Opinion: Selectboard acts properly

Published in the Mountainview

At Town Meeting, the voters of Middlebury were given the chance to have more control of the way their tax dollars are spent. An advisory vote was taken to assist the Selectboard in deciding whether to continue to fund health and social service agencies from the town's general budget, or to separate the budget and the funding to subject them to separate votes by the residents.

Selectman Fred Copeland suggested that we take advantage of the opportunity to review for ourselves the way we spend those tax dollars. He posed several questions for discussion. I will answer them here.

Would it be a threat to the funding of these organizations? From the experience of neighboring towns which approve their agency funding by other means, the answer is no.

Do the voters want more of a say about their tax burden and the town expenditures? In all likelihood, the funding from the town would be the same. Therefore, the expenditures and taxes would be the same. It would be a different method of getting to the same place.

Would it be too much trouble or too much work for town residents to analyze the budgets of these agencies and decide on our own how they should be funded? Yes. We elect our public officials specifically for the purpose of evaluating large amounts of information and making sensible decisions based on that information and their own experience. The Selectboard are experienced at evaluating budgets of social services agencies; I am not. The Selectboard has paid assistants to help them understand material they receive, and they speak with the voice of the whole town when they ask for information from, or make recommendations to, these agencies. As an individual, even were I to give a large amount of my income to one or more of these agencies. I could not speak with the voice of a powerful legal entity with a large budget.

The Selectboard, as attested by members of the board and by officers of various area health and social services agencies, scrutinizes the annual budgets of each of the agencies which request municipal funding. The Selectboard concerns itself largely with the services provided by that agency to residents of the Town of Middlebury. The Selectboard can suggest, as they did this year, that all agencies only request level funding, rather than increases, due to additional expenses borne by the Town this year. Every agency respected that request.

We have the opportunity to take upon ourselves a greater portion of the burden of self-government. We must commend the Selectboard for offering us that opportunity. We must also know when these issues must be decided as individuals, and when we can delegate that authority to our elected representatives. This time it is the latter. We must encourage the Selectboard to continue to offer us the opportunity to govern ourselves more directly; we must also support them in their efforts to perform the tasks we delegate to them.

In this instance, voters' time would be largely wasted by debating each of the agencies'  funding requests each year at Town Meeting. Most of us would be arguing from positions of anecdotal information, largely unsupported by facts. We would not have read, even once, the annual reports of these organizations whose line-item budgets are examined carefully by our Selectboard. Funding to these organizations would not be threatened substantially, and the democratic process would be subverted by discussion which would change little.

The Selectboard are the proper body to consider funding requests from health and social service agencies. The body politic must support them in their effort. We must also offer our input at every opportunity, so that they may know our opinions when they include the funding for these agencies in the general town budget.

We also must recognize that municipal funding is a small portion of the budgets of these organizations, and we, as members of the public, must support them with our own charitable contributions as well. Kudos to the agencies for their hard work, and to the Selectboard for so ably representing and remaining mindful of the public interest.

Opinion: Caution necessary in news council

Published in the Mountainview

An idea of which all journalists should be aware is a new proposal for "news councils," or bodies which monitor news organizations and the media for ethics and integrity. They are watchdog groups, made up of members of the journalistic professions, which can investigate and censure reporters or media which violate ethical guidelines.

Media censorship or regulation is a concept which should be investigated carefully. It rarely does harm to investigate a solution to a problem, but implementation of solutions should be done with great caution. This is particularly the case when dealing with institutions so close to the core of the American culture as its news gathering and dissemination organizations.

Editorial content of one publication is already subject to public scrutiny and to the challenges of other publications. Most publications have a "Corrections" section where they admit their own errors and provide correct information. This is a form of self-censorship which is productive and appropriate; any newspaper which has a large amount of space devoted to corrections is likely doing a poor job of fact-checking. Further, should one publication fail to correct its own error, other publications are free to (and ethically bound to) report the correct facts.

Outside monitoring (even by a formal intra-industry regulating body) are threats to a free press. Press monitoring goes on all day, all over the world. Individuals receive information from media outlets and evaluate the credibility and usefulness of the information. Into that equation they add their own self-interest, the reportage of the same situation by other information sources, and their genera/ experience with a news reporting agency.

To formalize this implicit interrelationship between media outlets is to formalize a threat to an essential freedom in the American democracy. Left unformalized, regulation is on a low level, bound by ethical considerations but free from the intimidation which a watchdog necessarily imposes. Formalized, the regulation suddenly carries the weight of the world.

When developing a system of regulation, the question must always be posed: "Who watches the watchmen?" As the information dissemination system is currently in use, the answer is "They watch each other, and are equally capable of reporting on violations of public trust." A news council would be accountable to the public. That appears to be a good thing, until we remember that the only effective watchdogs the public has on its side are the media. Each individual cannot go out and research the world and current events; that is specifically why we watch television and read newspapers. With news councils in the system, the answer would be "The regulators watch the reporters, who in turn watch the regulators. However, the regulators, when they speak, speak with a more powerful and legitimated voice than the reporters." This imbalance of power and of access to the public mind is dangerous to freedom of information.

Freedom of information is so important to the American public that we often fail to acknowledge its existence. We often exhibit cynicism and doubt towards the media. Those are both good things. If we inherently understand that freedoms are important, we are unlikely to abridge them. If we question the sources of our information, we will always feel in control of our own minds and opinions. However, if we take for granted that freedoms will always exist, and begin to mistrust the media and suspect it of threatening the public interest, we risk limiting the very instruments we rely on for our own., participation in the wider world.

Imposing regulations on a necessarily free industry is a mistake which must not be made now or in the future. Having bodies which meet to design ethical guidelines is an excellent idea; all newspapers currently have them, in the form of editorial boards. Professional journalists' associations have codes of ethics to which all members must subscribe. The ethics are already in place, and despite disparate sources are very similar codes throughout the world's journalistic organizations. Regulating an industry which is self-regulating and necessarily free is to deny freedom of information and of the press.

Opinion: Help the Environmental Center

Published in the Mountainview

Residents of the town of Middlebury have a unique opportunity. The Environmental Council has invited all who are interested to participate in the planning process for a new Environmental Center to be sited west of campus, in the fields south of the Harris Farm.

College faculty and staff are also invited, as are any residents of the county who are interested in the planning process and in this project.

College Environmental Coordinator Jen Hazen has said that anyone, no matter how mild their interest, should attend the brainstorming meeting on March 1 from 4 to 9 pm, in Weybridge House. Dinner will be served.

The basic concept for the new center is a multidisciplinary focus on living and learning. It will be guided by a College-wide determination to teach citizenship, as well as environmental studies. The Center as currently imagined, according to Hazen, will house residences, dining area, seminar and lecture space, and adjoin gardens and cultivated fields west of campus. A collaborative effort of students, staff, faculty, administrators, and area residents will be needed to ensure the success of the Center.

A place which will welcome all comers is badly needed on campus; local residents, faculty, staff, students, and administrators will, Hazen hopes, come together in the space all will help design, to learn about the environment and interrelationships in the world outside of Middlebury.

This is a rare opportunity for residents to have input before a decision is needed from a town governing body. It is something which all residents should both appreciate and take part in. The College rarely opens its house to the world; for it to do so now is a tacit admission of its need for assistance and guidance in this challenging time in the College's history.

Hazen welcomes letters, telephone calls, or other methods of communication and input as well. Participation in this dialogue, on the part of all residents, faculty, and staff, is voluntary but is governed by the moral imperative of involvement in one's own community. This is a chance like none before; if the opening is not productive, it is even less likely to happen again.

Now is an excellent time to act. This community speaks with many voices when it comes to the future of the College, and its relationship with the town and residents. Now is a time when the College is opening itself to positive input and constructive criticism about the process of planning this Environmental Center. It will be, more than any other part of the College (save perhaps the Arts Center), a resource for the public as well as for the College. We residents must participate in this process to ensure we get something we can use.

The College wants to give us something for free. All we need to do is offer our input at this stage, and through the planning process for this Center. What we get, at the end, is a facility which will be as much ours as the effort we put into it, as much ours as it is the College's. If, however, we neglect to participate, not only will we lose a golden (and once-in-a-lifetime) opportunity, we will be left on the outside of this new Environmental Center, wondering what could have been.

Concert Review: Connie Kaldor

Published in the Mountainview

The Knights of Columbus Hall on Merchants' Row in Middlebury filled on Saturday evening, February 8. People came from all over Addison County to hear Canadian folk-singer Connie Kaldor play as part of the After Dark Music Series. Kaldor, from Regina, Saskatchewan, is an accomplished musician who has won, among other awards, the Juno Award, which is Canada's equivalent of the U.S. Grammy Award.

Kaldor and her bassist, Bill Gossage of Montreal, were a bit stiff during the opening few numbers, but loosened up before too long. A fast stress-filled narrative about all sorts of things needing doing in this life led into a song called "Relax," advice Kaldor could have taken at the outset. Her ad-libs and song introductions seemed rehearsed and at times forced, until just before intermission.

She played keyboard, guitar, and sang a capella at different times, and Gossage provided backup vocals. As the two became more comfortable on the small stage in the silent room, Kaldor's "dry crop-failure" sense of humor opened up. Explaining that the broad, open Canadian prairie is very different from Vermont's rolling hills and forests, she contradicted herself and suggested that Vermonters might appreciate the advice prairie-dwellers give each other: "The three main routes out of Saskatchewan are marriage, crop failure, and the arts."

Despite Kaldor's escape, she returns often and draws her inspiration from the people and the places of the Saskatchewan landscape. She sang an old Canadian favorite, "Saskatoon Moon," but had to teach it to the Vermonter audience first, leading to come confusion on the part of the audience. The audience did well, though, and Kaldor seemed pleased.

Her lyrics were indicative of the difficult landscape in which she was raised: "Mother's Prayer" was a touching song about how mothers view the world and their hopes for their children's future and safety. "For the First Time, I Don't Care" was a paradoxically-named love song drawn from a musical Kaldor wrote last summer.

Her musical range was impressive; not just the notes which she could reach - very high and very low - but moving from ballads to hymns, from blues and soul to country style songs. Gossage kept up ably, and played fiddle as well as appropriate. Kaldor's musical experience is broad: she taught songwriting at an arts school in northern Saskatchewan, as well as writing musicals, operas, songs, and performing on multiple instruments.

Her songs come from the heart and from the desperation of the lonely and the hardworking poor. "Coyote's Call" expressed a feeling many Vermonters have: "at least there's a roof overhead and the kids got a yard" to play in. She mixed a "cheap, trashy, and tasteless" song together with a wrenching song about a recently-deceased lifelong friend. The eclectic mix worked for her as it would for few others; she showcased her talent and held the mood and attention of the audience throughout the evening. Her long stories leading into songs gave a sense of perspective and an insight into Kaldor as an artist and a songwriter; the audience was able to understand some of what life is like on the prairie.

The universality of her songs is no doubt what has won her such acclaim in Canada; it guaranteed her success in Middlebury as well. The prairie and its inhabitants have as strong a sense of place, community and tradition as Vermonters do; the trials of human existence come through in her songs with a clarity and simplicity rare in even folk music today.

The After Dark Music Series brings prominent folk-influenced musicians to Middlebury each month during the winter. It is sponsored by many local businesses, including Otter Creek Brewing, the Middlebury Inn, and Main Street Stationery. The next performance will be by Lucy Kaplansky and Greg Greenway on Saturday, March 8, at 8 pm at the Knights of Columbus Hall. Doors open at 7 pm. Tickets ($13 in advance, $15 at the door) are expected to sell out, but are currently available at the Middlebury Inn or Main Street Stationery. Kaplansky and Greenway are sharing the show; they are not a duo, but will perform separately throughout the evening. Both are excellent musicians with national reputations; it, too, should be an excellent show!

Opinion: Supreme Court rocks the schools

Published in the Mountainview

Last week the Vermont Supreme Court handed down a landmark decision striking down the property-tax-based method of funding public education in Vermont. Deemed unfair to poor towns, the Court said that the current system is based too much on the financial base in the community, rather than on the actual cost of giving each Vermont child a solid education.

The case, brought by the ACLU on behalf of a Whiting third-grader, has already had strong effects in Montpelier. The Statehouse was abuzz with discussion as the Vermont Assembly begins its second month of legislative session. Already on the slate for this session was property tax reform. The Court's decision has forced the issue, and has forced the reform to be even more sweeping than anyone was previously talking about.

The basic structure of a new school financing structure for the state is likely to be a single pool for statewide funding, with a dollar amount earmarked for each student. This will improve the funding levels for schools in poor communities; what remains to be seen is the impact on funding for schools in middle and upper-class towns. There has been some talk of prohibiting wealthier towns from spending more money on their schools, but that initiative is likely to fail. Local control of schools has become a national concern; preventing parents from materially influencing their children's education is a dangerous and potentially litigation-causing issue.

The major questions now are how this statewide pool will be funded and administered. Property tax is a deeply controversial issue in Vermont, where farms and condominiums are closely juxtaposed on similar plots of land. Some suggestions for an increased income tax to fund schools have also surfaced.

That suggestion is based on the idea that a family's tax burden should be proportional to their ability to pay it, rather than taxing a poor farmer on large tracts of land which yield little income. Income taxes would also place more directly the burden of school support on renters, who now currently cover their landlords' tax payments with their rent bills. This is a concern; should property taxes drop, will rents decrease statewide? It is not likely, though renters' other tax bills will increase.

Another potential method of funding schools is additional sales tax. This would leverage tourist dollars to directly benefit Vermont's children and future, in additional to being based on the ability of the taxpayer to pay; most essential items are not subject to sales tax,

We are likely to see this reform process move forward this legislative session, but there is no guarantee of a solution anytime soon. Other states have had similar court decisions come down in recent years; notably, New Jersey's Supreme Court ruled very similarly to the Vermont decision. That was eight years ago, and nothing substantial has changed about the way New Jersey funds education; solutions are bogged down in legislative subcommittees.

Vermont's Supreme Court justices have the option, should a solution be too long in coming or be constitutionally flawed in other ways, to take over the educational-funding system themselves and design a new, constitutionally-acceptable solution. This is not likely to happen soon, or at all, but it is a thinly veiled threat to Governor Dean and the state legislature. Vermont's leaders need to design a plan which is constitutionally acceptable, which funds education equally across Vermont, which does not severely curtail the influence parents or their financial resources can have on their children's education, and which is affordable for all Vermonters.

The Supreme Court has not said much to guide them, except that the current system is unacceptable. Vermont's constitution states that all Vermonters have a right to equal access to public education. The Court has said this translates easily into dollar figures per student. Schools doing more with less are likely to see increased funding, while schools doing less with more will be forced to be more efficient. We can only hope that schools which are spending large amounts of money per student, and which are seeing material results, will be permitted to pursue their excellence without fear of financial cuts.