TOWNSHEND — It is not the place of local government to be the voice of negativity. Selectboard members are the public image of our town, and to hear many of them openly disparage the character of the townspeople with perpetual pessimism, as was the case in the closing minutes of Townshend's Aug. 6 Selectboard meeting, is disappointing, to say the least.
Realism and realistic expectations rightly have a prominent place in public discussion, but to hear a Selectboard quibble about the value of training town employees based on whether or not those employees will like the training is ridiculous.
Like many small Vermont towns, Townshend prides itself on fiscal responsibility and frugality. Yet the Selectboard, time and time again, leaves state, federal, and private grant money on the table and chooses to pay for things the hard way or not all.
Townshend is a fiercely independent community, but this is not the result of our independent streak; it is selfish ignorance on the part of a very small number of people.
The issue here is that Townshend's Selectboard continues to allow the town to be ineligible for many (most) grants because they find it too ”cumbersome” to encourage, track, and document the training of town employees and volunteers in a way that meets minimum established standards.
After an unsettling amount of hemming and hawing, Townshend's Selectboard members reluctantly and grudgingly voted to commence the process of establishing a basic training plan that will begin to shuffle the town into minimum compliance.
“Am I a town employee?” is not the type of question I expect to hear any Selectboard chair ask in protest of the idea of commencing a training regimen for town employees to bring the town into compliance.
Feigned concern for the valuable time of volunteers and elected officials is a red herring at best and a smokescreen at worst. Even when our town's elected leaders do the right thing by taking necessary action, the tone and demeanor of their dissent in the discussion leading up the decision displays a contempt for the contemporary education required to effectively run local government in this day and age.
I am all for a reduction of federal intrusion into state and local matters, but when we repeatedly fail to educate ourselves, we force this issue up higher than it needs to go, and grant money becomes a carrot. I don't want to wait for a stick.
Long enough have volunteers and town employees been told by the Townshend Selectboard how they are supposed to feel about being asked to take training courses. I do not believe the dissenting board members were speaking for the community when they resisted the idea of a training plan, but rather they spoke from a personal disinterest in their own training.
The board's 'can't do' attitude is not a reflection of the town. This is a simple case of town government doing the right thing and still failing to display meaningful leadership on the issue.
We can do better than this. We deserve better than this. We deserve local elected officials who are willing to lead by example.
Perhaps Townshend Selectboard members should not be allowed to draw pay until they have attended some basic training courses themselves.