Greater good doesn't count in Paris

In some ways it's funny. A selectboard that has been notorious for bullying each other and residents over the past year or so, appears, now to have been bullied into submission by a handful of vocal, unrelenting residents, some of whom have an agenda.

After scheduling a special meeting Friday to address putting the police merger on the November ballot, the board listened politely to Mary Beth Caffey, who had valiantly organized a petition to get it on the ballot.

Then, a motion was immediately put forth and approved unanimously to indefinitely suspend consideration of the agenda article pertaining to the referendum, effectively eliminating any chance of getting the question on the ballot.

We have it on good authority that this was done because the board was afraid it would be accused of pushing the issue forward in a special meeting.

Caffey, started the petition at the beginning of September, then stopped because she was told the board was going to vote to put it on anyway. When that attempt failed she started petitioning again and says she would have had the necessary signatures if only she had more time. 

It's too bad and, in a way, a real miscarriage of citizen rights. Had she obtained the necessary vetted signatures the question would have had to appear on the ballot. A petition with enough verified signatures "shall be placed" on the ballot, according to law. It did not need selectboard approval.

While the petition may have fallen short of the required 243 signatures, the selectboard should have recognized that the 122 people who did sign it, as well as the tie vote at the August town meeting, indicates significant interest for a final, definitive vote on the issue in November.

Opponents of the merger fought against the referendum specifically because they knew that if Paris residents were given a chance to vote at the polls, (instead than of a Monday night meeting) the merger would pass. So the Paris selectboard proved it could be cowed.

In the end, the selectboard decided that it would rather ignore the right of all its citizenry to be heard than put up with a few of the loudest mouths and sharpest tongues. 

Wow.