Steeves Takes Scalpel To Marino “Plan”

Ken O’Brien

Gus Steeves

Local commentator, former Evening News reporter and prospective candidate for Southbridge Town Council Gus Steeves has published a new installment of his column “Earthborn” in the May 2 edition of the Southbridge News.

Titled “Red flags fly over petition” he examines what he terms “…a disturbing and potentially dangerous conflict”  in the petition designed to return Southbridge to a town meeting form of government.

Mr. Steeves elaborates on this assessment as follows:

Although some people in town have expressed concern that power is already too concentrated in the hands of the nine councilors we now have, the text specifically calls for giving five selectmen “all powers and duties” of the present council plus the ability to “appoint, suspend and remove” all town officers. Since one of the council’s powers is to act as the town’s legislative body, that phrasing could be read as negating the Town Meeting’s ability to legislate.

In fact, that power concentration is reinforced by a line in Section 2, which states, “a majority vote of the Board of Selectmen shall be required for the passage of any bylaw.” In most towns, the selectmen can only vote to send bylaws to Town Meeting, which has final approval power. That’s the whole point of having Town Meeting. If that provision remains intact, it would make the system even less democratic, effectively limiting Town Meeting’s authority to rubber-stamping the budget.

Following this deft critique, which cuts the legs out from under the central premise used by the plan’s advocates, Mr. Steeves goes on to note,

Another problem is what I call the “privatization provision.” It specifically eliminates the town’s ability to do engineering work in-house by killing the DPW’s engineering department and the requirement the director be a certified engineer, stating instead “all engineering services shall be performed by private firms or individuals.” That severely restricts the town’s ability to solve problems creatively and throws the door open for favoritism that will almost certainly cost the town more money in the long term (as privatization always does).

In addition to these faults, the author goes on to note several additional shortcomings including:

·         Reinstatement of all other town officers as they existed in 1972.
             - Several posts that are now appointed were then elected, including treasurer, collector,                    accountant and Board of Health, so what does the transition mean for the current office-                  holders?

            - Several more posts simply didn’t exist in 1972 — what happens to them?

·         The petition calls for repealing charter sections 4-4-2 and 4-5-1 to 8, but only one of those still exists after last year’s amendments.

·         Section 1 creates five selectmen, but section 7 staggers the election terms for six of them (one for one year; two for two, and three for three).

To summarize Mr. Steeves begins by saying, “I like Town Meeting and want more people to be involved”, interjects the observation “the petition isn’t as well drafted as it should be for such a serious undertaking”, and following his analysis concludes, “The more I look at this, the more concerned I am that this proposal is not about increasing democracy at all …”

While Gus and I may disagree on a number of issues I can safely say that his conclusion is certainly one which I can embrace.

PLAN "B"