that are ultimately made to Town Meeting.

And as a Town Meeting member, if you really can’t agree with a recommendation, you can always vote to oppose it. That makes much more sense than trying to alter it in some complicated way that disrespects both the committee process in bringing the recommendation, and the Town Meeting members’ process of making diligent and informed voting decisions.

I am, of course, brand new at this. I may be too naïve or idealistic in my view of how “the system” works. Perhaps being heard and effecting change are less possible than I believe. Fair enough – I concede that point. However, as a new TM-er, trying my best to make good and educated voting choices, I can say without hesitation that I can not and will not vote for a complex and significant alteration of a recommendation that has only been presented mid-discussion, giving me no time to consider, study or prepare. If your recommendation can stand up to scrutiny, please give me plenty of time to scrutinize it – not minutes – days, better yet, weeks. It is not that I think that the committees are automatically right, but in my eyes, you as the “opposer” bear the burden of proof. And if you can do that, I welcome it, and in fact, I thank you.

Just my opinion, of course.