Saturday’s joint boards meeting to discuss the FY 2008 school budget was filled to capacity with town residents. Evidently many in town were interested to hear the superintendent’s budget presentation and listen to budget committee members’ questions and comments. Some citizens also clearly intended to ask questions of their own, as is customary in public meeting procedure and invited in Finance Committee Chairwoman Debbie Ricci’s outline of the day’s agenda at the meeting’s start.
After the two-hour-plus committee meeting, Ms. Ricci informed the room that comments from the public would be limited to about five minutes. The subsequent uproar earned another five minutes, but in all only four people spoke and two of us were cut short. Who can speculate what questions or comments went unspoken? Just as the committee members might be left guessing as to the various viewpoints of the room’s occupants, so might meeting attendees conclude that our town officials believe that the public can’t offer value to this administration.
Open forum is a cornerstone of town government. We rely on access to public information and our officials to ensure accurate representation. Certainly, a budget meeting isn’t a Town Meeting, and I wouldn’t anticipate the same level of public discourse. And I am conscious of the considerable time commitment that public service demands and can appreciate a desire to adhere to a reasonable meeting length. But what better channels exist to exchange a dialogue on the greatest fiscal pressure affecting our town?
Perhaps there are ways to optimize this process: 1. Papers distributed to the boards could be posted before committee meetings on the web and/or projected for all meeting attendees to see. 2. An open budget meeting encouraging public discussion could inform the budget that is brought to Town Meeting for vote; perhaps that would tighten the relationship between the proposed budget and voters’ expectations and interests. 3. Agendas specific to these meetings (committee meetings vs. open budget meetings) would help ensure that participants wouldn’t get too far astray from the task and address issues that are out of scope for the meeting.
Stu Sklar
Scott Road
