Yesterday was town meeting day. After going down to Caron's diner for breakfast, we made our way to the still-being-renovated town hall. The renovation bond passed at last year's town meeting. The downstairs, where we hold town meetings, looks really good. I didn't take a look at the upstairs, where the town offices are (once it is done anyway, right now they are in trailers).
The meeting lasted from 9AM until 2:30 PM to go thru 21 warrant articles. The basic town budget took about 2 hours as we went thru and approved or amended each line item. We actually added money to the town budget because one of the town plow/sand trucks had just died (actually 2 died; one is salvageable, one is not).
We had the usual cast of characters there; some of the townies that had lived here their entire life (60 or more years), more of the people that had lived here 10-25 years (we were in that catagory), then some have only been to the last couple of town meetings - either because they are new here or because they recently became old enough to vote.
A couple of the people in the latter catagory, are really irritating. One of them will argue against any spending of money - even if the spending in question holds the line on the previous year's spending (in some cases, even lower than last year). This person doesn't seem to realize that we have to at least spend some money to keep the town running.
The other young fellow, who doesn't look a day over 15, had to speak during every article, even if he was just moving to vote. He doesn't seem to get the fact that if other people have their hand raised, his moving to vote does not hurry the vote; those people still get their chance to speak to the article. If there aren't any hands raised, his getting recognized to speak, and moving to vote, only means we take more time on the article just for him to be recognized and speak.
The last article on the warrant is to allow for people to transact any other business, as long as no money is involved. The teenage looking young fellow asked why, since other towns had cancelled their town meeting because of weather, why our selectmen hadn't. Actually, it's the moderator's job to cancel the meeting, if conditions warrent.
The moderator felt that the roads were in good enough condition that the meeting could go on - and most people agreed. We only got 5-6" of snow while we were at the meeting, so it was no big deal to most of us. We've continued the meeting until the next weekend a couple of times, but that was after we had gotten a foot or more of snow during the first couple of hours of the meeting.
After we got home, we ate and discussed the meeting for a while, then went out to shovel and snowblow. We had accumulated 10-11" of wet, heavy snow by then (yes, the snow got serious after we got home from the meeting). After dinner, WS went out on his sled for a couple of hours - mostly going around with the neighbor on his trails. While WS did that, I finally got antsy enough that I had to plant some vegetable seeds. I started green peppers, tomatoes, onions, and leeks. Hopefully I have gotten it out of my system and can hold off on the melons for another month or so.
Looking out the door this morning, we got another 4" of snow that needs to be removed today.
The excitement in a small town never ends!
Your life may not seem exciting to you, but it seems pretty idyllic to some of us. You get to live the rugged, frontier life in 2005! (Twenty years from now the young whippensnapper will be complaining about some new guy who thinks he needs to speak to everything--you think? Probably not. He'll still be asking for the vote.)
I got started pulling weeds, yesterday. Since they've been growing all winter and are in full bloom, now, I'm a bit late getting started. My knee is giving me fits, so I had to cut it short, at that. I'll be building up some endurance (unless you want to come pull the weeds and do the yard work for me?)
P.S. I saw not only fruit trees in bloom on my walk, yesterday, but Forsythia. Some of the trees are already leafing out. (I only tell you these things so that you can be as jealous of us as I am of you and your snow!)
Posted by: Cop Car | March 13, 2005 at 08:30 AM
You come shovel and I'll come and pull weeds. I pulled a shoulder muscle or something about 10 days ago (shoulder blade area) and everytime it gets to feeling better, I have to go and mess it up by shoveling.
Posted by: bogie | March 14, 2005 at 03:35 AM
Probably, I would wrack my body really badly trying to do all of the shoveling that you do, Bogie. The bad thing about your shoveling chores is that you are not shoveling snow off of a nice, smooth surface (like concrete). My old bod probably is just getting lazier and more whiny no matter what the task set before it! (It will be exciting to see how my knee reacts to my workout this morning.)
Posted by: Cop Car | March 14, 2005 at 09:28 AM
...no snow :^(...not enough to make a snowman :^(...
Posted by: billy | March 15, 2005 at 11:13 AM