Pure democracy or pure arrogance at Centerville Osterville Marstons Mills Fire District Annual meeting?
Last night I was witness to a scene right out of a Machiavellian plot at the Annual District meeting of the Centerville Osterville Marstons Mills Fire and Water District. As a non-resident of the ‘District’, but President of the Marstons Mills Public Library Board of Trustees, I was there as an interested party to Article #21, an article on the Warrant because of a Citizen’s Petition. This article reads (sorry I don’t know how to easily incorporate a link to this language elsewhere)
“We, the undersigned …respectfully request the Prudential Committee of the COMM Fire District to pursue an appeal to the Massachusetts State Legislature for an enabling act to permit the district to raise and appropriate funds for the assistance of the Centerville Public Library, Osterville Village Library, and Marstons Mills Public Library.”
The Prudential Committee, on advice of legal counsel, recommended ‘indefinite postponement’-effectively killing the request. In this recommendation it is expressed that because of legal technicalities (too obtuse to explain here), that “adopting it would amount to invalid action taken to request an invalid activity.”
So, how is this Machiavellian (defined in the OED-quoting here-” the employment of cunning and duplicity in statecraft or in general conduct")? This petition was submitted for review to the District in February 2011, ample time for the District to review this petition and discuss the legality & proper terminology in order to inform the Petitioners what they might do to correct improper language & concepts, etc-before securing the required 50 resident/citizen signatures! No such response or advice was forthcoming-even when the signed petition was submitted for in proper time for eligibility for inclusion on the May 2011 warrant. Long after that deadline to submit (too late to change anything) the originating petitioner received notification about the recommendation to indefinitely postpone and the legal rationale-too obtuse to comment on here.
This was the first inkling to the petition supporters that this petition might be deemed to be a nuisance-too trivial and amateurish to be treated with the seriousness the Petition deserved. To the District-a ‘commendable’ idea, it said in its comments about the recommendation to postpone-this may have been viewed as an intrusion on their authority of overseeing a $14 million dollar annual budget (!) that Citizens actually initiated this petition (based on the precedent of Cotuit Fire District’s change of the enabling legislation decades ago to allow monies to flow to the Cotuit Library from its coffers) and found a way to get it officially in front of the District Voters for a vote.
So that is the background!
At the meeting, it was even more interesting to see how the Powers-that-be worked to thwart the ‘pure democracy’ of the District Meeting. Articles 1-20 passed with little comment or dissent. When Article 21 came to a Motion (duly moved and seconded), the ‘lead petitioner’ made a presentation outlining the events above-no response from the District or its Legal Counsel, and the precedent in the Cotuit Fire District for assisting in library funding. When another District Resident sought clarification about Cotuit’s changing enabling legislation, the District Counsel and the Moderator treated the questioner with disdain and condescension when she asked if they could confirm Cotuit’s funding. They acted as if they had never been aware of the Cotuit situation. The lead petitioner came to microphone to provide copies she had procured of this legislation, and offered it to the Moderator and District Counselor, both of whom remained planted in their positions on the stage-apparently unwilling to touch the ‘hot potato’ they might have to acknowledge.
Some other discussion was provided, some by a beloved and caring District resident. He suggested that all things can be re-worded, as legislation is changed and modified constantly by subsequent legislative action and did not understand the reluctance to treat this Article as one that the District meeting voters should be allowed to vote upon.
The Article did actually get ‘moved’-called for a vote and the voice vote was close enough to require an actual count. The motion to pass the Article had strong support-to the great surprise of the supporters of it, and to the consternation of the opponents-especially the ‘suits’ (Prudential Committee, Moderator, Legal Counsel, and Commissioners) on the stage! After the audience count, Jim Crocker (COMM Fire Commissioner) recognized that the article had a good chance of passing, and to the naïve observer (myself included!) it appeared he wanted to support this article and he voted in the affirmative! Wow, the People were heard! The elected official responded!
WAIT-not so fast! After the negative votes were counted, the motion DID pass, and Jim Crocker immediately popped up and made a Motion to ‘reconsider the motion’ just approved. This parliamentary maneuver is one only an ‘insider’ would know-he HAD to vote in the affirmative in order to ‘move’ for reconsideration! What just happened? By putting a motion to reconsider the vote, it was a blatant attempt to overthrow the ‘Yes’ vote that had just occurred.
Is that a true example of Machiavellian tactics? Seems that it is to me! Is the Legal Counsel’s lack of advice and response to the early submission of the petition also Machiavellian or simple arrogance? Do the People have a right to be heard? In a Pure Democracy (as the 5 separate Fire Districts in the Town of Barnstable are purported to be), is that why District residents simply have given up attending the meetings? A quorum of 100 took over an hour to achieve! Obviously, it is more than just citizen apathy. It is being treated as if the voters have no voice. The Citizens are outmaneuvered by the elected officials’ access to the citizen-funded legal advice, parliamentary tactics and the difficulty of sorting through how the monies are actually spent.
Now, for the evening denouement: the meeting was adjourned, because a quorum no longer existed to vote on the reconsideration motion. Therefore, the meeting is not ‘over’ --only adjourned until June 9, where I hope the supporters of this possibly technically flawed petition will have their say again-to vote in the affirmative and to ask the Elected Officials to do their sworn duty--to act on behalf of the electorate, and EXPLORE how to change the enabling legislation to allow for some monetary assistance to the Centerville, Osterville and Marstons Mills libraries, who struggle mightily to survive in the Town of Barnstable’s only partial financial support of their existences.
Whew that was a treatise-but then such an involved story cannot be explained in 500 words or less!
Posted by:
Deborah Schilling, Town of Barnstable Resident-not speaking on behalf of the Marstons Mills Board of Trustees, but only as an interested witness to the machinations of the COMM Fire and Water District and its politicians and legal counsel.
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