Curt Brown has a blog post this evening that Town Meeting Moderator, Steve Sharek, has appointed M.L. Nunes and Jason Wentworth to the Finance Committee. They will begin serving on July 1 and are appointed to seats ...
... that were formerly held by Melissa Haskell and Fran Pettengill, who asked not to be reappointed.
Monday, June 8, 2009
Moderator names two to Finance Committee
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19 comments:
I know Jason both personally and professionally and think he is a great addition to Fin Com. I do not know M.L. Nunes, but have heard only good things about her. Steve has made two solid selections for Fin Com
I don't know Mr. Wentworth, but do know Ms. Nunes. Excellent choice. We are fortunate.
Why should one man have the power to appoint members to this committee? I still believe that this should be a board of elected individuals and not cherry picked ones.
The Finance Committee would lose much of its independence if it became an elected position. The voter has the control by electing the moderator who in turn assess the merits of each candidate. If you do not like the choices, then vote him out.
I for one think that he has done a great job.
Why should the Finance committee have this "independence?" I would much rather see them have to answer to voters for the recommendations they make.
Then why don't you make inputs to the upcoming charter review rather than just complaining.
Do you really want the Select Board involved in appointing people to review the budget? Remember, it's the Select Board members (the executive branch) that initially propose the budget. The Finance Committee, appointed by a Moderator who is elected independent of the Select Board, reviews the budget and makes recommendations to Town Meeting (the legislative branch). Town Meeting then votes on the budget. Having the Select Board appoint the FinCom (or even being part of the process) sets up a situation where FinCom members could be improperly influenced by the appointing authority (the Select Board). Our system in Dartmouth works well. We have a great system of checks and balances.
Two good appointments.
I know ML Nunes is a good pick. From what I hear, so is Jason Wentworth.
This whole business about whether or not we should change our form of government is really interesting to me and I enjoy reading the posts about it. I am undecided about what I think is best. I do kind of like town meeting but there are some problems with it. What do you all think about the prospect of keeping town meeting but with much fewer members, say nine per precinct? This would make members more accountable but eliminate some of the pitfalls of a steady town council full of full time politicians. I am not saying that this is the answer but curious what people think. Is it even feasable by state law?
Fewer? Sure. Nine? No.
From MGL chapter 43A, section 4
"Section 4. Other than the officers designated in the by-laws of the town as town meeting members at large, the representative town meeting membership shall in each precinct consist of the largest number divisible by three which will admit of a representation thereof in the approximate proportion which the number of inhabitants therein bears to the total number of inhabitants in the town, and which will cause the total elected membership to be as nearly two hundred and forty as may be."
That would be 24 from each precinct instead of the 39 we have now.
I just read on Mom of 3's blog a great idea posted by Doug Roscoe to make TM more accountable and that is the use of "electronic voting equipment". According to Doug's post "this would create a record of how every TM member voted on each issue (and of course whether they voted at all)." "Tabulation would happen in real time on a screen and the data would be saved and potentially uploaded to the town web site."
I think that's a wonderful idea!
two questions one that idea. How are we going to pay for something like that? Who is going to set-up this system for every town meeting and how much are we going to have to pay to have it set-up?
I just met Mr. Wentworth and he seems like a very capable young man.
ML is a good choice, too
Two fine selections
I've researched the backgrounds of both of these appointees and I've come to the conclusion that they are both excellent choices.
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