Busy List (Norwich listserv)

Jeff Doyle raises some interesting issues that I can't resist addressing.

I don't agree with those who suggest Norwich is somehow exceptional either in our incivility or our dysfunction. If anything, we may have a disproportionate share of people who expect to get their own way, but it takes a selective reader of the Valley News to imagine we are unique in our troubles or our difficulty addressing them.

I'll venture to say that most of our political problems this past decade are rooted in the inevitable tension between representative democracy and professional bureaucracy. Elected and appointed volunteers -- like most any committee -- have a terrible time supervising professional staff. Do professional staff serve communities or the elected and appointed volunteers who are their bosses? Selectboard members are answerable to a different constituency than town managers. SAU superintendants live a completely different day-to-day existence than school board members; responding to different points of friction, assessing their own performance against utterly different criteria, and operating on completely different time horizons. We pay no attention to the difficult, perhaps contradictory role faced by our professional administrators as they try to do a job on the basis of goals and values articulated by people who may be relegated to a minority in the next election cycle or resign to get back to their "real" lives. Professional administration is fundamentally anti-democratic and no one ever acknowledges the fact. We expect our administrators to possess a kind of omniscience we ourselves -- being voters and taxpayers -- feel no compunction about lacking ourselves. And we ignore the Darwinian inevitability that civil administration attracts and promotes people who possess a skill set often at odds with -- even downright antagonistic to -- what we commonly hold to be democratic and political virtues. Add some forceful personalities to the mix and you have news. I could go on at length, but Virginia Close intimidates me.

I also can't agree with Jeff's statement that we suffer "from a gulf between what can be said out loud, and what is said in hushed tones between like-minded friends." In my experience, at least, like-minded friends tend to reinforce a narrow-minded perspective. I've never once found a selectboard member or other citizen unwilling to share their views when asked. Some have struck me as close-minded and others distasteful, but I've always found they will say out loud much of what they think on the issues of the day. Make the time to chat with an Alison May or Sarah Nunan and you'll find an intelligent person who cares a great deal about what they believe. You may not agree, but you'll likely understand much better why they do the things they do. If you want to feel more a part of this community, seek out the unlike-minded and take the time to listen to what their unlike mind is up to. Maybe they'll do a bit of listening themselves.

Finally, why do we superimpose values such as dialogue, understanding, and consensus upon warned public meetings? That's simply not their purpose or design. I would like to think there is a place for meaningful dialogue, understanding and even consensus about how we govern ourselves, but we search in vain looking for it in warned public meetings and a listserv. My gender betrays me.


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My problem with Norwich politics is that what passes for openness and
transparency is often little more than a kind of verbal arbitrage in
which innuendo and prevarication are played off against the limits of
decorous speech. A problem which is only exacerbated (in my opinion)
by well meaning commenters who decry the town's supposed lack of
civility, but fail to see that this very civility is being manipulated
at the expense of community. I think we suffer not from a lack of
civility, but an excess of decorum. We suffer from a gulf between what
can be said out loud, and what is said in hushed tones between
like-minded friends.

In this sense, Norwich is like a dysfunctional family: it can't solve
its problems because it can't talk about them. I don't, however, think
the listserv is quite the right venue for a talking cure. Nor - for
different reasons - is town meeting. Nor are the select board
meetings.

Jeff