Where do we draw the line, between traditions that have outlived their usefulness, and traditions that define who we are, distinct from other people, places, and cultures?
Yesterday was Town Meeting Day in New Hampshire, the traditional day when communities across the state hold their annual gathering of citizens, to discuss and vote upon proposed budgets and municipal activities for the coming year.
In my home town (the town where I grew up, rather than the one I live in now), the last vestiges of this form of government have finally been eliminated.
I was present at the Meeting in 1988, when the town voted to try running matters via a Town Council (elected) and a Town Administrator (hired by said Council). I voted against the change then, and I'm just as firmly opposed to it today. The argument in favor of the change, was that the town had grown too large to effectively manage its duties with only a single day per year to conduct the year's business. And, in many respects, that argument is not without validity. But leaving communal goverment behind in favor of representative government nonetheless weakens a community at its most basic level.
When you govern by Town Meeting, there is no separation between the concepts of "Town" and "citizens". They are one and the same, and governmental activities are woven into the fabric of normal, everyday community life. To choose instead a representative form of government, is to separate the one from the other. Instead of the Town being a "we", it becomes an "it". What kind of impact does this have on individual investment in the community? When you are no longer part of the core structure of a town, maintaining a high level of social discourse among an informed electorate is made monumentally more difficult.
Our Town Moderator for many, many years, Joe Michaels, was the epitome of the classic New England Town Moderator - with good humor and a wry intelligence, he kept Meeting rolling right along, giving fair opportunity for folks to speak for and against each measure, while holding us to a focused progress through the agenda. On the evening the final Town Meeting vote was passed, he commented, that only time would tell if the change would prove to be a golden goose...or a rotten egg.
No points for guessing which outcome I think was achieved...
Posted at March 10, 2004 07:17 PM in Social Order , Wonderings