BRATTLEBORO — Proposed amendments to Brattleboro's Charter are on the March 3, 2015, ballot. The Brattleboro Selectboard asks you to consider the following when voting:
• Town Meeting term limits - Brattleboro's Town Meeting is both participatory and representative democracy. Up to 155 residents get elected and gather annually to make budget and policy decisions for the town. It is anti-democratic to ban Brattleboro residents from Town Meeting because they have attended six years in a row.
Term limits would bar many residents who now attend Town Meeting, and the institutional memory they bring with them would be lost.
Right now, there are 25 open Town Meeting slots, so anyone interested in joining already can. Term limits actually could empty out Town Meeting so there would not even be a quorum.
• Voting on the first Tuesday in November - Town elections in Vermont take place in March and are distinct from national and state elections. The proposal to move elections and ballot items to a different cycle from Town Meeting would damage the link between these important parts of government and leave Brattleboro out of step with the rest of Vermont.
Also, the ballot proposal would move elections to the first Tuesday in November, which is not national or state Election Day.
• Paid time off for elections - The ballot proposal to require employers to give paid time off is not tied to Brattleboro Town Meetings, so it also would mandate Brattleboro employers to pay employees to attend town meetings in other towns and states.
Brattleboro residents already face very steep property taxes because the town provides infrastructure and services to support the economy for the whole region, but the town can't collect taxes to support these services from people who work and shop here.
• Town grand juror - The role of the town grand juror under Vermont law is to recommend prosecution of offenses to authorized officials.
The grand juror position is essentially obsolete in this modern era, because enforcement of laws and ordinances is handled by other elected officials and clear structures.
• Proposed referendum, ordinance, and initiative charter changes - The proposal to change the charter's current referendum system seeks to shift decision making away from the Town Meeting model, which encourages collective discussion and consideration of issues, to a ballot system, which allows only up or down votes on questions.
Town Meeting makes many important decisions, and setting separate rules for voter review of budget items over $2 million is confusing and arbitrary.
The proposal to remove the words “representative” and “general” from the charter's ordinance and initiative sections does not fit with the structure of the charter and also would cause confusion.
While it is claimed that the amendments would restore free speech, recent charter changes actually lowered the number of signatures needed on a petition, and there is nothing to show that the charter as it stands discourages ballot items.
• Structure of charter amendment proposals - The proposed charter amendments are grouped together on the March 3 ballot and can only be voted up or down in groups. Voters should carefully consider all proposals in each ballot item, and remember that a vote to approve either group of amendments is a vote in favor of all its parts.