town meeting day

breakfast on a sunny day

Sort of dumbly excited about Town Meeting day. I spaced the date last year and had work plans by the time I remembered what the date was. For someone of my political bent, the only sort of democracy I really like is direct democracy and town meeting is IT. This year has been lively in town. The town manager was removed from his position amidst a lot of rumors that can’t be confirmed or denied because everyone can’t legally disclose what happened. That same town manager (who maybe is an okay person but I didn’t like him much as a town manager) is running for selectboard which is sort of crazy. There’s a schism in town between the no-new-or-higher-taxes crowd who I consider more conservative and the “Our town is awesome let’s keep it that way” crowd which I’m more aligned with. I even became the “social media manager” of the Randolph We Love page on facebook which is about as far as I go in getting politically involved outside of my library activism. As a renter I don’t even pay taxes in this town directly, but I’d be happy to chip in a bit more to keep the library functioning as well as it does and keep the opera house open. This is a great little town.

So I’m at home the night before the meeting making cookies for the “meet the town” social hour before the meeting begins at 10 am. There are a few places online to follow the statewide happenings including VPRs page of updates and a site they link to TMDVT which is a simple tagged content aggregator. I have the day off of work and a hot dog party to go to in the evening so tomorrow will be a big day which I’m sure will be in interestingly marked contrast to SXSW which is coming up at the end of the week in Austin Texas.