Public input. My favorite part of council meetings.
My mother always told me you don’t learn anything when your gums are flapping. If you want to learn something, keep your mouth shut and your ears open. I’ve noticed that as we get older we get more nostalgic, and I think that’s why I enjoy the public input sessions in Council. It takes me back to my early school days. You remember when the teachers would pound those multiplication tables into your head day after day in hopes that you would eventually learn them. I was always glad that once the teacher realized that you understood what they were telling you, it quickly became a waste of time and they would move on to something new. Regrettably, that is not always the case with certain topics at our public input sessions.
The public input sessions are designed so everyone has a chance to have their say in how the city is being run or managed. We sometimes forget what a privilege it is to live in a country where we can express our opinions without fear of reprisal. I personally found during my career that the more information and ideas I was made aware of, the better the quality of the decisions I arrived at. When I look back I quickly realize that the best decisions I made were based on facts, and were sometimes different than my gut feeling when I first encountered a situation.
We all have our own ideas about things in our city that should be changed. The problem is, we usually only discuss those things with people who think the same way we do to reinforce our own opinions, and we don’t always support it with meaningful facts. That is why the public information sessions at council are so important. You are providing us with information, facts, and ideas that we may not have considered in our decision making process.
There have been many instances where people have come to Council and provided information which was very beneficial pertaining to the items under discussion. On these occasions, Council has often revised its position on some of these issues. I always find it interesting though, when people start their conversation with, “I heard a rumor,” or “I heard it from a good source,” or “I think.” I can tell you that I don’t make decisions based on rumors; I have no idea who these good sources are but if it’s regarding city business, there is no better source than the City Manager and the Council to whom you are addressing at the time, and although I care about what you think, I would prefer you have some back-up information to go along with it. I’ve had investment brokers tell me they think a particular stock is a good investment, but if they don’t have some concrete reasons for thinking that, I’m certainly not going to rush right out and buy it.
I use the same rationale when discussing the various aspects of the city. I’ve had people tell me they think our police force is too large. Do they feel there is not enough crime in Caribou to warrant the officers we have? Are we patrolling areas we don’t need to? Are we making more traffic stops than we should? Should people be willing to wait longer when they contact police for an officer to arrive? Why do you think our police force is too large? The other one I really enjoy is, “we have too many employees working for the city.” The next time someone says that to you ask them how many we have. I have yet to come across anyone who knows.
There is no problem with people coming to Council to receive clarification on issues or to question the validity of something they’ve heard, but when their reaction is “well that’s not what I was told by someone else,” why bother to ask the question in the first place.
Our new Charter revised how the public input sessions are to be handled. It allows at least 15 minutes at the start of each council meeting for the public to speak on either agenda items that Council will be dealing with that evening, or on non-agenda items that an individual citizen may want to bring to Council’s attention. Depending on the circumstances, non-agenda items may not be dealt with at that particular meeting. All requests to speak at Council will be honored. Council’s policy allows a maximum of five minutes per speaker, but gives the council chair the authority to waive the maximum time if the information being presented is pertinent to the issues at hand.
Before I sign off for this week, I have had a number of people ask me what all the talk about revenue sharing is, and what it means to us. The following is a simplistic explanation:
Five percent of all the sales, corporate and personal income tax collected by the State is set aside to fund the municipal government’s revenue pool. Last year the state government withheld over $40 million that was destined for the municipalities and transferred it to their general fund. The amount each municipality receives is based on a formula using the municipality’s population and assessed value. Caribou’s share of this revenue last year was approximately $880,000, or the equivalent of approximately a 2.3 mil reduction in our taxes. The statute for revenue sharing was passed by the Legislature to assist financing of all the municipalities’ services and thereby lessen the property tax burden on all Maine citizens.
The current State budget proposes suspending the revenue sharing for the next two years as well as eliminating the Homestead Exemption, changes in school funding etc. If all of these changes were approved it would equate to about a $600 tax increase on a $100,000 property in Caribou.
This column is strictly the opinion or view of the writer and does not necessarily reflect the views of the City of Caribou’s administration staff, its employees, or other council members. Gary Aiken may be reached at garyaiken@hotmail.com
