Don’t let D-F election regress to bygone era

To the Editor;

By attempting to take away the ability to vote by secret ballot all the budget related Articles on the ballot at the Dover-Foxcroft Municipal election in June, the Charter Revision Commission has regressed to a bygone era! They claim to be “streamlining” the voting process by having residents vote by a show of hands at the “open” town meeting in April. In fact the proposed Charter revision will only permit a single Article showing a total “bottom line” figure for the annual budget to appear on the printed ballot for voter approval or rejection in June. Actual voting for the various budget components will be completed during the “open” town meeting. Should you be unable to attend the April “open” town meeting you will be restricted to a single secret ballot vote, “up” or “down” for the entire budget.

What happened to the wishes of the voters when years ago they approved using the secret ballot so they could understand the budget’s content and then cast their vote for each incremental budget element listed by separate Warrant Articles? During the intervening years between adoption of the secret ballot and the present, there has been a steady reduction in the number of budget related Articles appearing on the ballot and now the Commission proposes to eliminate all of them.

You’d be quite correct to question the disappearance of transparency. And what about administrative accountability? You might even be tempted to wonder about our ability to trust our town government. Ronald Reagan answered that — “…trust, but verify.” The proposed Charter revision eliminates all possibility to verify even one budget element except in “open” meeting, and even then you’ll be forced to sort through the “foggy” administrative explanations. What could possibly be the real agenda behind a decision to reduce an established democratic process/of voting for a complete budget replete with all its components, in the privacy of the voting booth? Could it be the Selectmen and town manager have determined that the peer pressure exhibited at town meeting is sufficient to achieve their limited goals that might just not be in the collective interest of all the town’s citizens?

Aw shucks, maybe I’ve got it all wrong! A while ago a now retired former Dover selectman extolled the virtues of the “way things used to be.” He said he’d been raised in this town and he liked it to be just as it was many years ago. Even attempting to change that kind of sentiment borders on the ridiculous. Yet, expressions like that might have been all that was needed to have the Charter Revision Commission attempt to step back a decade and then to propose we return to an out-dated, out of fashion time made antiquated by the advent of a voting booth, secret ballots and electronic tabulation.

Here’s a real flight of fancy about as foolish as “keeping things just the way they used to be.” If the administration truly wanted to turn back the clock in order to effectively do away with the secret ballot, perhaps another Commission would have taken an entirely different position. They could very well have considered how much money could be saved by doing away with road paving and returning them all to dirt. Ban the automobile and permit only horses and carriages in town. Center Theatre could be transformed into an opera house of great fame. Why, Rite-Aid could disappear and the Blethen House rebuilt. With EPA approval all indoor plumbing could be made obsolete and the “one holer” returned to former prominence.

Just think of the tax money that could be saved if the town gave up its fleets of snowplows, the grader and other snow-taming equipment, deferring instead to the horse drawn roller for packing snow on the town roads. Maybe we can turn the years back to pre-date Edison and light the town’s by-ways with oil burning post lanterns. Perhaps by a show of handset “open” town meeting the present number of town administrative employees could be cut in half, and the few remaining could rattle around in that perfect model of antiquity, Central Hall. Now let your imagination really fly. How about the men folk once again sporting full beards, using straight razors and a shaving bowl. Finally, try this image on for a laugh. Swing by the letter office to see the town mail loaded on the weekly stagecoach to Bangor, maybe riding “shotgun” would be the Chairman of the Board of Selectmen protecting the town’s tax booty as it’s spirited away to some distant depository.

Really, how illogical and unreasonable, even foolish to think about how things used to be, particularly within the context to multi-million dollar town budgets, to return to a time when a show of hands established budget priorities for the town. We’re all grown up now and truly democratic procedures could be carried out in private, by secret ballot, with each Warrant Article carefully presented so as to provide absolute and total transparency even for the not well-informed voter. All it takes is the will to do so, and to do it for all the citizens.

Let’s not turn the clock back to another era, just vote to keep the secret ballot, and not to change the Town Charter. Retain your power to be involved and to have your tax dollars used as you think they should be. In June vote by secret ballot not to accept the revised Charter. Keep it simple – vote NO.

Don Benjamin
Dover-Foxcroft