That letter
The following letter was personalized, and sent out to each of the five-member Board of Selectmen in Weare, New Hampshire. Read the post below to see why I'm sending this, and why you should write an email, or letter, as well.
Date: Mon, 11 Jul 2005 17:42:47 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Peter Jaworski"
Subject: Lost Liberty Hotel
To: dadada@weare.nh.gov
Dear Member of the Board of Selectmen,
My name is Peter Jaworski, and I'm a resident of Orono, Ontario, Canada.
I wanted to send you an email to encourage you to support the proposal for the Lost Liberty Hotel on 34 Cilley Hill Road.
Should the Hotel become a reality, I will visit it each year. At least once. And I will come with friends.
Also, if possible, I will host the Liberty Summer Seminar (http://www.libertyseminar.org) in the Lost Liberty Hotel every other year. The event draws between 50 to 75 attendees, mostly Canadians, and mostly from areas outside of Weare. This is likely to continue.
I'm certain that many people, just like myself, would also make use of the Hotel, would spend time in Weare, which would be great for tourism, and good for tax revenues as well.
Sincerely,
Peter Jaworski,
Director, Liberty Summer Seminar,
MA (Philosophy), University of Waterloo,
MSc (Philosophy & Public Policy), London School of Economics.
posted by P. M. Jaworski at 4:48 p.m.
4 Comments:
Actually, the selectmen might appreciate it if you didn't petition them directly. As someone who lived in New England for a long time, I'd have to say that there's a lot of misinformation going around about how the towns there are run.
New England towns have no executive or legislative government other than the entire population voting in a Town Meeting (they have real direct democracy). The Board of Selectmen only have the power to carry out the decisions made by the Town Meeting - they have no decision-making power over budgetary or policy issues all by themselves. Therefore, the statement that all it takes is three of the five Selectment to accomplish this is completely false. It would take a majority vote of the Town Meeting to make a budgetary/policy decision like this.
Elected officials usually don't take kindly to letters from random strangers urging them to do things outside the scope of their offices' responsibilities.
Wow. I've sort of given thought to moving to New Hampshire for a long time now. It sounds like just the sort of place I'd like to live.
At any rate, I didn't know about the way the town is run. Still, they might mention that they did receive this or that many letters about this particular proposal at the meeting, couldn't they?
I'd make the trip - I think the whole idea is fantastic.
"New England towns have no executive or legislative government other than the entire population voting in a Town Meeting (they have real direct democracy)."
As someone who lived in Connecticut for a long time, I must say that I know a lot of you northerners want to boot us from New England, sure, but I've never encountered a townn in CT run like that.
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