What's the only thing worse for a town meeting representative than spending more than 13 hours over two Saturdays debating changes to your town charter?
Spending more than 13 hours debating changes to your town charter and seeing your work go for naught.
It's bad enough that Representative Town Meeting members could only finish consideration of 15 of the 33 articles put forth by the town Charter Revision Commission on Jan. 22 before the meeting was adjourned to Feb. 5.
Within minutes after the proposal to expand the Selectboard from five to seven members was struck down by a 53-43 vote, commission members Larry Bloch and Spoon Agave began circulating a petition to put the measure to a town-wide vote on March 1.
However demoralizing to some Town Meeting members, their efforts nonetheless served as a successful lesson illustrating the checks and balances of Representative Town Meeting. Now, just as voters did during last year's pay-as-you-throw debate, Brattleboro's electorate as a whole will get to weigh in on expanding the five-member Selectboard to seven members and to vote on a proposal to change the term lengths for members to four two-year terms and three three-year terms.
Expanding the number of seats on the board is a dubious proposition.
Given the quality of the professional staff in the Municipal Center, including Town Manager Barbara Sondag, a five-member board is able to adequately oversee the responsibilities of town business.
Further, the plan will do little to change the belief among many residents that only a masochist with too much time on her or his hands would consider public service. Considering the difficulty in attracting people to run for public office, a bigger board would not necessarily produce a better board, especially considering that many of the candidates for next week's election are vying for a one-year slot that would be eliminated.
Bloch and Agave argue that more members would foster a wider range of ideas and discussion on the board; Elwin “Corky” Elwell, a former town manager and current charter commission member, disagrees and believes that adding two more board members often means prolonging discussions on the issues without appreciably improving the quality of the dialogue. Furthermore, according to the research of one computer science scholar, “The division of labor effect reduces time to complete in a proportional fashion (1/N), but the loss due to team member interaction increases quadratically (on the order of N²).”
In English, that means that more people talking and communicating get less done than you might think, creating a less effective board and, certainly, frustration among elected officials and citizens alike.
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Another point debated in the Representative Town Meeting sessions is the issue of Selectboard demographics, raising questions among the representatives considering the charter changes. Their questions, in a nutshell: Does the current five-member configuration create a board that truly represents the changing interests of the community as a whole? And if not, would a larger board provide more opportunities?
In Brattleboro, far too often the term “diversity” becomes a code word for “people who agree with me.”
The true measure of diversity shouldn't come only in the form of candidates who mirror a voter's own beliefs or political dogma, though, of course, that is relevant and important. Rather, truly effective town officials demonstrate the capacity to think critically, listen fully, engage wholeheartedly, and govern decisively and transparently.
Could a town use good leadership from widening the spectrum of citizens? Of course. The town can be richer by encouraging candidates who bring their own personal worldviews and experiences that is informed by minority viewpoints, whether they dervive form of racial identity, sexual preference, different physical or cognitive abilities, or simply a candidate's gender.
At present, we see spirited campaigns with more candidates than seats to fill. When voters have choice, it forces discussion and debate, and everyone - the voters, the town, and the candidates themselves - ends up better for the process and the competition. Increasing the number of seats would likely only guarantee seats for any warm body who expresses an interest in the job, which sets the bar too low for effective Selectboard leadership.
For those dissatisfied with a lack of diversity, it's heartening to see a wide array of candidates facing off this year, from Republican Hilary Cooke to political newcomer Ken Schneck, who recently said that a friend of his observed, “Only in Brattleboro could you, as the gay Jew, be considered the conservative of the two candidates.”
So we believe that, however messy, the current board configuration has worked and - with the requisite effort by all involved and the continuing engagement of the citizenry - can continue to work.
We'll see on March 1 whether Brattleboro's voters agree.