In this era of great angst, hand-wringing and outright anger over the status quo problems of our government at all levels — local, state and national — the biggest problem facing America is not among those being elevated to national spectacles by the screaming mobs on the left or the right.
The same holds true for small-town politics. Usually, it’s the squeaky wheel getting the grease and consuming the time of our government leaders and officials.
Brad Plante, the departing town manager of Harrison, nailed it succinctly this week when he lamented that the biggest problem facing Maine towns today isn’t any of the things you often hear or read about in the daily newspaper.
For Plante, it’s not shortages in funding from the state, or the ever-increasing costs of educating our public school students, or even the ongoing and ever-popular lament that taxes are too high and going higher. (Has anyone every complained they are too low, by the way?)
No, for Plante the biggest problem facing our government — the one President Lincoln cherished in his oft-quoted Gettysburg Address as being of, by and for the people — is the simple fact that the “People” just aren’t participating any more.
Whether it’s attending town meetings or showing up to meet with selectmen to work out local problems, the citizens of Maine’s small towns have become disengaged.
We are sure Harrison is not alone and by no means the only town in Maine where apathy rules supreme. We live in a busy age of work and family, but with so much new anger vented toward our government, who among the angry is working to truly make constructive change versus loud criticism?
Plante said it’s not that he never hears from the people he works for.
He does. They call him and complain and list their grievances, but seldom to they take him up on the standing offer to come to a Board of Selectmen meeting to raise their concerns with the town’s elected leaders.
He also notes that when he has asked whether they voted in the last town election or attended the last town meeting, most answer that they did not.
We suspect that this is the way life is in many Maine towns, and even its cities. Rare is the day when the council chambers in Lewiston or Auburn is standing room only.
We also know from interviewing town officials both hired and elected over the decades that they often say they find themselves wedged into “Catch-22” situations, largely because they lack the information they need from citizens to act successfully.
This in an age when access to information and its availability online is more prominent than ever.
Yet more often than not, the paralysis of government is a direct result of trying to make important decisions in a vacuum. While the best elected officials take up their constituents’ causes, many also say they just don’t know what people want anymore and often don’t know until they’ve made an important decision that ends up irking some. Serving in office becomes a constant battle of “damned if you do and even more damned if you don’t.”
And while you can never please all of the people all of the time, it sure is hard to please any of them if you don’t even know what they want.
Plante often hears from those with concerns who say that they simply don’t want to “get involved.”
One of Plante’s heroes is the flamboyant U.S. President Teddy Roosevelt — a rare politician who spoke his mind perhaps too candidly at times. But there was no wondering where Roosevelt stood or what he wanted. His warning to those who would sit idly by was most eloquently stated in his analogy of political engagement to that of a prize fight.
“The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena,” Roosevelt said, “whose face is marred by sweat and blood … who errs and comes short again and again because there is no effort without error … who at best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement; and who at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who have never tasted victory or defeat.”
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