July 23, 2010

The Government They Prefer

Justin Katz

It's always notably plausible that there's a larger truth in the mix when I agree with Bob Kerr, but while his column lamenting the possibly fatal restrictions that the Tiverton Town Council has placed on an annual charity event, this year, counts in that regard, I'd suggest that he should think on the larger lessons that the controversy teaches about government. As Kerr describes it:

For seven years, Jane Bitto, who owns Evelyn's Restaurant with her husband, Dominic, has gone to Town Hall to get the permit for "Singing Out Against Hunger," three days of music in September that has raised a lot of money and a pile of nonperishable food for East Bay Community Action’s food pantries. Last year, in a bad economy, it raised $25,000. ...

There have been complaints. That's what Bitto heard when she went to Town Hall. There have been complaints from people living on the opposite side of Nanaquaket Pond from Evelyn's. The music is too loud and it goes on too long, they say.

As Kerr touches on — and as I've seen occur time and again in local politics — the process wasn't one in which people with complaints were asked to step forward to make them and confront those whom they wished to restrict. Council members made general statements about hearing complaints — complaints submitted through the typical Rhode Island method of a note, visit, or phone call to people with power — and blindsided their target only when the time to the event was too short to mount an effective response.

Kerr calls it "the flip side of small town charm." Over on the Tiverton Citizens for Change Web site, I beg to differ. This turn of events is the entirely predictable consequence of small-town fiefdoms. "Community minded" tends to mean a town or neighborhood conforming with a small group's personal preferences, with differences resolved through imposition rather than compromise. Just like we weren't the ones who turned this year's financial town meeting into an offensive circus, or who strove to ban the Easter Bunny from the public schools a couple of years ago, it isn't us selfish tax-hawk newcomers who aren't willing to tolerate a little prime-time music come a late-summer evening.

Rather, it's the same folks who regularly squash businesses' attempts at economic development. It's the same contingent who skirted the law to raise taxes by an oppressive amount and who then sued TCC President Dave Nelson for having the audacity to complain about their tactics, including Town Administrator James Goncalo's sending of false documents to the state. In other words, Kerr and his sympathizers should look at their concept of a government that cares and question whether it's possible to preserve such an entity from people who care above all about themselves.

I've heard it stated many times that those who hate the town — as indicated by an aversion to massive mid-recession tax increases — should leave. Oddly, I don't expect to hear similar suggestions when the indication of that hatred is aversion to live music in a public place for an excellent cause.

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So now Justin is willing to blindly assert that his TCC cronies, one of whom lives in the area across the pond from Evelyn's are the good guys because they didn't complain about noise. While in reality we don't know who did and did not complain. What we do know is that the TCC lied about the major tax increase ,they lost the vote and now all we have is a whining group of sore losers. For all we know it was Jeff Caron who made the complaint, I mean his budget comm had no problem cutting the visiting nurse services because it was deemed not a function of government. Stop the crying about the FTM and get on with your business.

Posted by: triplerichard at July 23, 2010 10:49 AM

the tiverton town council desided in executive session to withdraw from a lawsuit in which they and 20 some odd citizens have been involved in for 6 or 7 odd years now, that fine but i do believe it would have been nice of them to tell us that they were doing so and i myself would like to no just who voted what and why in exec session, seems father sneaky to me

Posted by: jim lipe at August 4, 2010 12:10 PM
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