-Caveat Lector- http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/188/metro/Town_takes_a_vacation+.shtml
Town takes a vacation Irate Maine residents vote down a budget, bring services to halt By Marcella Bombardieri, Globe Staff, 7/7/2002 LEBANON, Maine - The outgoing message on the Town Hall's voice mail is spoken in an upbeat female voice: "The Lebanon Town Office will be closed until at least August 14th. Please call back then for further information. Thank you." Since July 1, no one has been able to register a car in Lebanon, get a marriage license, or report a health code violation. The town clerk and other staff are collecting unemployment, while the rescue squad begs nearby towns to donate supplies such as latex gloves. In a heated referendum last month, citizens voted "no" on the town budget, shutting it down at least until another ballot in mid-August. The vote was the result of a standoff between selectmen and a grass-roots citizens group. But many residents of this Maine town near the New Hampshire border are unruffled, even pleased, with the idea of a summer without government. "If people had their choice, most of the government would be shut down anyways," said Jim Martin, a 42-year-old mechanic. "Your tax money is going there and it's not doing anything." Lebanon could be the test tube that limited-government crusaders have dreamed about for years. There are bureaucrats in Washington, D.C., who spend their whole careers arguing over whether America would do better or worse with fewer rules. The think tank set may never settle the issue, but Lebanon's 5,000 people just might. "Whether it works in this place I don't know, but it is a great experiment," said Matthew Spalding, director of the Center for American Studies at the Heritage Foundation in Washington. Critics, however, say stripping away the services usually provided by government amounts to playing with people's lives. In addition to rejecting the town offices' budget, Lebanon also rejected the rescue squad budget and a plan for the town to buy its own ambulance, now that a hospital has canceled its ambulance service to Lebanon. Because the budget item didn't pass, the town had to hire a private contractor. Some blame that outcome for the sky diving death Thursday of a woman who crashed in Lebanon, since it took the private ambulance 20 minutes to get to the scene from its base in a neighboring town. "She would've had a good chance" if she had gotten to the hospital sooner, said assistant rescue chief Jason Cole. The victim, Texas resident Zara E. Sunday, 24, had trouble with her parachute and sustained severe head trauma and internal injuries. She died of cardiac arrest about three hours after arriving at the hospital. But Cole said voters may not have intended to vote against the ambulance. The measure failed by only 12 votes, in contrast to the 3-2 ratio against the town budget, and some residents said they misunderstood the question. The Lebanon experience - especially the sky diving death - suggests that people tend to dislike government until they need something from it. Many Lebanon residents are more comfortable knowing they won't get a visit from the animal control officer, but then, some wonder what would happen if a rabid dog paid them a visit. "In the abstract, people are happy to do without government, until it infringes on their own freedoms and needs," said Robert O'Neill, president of the National Academy of Public Administration, a group chartered by Congress with the motto "Making government work, and work for all." O'Neill, a former city manager in Virginia, said people often complained to him that they got nothing for their taxes. He would respond by asking if they flushed their toilet or sent their kids to school. "There are things you cannot do for yourself and can only be done in a collective way," he said. Lebanon has a maverick political history. Without any big businesses in town, residents constitute almost the entire tax base. With that burden has come an especially robust skepticism about taxes and government. A decade ago, the community spent a summer without a government, and no one can remember any resulting disasters. That was around the same time Lebanon shut down its own police department to save money. To this day, it pays for extra protection from the county sheriff, and locals say their security is just fine. Now, thanks to the June referendum, there is no town clerk, no tax collector, no treasurer, no animal control officer. Town clerk Laura Bragg is volunteering two hours a week to process absentee ballots for the August vote. At first, citizens were told they would not be able to renew their car registrations during the shutdown, but the selectmen later made a deal with a nearby town to supply the service. The transfer station is open and road crews are working, because their budgets were passed in separate questions - although the bone-jarring road conditions are a prime example Lebanon residents use to argue how government isn't doing anything for them. The code enforcement officer, Brian Rainaud, said he is still working - on the assumption that the town will "square up" with him later. But one resident said the shutdown has been a huge headache as she has sought to add a second story on her ranch-style house. Pam Roux said the conflicting answers she was given, about whether Rainaud would be able to give her a building permit, set her back two weeks on her project. Several of Roux's family members, who took last week off to build the addition, found themselves unable to get started because she had yet to get the permit. The voters who rejected the $110,000 Town Hall budget (not including revenues) on a 585-419 vote were not anarchists - they simply preferred no budget to one they didn't like. For the first time this year, the three selectmen decided to include in the budget a $15,000 salary for each of them. They say it's not a pay increase because in the past they've worked 30 hours a week at $10 an hour. But the Lebanon Citizens for Better Government contends that the selectmen don't document their hours and shouldn't get paid so much for what is usually a volunteer position. Harold Randall, chairman of the selectmen's board, argued that they deserve their salaries because they are also performing the duties of a town manager and an assessor. To get a budget passed in August, the selectmen are going back to the $10 hourly rate. Randall said shuttering Town Hall over the money dispute was absurd. "As one fellow said to me, the more I know people, the more I like my dog," said Randall, 73. "People in general are against any form of government. It's human nature, but you've got to have some authority." Some authority, yes, but not too much, many in Lebanon say. "You have to have enough government to function, but usually most places have too much government," said contractor Lyle Duell, 56. It's a sentiment many conservatives and libertarians would applaud. David Boaz, executive vice president of the libertarian Cato Institute, said contracting out services from garbage collection to police protection can be more efficient. And he said Lebanon's difficulties with car registrations, marriage licenses and such show that state and federal governments are requiring too many inspections, permits, and licenses. "People in small towns in Maine build houses that are safe to live in, not because government forces them to but because the house otherwise would have a lower value," said Boaz. "Restaurants are clean because otherwise they would lose customers." The jury is still out on the Lebanon experiment. Certainly, the sky diving accident has sobered the town. O'Neill argued that the federal government shutdowns during a 1995 budget impasse upset Americans and ended up hurting Newt Gingrich and other Republicans who were pushing for a leaner bureaucracy. Still, many think that six weeks without a Town Hall will prove that, in civics, less is more. Said Jennifer Cyr, who pays taxes for her daughter's house in Lebanon: "It'll be a flagship town for the rest of America." This story ran on page B1 of the Boston Globe on 7/7/2002. � Copyright 2002 Globe Newspaper Company. <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/";>www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance�not soap-boxing�please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'�with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds�is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. ======================================================================== Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html <A HREF="http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html";>Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]</A> http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ <A HREF="http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/";>ctrl</A> ======================================================================== To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
