I think most people agree that the pickle our current town manager, Mr. Williams, finds himself in, is a pickle of his own making. He made remarks about family at a gathering of others, not related, and said some pretty hurtful things. All true, but hurtful none the less. The story has been around long enough that most people are most likely aware of it. However, for those who may not be, a good summary can be found in this article posted by editor, Max Bowen, in the online version of the Billerica Minuteman.

There was one section of the article that I found to be most insightful and filled with meaning masked by what I believe to be, very good sarcasm:

Granted, there has been plenty of chatter on the local “Topix” blog;, including my own, about this subject. However, the remarks have been pretty low keyed by the majority of town folk. Perhaps, the story will only come to light when the Minuteman comes out? Maybe a lot of town folk don’t read the Lowell Sun or blogs or watch local television. Now, I’m being the sarcastic one.

Most people rely upon the Board of Selectmen and Town Meeting with the guidance of the Town Manager to identify problems, sometimes with the help of fellow local citizen’s, sometimes not, and to fix those problems in a timely fashion. In an ideal world, that might be good enough. But, we all know this world is far from ideal, and Billerica is no exception.

The greatest problem with a Town Meeting form of government, in my view, is that too much accountability is assigned to the wrong places, and too little goes where the emphasis should be the greatest. Let’s review from the grossly inadequate Billerica government website:

The Board of Selectmen receive the advise and recommendations from the Town Manager. Even in the best of circumstances and relationships between the board and the manager; the BOS is under no obligation to accept such advice or recommendations. Once given, however, the town manager has met his primary responsibility, unless asked to do more research or to find alternative choices.

The Board of Selectmen is charged with the following:

If the Board of Selectmen decide to adopt the Town Manager’s recommendations and to put it in front of Town Meeting in the form of a warrant, then the Town Meeting members, alone, have the power to pass or to reject the warrant article.

It is here, that it should be getting clearer as to who has the greatest influence on dealing with problems and fixing them , as opposed to who is generally to blame for the clogged wheels of action and achievement. The least responsible is Town manager. He is the day to day substitute in performing the routine duties normally performed by selectmen in smaller towns. He has a lot of authority over those operations, but has absolutely no executive authority to demand and direct change. He has a bully pulpit to a limited degree: he is appointed, not elected, and therefore, he is vulnerable to the whim of the Board of Selectmen if he becomes “uncooperative”.

As the executive body for the town, the Board of Selectmen oversee the job performance of the Town Administrator along with limited authority over licensing and so on, as described above. It is they who decide what warrants to bring before town meeting for debate and voting. But, ultimately, it is town meeting who decides the direction and fate of the town.

It has been my observation that the Town Manager, as the out front person, is the one who receives the most scrutiny regarding his decisions and statements. He is held to a higher standard of performance than the Board of Selectmen, even though the Board of Selectmen supervise him and can, at any time, obstruct his efforts to make positive changes without giving cause or explanation to the public.

However, the most egregious group of all are the Town Meeting members. Warrants come up for debate. Debates are held with varying degrees of collegiality and aggression. However, when votes of critical importance are taken, they are done so in such a way that those whom the Town Meeting members represent never know how their “representative” voted.

The functions and powers of Town Meeting are so secret, in fact, none of the members for any precinct are listed on the website and neither is a description of their duties. In fact, our website is so poorly incomplete in comparison to Burlington’s, that like the appearance of our town in comparison to surrounding towns, it speaks volumes about how far behind our neighbors we truly are in presentation and representation. By the way, do you remember this man? He did quite a bit for this town, even in the face of great obstruction by the likes of Cangiamilia, O’Donnell and others. To quote Bob Lobel, “Why can’t we get guys like that?”

Town meeting members get to function in whatever way they want and never have to answer to anyone for their individual votes; only the votes of the collective (which is most likely why the have such love for unions – another great place to hide). Such was the case with the “mixed overlay proposal” . That vote obtained a majority in favor of the warrant, but not a 2/3rds majority; so, the measure was killed.

It was later reported that many of those who voted against the measure would have voted in favor if they’d know more about it, or if they had information available to make the issue less confusing. I may be mistaken, but I believe this measure has been in front of the town before. I believe that it was debated and the author, Mr. Jeff Parenti has made himself both well known and available for questions. In fact, Mr. Parenti has put up a Q&A posting on his blog to help people understand the proposal and why business as usual not only won’t do, but is actually harmful to the best interests of citizens and to the town.

Yet, I’ve read nowhere that Town Meeting members are being held accountable for their decisions. I am in agreement that Mr. Williams, as the leading paid advocate for the town, was out of line in discussing the more negative aspects of Billerica in such a manner that it’s effect would be to chase investors away, instead of bringing them in. But, I can also understand the frustration of taking all of the heat when you have no power, and apparently no influence, to make the changes necessary. It must also have been frustrating to have to work with a Board of Selectmen upon which sat individual members who spent more time on nonsense trying to make the other look bad instead of trying to do something beneficial for the town.

One Town Meeting member who was trying to force me into seeking a TM position, made the statement that most TM members spend 12 nights a year trying to learn about their local government. Now, call me whatever you will, but do you honestly think 12 nights a year is all they need to spend focusing on correcting some of Billerica’s massive problems? Do you think 12 nights a year is sufficient time to understand proposals such as mixed use overlay and all of its ramifications – real or imaginary?

It is my view that this town has arrived at its current state by not demanding to know how Town Meeting members vote or what their opinions on issues are and why they lean that way before they vote. The problems with Billerica are not a succession of Town Managers, but the egregious lack of time given to researching and understanding issues before approving or voting by both the Board of Selectmen and Town Meeting members. Their dereliction in going through the necessary steps to make an informed vote demonstrates the negatives that come with failure to perform due diligence, a term that seems to inflame some Town Meeting members in blog discussions, but when understood, means nothing more than carefully applying common sense work ethic to problem solving. Is that asking too much of our 12 night per year representatives?

Town Meeting members have been all over me on bulletin boards for stressing due diligence and criticizing them for their inappropriate behavior, but the fact remains that this failure is exactly why we are where we are today. To be fair, some have been supportive.

To be clear, I appreciate anyone who runs to serve their community or who works in service to the nation, but if they are not going to do the job in an intelligent and informed manner, dedicated to the goal of improving the lot of those they represent, then they have no business “serving”. Service is not what they are giving; they are supporting failure and destruction, and they need to be held accountable.

The town’s website, I’m sure was put up with good intentions, but like most everything else in Billerica, once the project got partially completed, half assed was considered good enough.