Anyone who remembers the movie “Network” certainly remembers the refrain from that movie, which was “I am mad as hell, and I am not going to take it anymore.”
Well you the voter in the Town of Kent should also be “Mad as Hell.” The Town Board’s decision to extend the term of the Supervisor from its current two years to a four- year term is nothing short of a decision to TAKE AWAY YOUR RIGHTS.
Think about it, would any elected officials voluntarily decide to limit their own powers? If you answer yes, then you have not been paying attention to what is going on around you. The shift of power from the people to power brokers grows every day and the current Town Board is asking you to aid and abet this shift by voting to limit your own Right to Choose. .
The current Supervisor states that the four-year term is necessary for a variety of reasons; she states that she needs the additional two years for the purposes of continuity. She has used as an example the process of procuring grant money in which she claims that the process is time consuming and without the additional two-year term, many of the requests for funding grants will fall through the cracks. If her statement is true then why do we even need an additional four Town Board Members? Are our remaining Board members oblivious to the financial needs of our community?
She also claims that extending the Supervisor’s term by an additional two years will free up the Supervisor to concentrate on running the Town and not having to be concerned with a re-election campaign in two years. This premise on its face is laughable. What the Supervisor is asking is not to be held accountable for an additional two years; it is as simple as that.
If you DO NOT WISH to be a mindless lemming and voluntarily give away your right to vote then VOTE NO on extending the term of office for the Town Supervisor.
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I wonder if the Supervisor would have sought “continuity” while Nordstrum or Tulipane were in office. A two year term for the supervisor’s position keeps the balance of power in check since the majority of the town board is up for election every two years. It gives the people the chance to oust a bad team if it sees fit. A four year term has little to do with efficiency. The fact that Supervisor Doherty has put this forth this retroactive referendum with a re-election bid speaks loudly to me.
For a law to take effect before it is passed is ludicrous. For it to have any credibility, it should take effect 1/1/10, in which case it would be law for the NEXT election, not this election, which is being held in 2009. So on the surface, it certainly does appear to be a grab for power.
JDKJJK engages in some interesting hyperbole I prefer not to entertain on my board. No one is losing their right to vote, that’s patently ridiculous. The question is one of efficiency, not of Democracy.
Since efficiency is the argument advanced by proponents of the two-year extension can I take it that you support the measure.
Come now! The world is simply not that clean cut. I haven’t taken any position on the issue and I may not. As I’ve said often enough, there are explanations and reasons on both sides of the argument – with each being equally valid – once you remove politics from the equation.
But, since you came for an argument which I will not give you, I will leave you with something in exchange: The question would be a lot easier to figure out if the referendum did not take effect on January 1st and waited, instead, for the next round of elections.
J
According to you the issue is one of efficiency? What does changing the implementation date of the proposed law have to do with efficiency? The proposed change will be no more or no less less efficient two years from now.
I, for one, believe the change will reward inefficiency. As things stand now an efficient Supervisor will be rewarded with an addditional two years through the vote. If the referendum issue is passed an inefficient Supervisor Supervisor will be rewarded with an additional two years in office.
We at Kent Fiscal Watch have put up a website at http://www.kentfiscalwatch.org with an impartial look at both the for and against. Feel free to take a look and make up your own mind.
Thanks
John