The Man and I spent some time at the Town Hall this evening. Local elections are happening soon, so even though we can't vote (have I mentioned that ever?) we decided to attend the hustings to check out the candidates and find out what issues are of greatest concern to our community right now.
Well, tax levels of course - are they justified? Predictably, the Democrats think they are, the Republican-endorsed Independents don't. There's a new housing development being considered, so that came under scrutiny, but in the end all sides seemed to agree that the developer's plans need to be improved before the go-ahead is given - so that wasn't very contentious. How to attract new businesses to the Town? Well, everyone thinks we should (to reduce the residents' taxes), though I'm not clear that anyone had a specific plan for how to do it (but I support the candidate who wants to ensure that we emphasize Green development - I think he's on the right track). Everyone likes open spaces - another area of agreement.
Really the one thing apart from taxes that the candidates didn't broadly agree on was Signs. Our Town has strict regulations on temporary signs - you can't put them up randomly along the highway or on roundabouts, or stick them on telegraph poles. Lawn signs (for example, supporting political candidates or promoting events) can only be stuck in privately-owned, non-commercial lawns. Even though this creates a bit of a challenge for the non-profits I'm involved with when we try to advertise events, I personally prefer a lack of signs to the proliferation there used to be before the law came in. But others, apparently, feel this law violates their constitutional rights.
All in all I came away feeling that we really do have it pretty easy in our suburban community. If our biggest worry is where we can put lawn signs (rather than, let's say, crumbling infrastructure, underfunded schools or gun-crime) we can't complain too much, can we?
Assuredly not!
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