A Letter to Our Next Mayor

With Christmas just around the corner, I have already drafted my list for Santa and checked it twice. As the odds are always fifty-fifty as to whether my stocking will be filled with gifts or lumps of coal, I am sending an alternate wish-list to whoever will be our incoming mayor after Tuesday’s election just in case…

Dear Mrs/Mr. Mayor,

First of all, congratulations. I know that it has been a grueling three months of campaigning and you must be thrilled that all the early train station visits, shaking of hands and knocking on doors has finally paid off. 

Before you get inundated with requests, I thought that I might sneak in my wish list a little ahead of the crowd.

1. While it's fresh in my mind, can we please make it illegal for politicians—and the contractors, children’s camps and whoever else has now jumped on the bandwagon—to post the appalling small signs on wire legs that litter our town, particularly throughout the campaign period?

In a town where officials and residents have deemed the plain brown bags that hold leaves to be offensive and have asked us not to leave these on curbs, these signs are the real blight on the local landscape.

There are many other means of announcing candidacies and tickets that are equally or more effective and would not make our town look like a dumpsite. Even if, has been discussed, there is no law that can be passed outlawing these signs, how about a gentlemans agreement between the two local parties?

2. Could you also remove the law that council members serving several terms are entitled to lifetime medical benefits? This is the craziest thing I have ever heard! In no other arena do part-time employees ever have the right to lifetime medical benefits—it’s no wonder our town is in its current financial crunch.

Our council members are often employed in great jobs elsewhere, ranging from owning their own company, to government positions, to attorneys. They can all afford medical benefits or get them from their full-time employers.

As I am sure it will be difficult to induce current council members to vote to reduce their own benefits, I am more than willing to settle for a compromise that these benefit options will remain for anyone currently in office but be unavailable in the future for officials elected after this current election.

3. Could we finally complete the update to the master plan and ensure that it follows the voice of the residents?

Time after time residents are having to spend their time and money hiring consultants and attorneys to fight developers who seek to build on dangerous or impossible sites that threaten to exacerbate existing flooding issues, override steep slope laws or decimate wetlands through blasting or migrating development encroachments. A comprehensive and effective master plan should have done this for them.

As taxpayers we have not only loudly requested this document be completed, we have also already spent valuable taxpayer dollars paying for its development and we deserve a finished and usable document that would guide the town as we move forward.

4. Can we please institute an illegal tree removal fine that actually works to discourage irresponsible developers from chopping down the trees that are one of the greatest resources our town has?

Current fines are so small that developers literally count the trees that they want to illegally cut down on any one site and then factor the fines into the proposal costs. Ridiculous!

Lets get some serious legs under the fines so it becomes impossible cost-wise to ignore our tree laws and at the same time require anyone illegally chopping down trees to spend even more money to replace them with trees of equal height and type immediately.

5. Lastly, could we finally get some architectural guidelines for our downtown shopping area? I’m not asking for a lot here. A simple requirement that all new tenants will henceforth comply with a standard awning size, color and design, signage guidelines and even a requirement for a planter outside their door with flowers chosen seasonally for them by our beautification committee is really not too much to expect from downtown merchants.

We could even encourage early changes by offering existing business owners a one-time tax reduction to comply as well and our downtown area could start looking like a cohesive charming downtown instead of a dollar store hodge-podge of mismatched styles, colors and exteriors.

So there you are—I’m not asking for a whole lot here (unlike my Christmas list)—and none of these would take a lot of time, effort or investment to make happen.

Oscar Wilde famously said of his fellow Englishmen: “They know the price of everything and the value of nothing.”

Throughout the campaign, both sides have focused on the price of everything—which in this economic climate is clearly vital to the town’s well being.

I just hope that whoever is elected as our mayor and council representatives Tuesday will be equally aware of the value of everything that we as residents hold so dear.

Thanks so much and best wishes for this new mayoral term.

PS: If you have any political pull with Santa, I would appreciate it if you would let him know that I really have been good this year.