Oriental Town Board Meeting Brings Up Staggered Terms Option

Not much happened at last night's Town Board meeting.

The only thing of note was that the biannual proposal to amend the Town charter for staggered four year terms was brought up for discussion.

The idea has come up every other year since Bill Sage became mayor and since Barbara Venturi lost the tie breaker for her seat in 2007. Nothing ever came of the discussion.

Charlie Overcash, David White and Larry Summers all spoke against the idea this evening, pointing out that our potential candidate pool tends to be of an age that is reluctant to make a four year commitment. Especially those reluctant to invest in green bananas.

Barbara Venturi and Bill Sage raised the specter of a possible wholesale replacement of the entire board. The new board wouldn't have any continuity and would be unable to provide leadership for the Town's advisory boards and committees.

In my view, that's a feature, not a bug. Voters should have the option of replacing the incumbents wholesale.

Bill Sage reminded the Board that "this almost happened" in 2005.

I attended most of the meetings of the 2005 Board. That Board consisted of Warren Johnson, Al Herlands, Candy Bohmert, Nancy Inger and Barbara Venturi with Sherril Styron in his 18th year as mayor. It was easily one of the best boards of recent years. They had No trouble learning what to do.

That board was replaced by one consisting of Sherril Styron, David Cox, Candy Bohmert, Kathy Kellam and Nancy Inger.

So what's the problem?

Neither Bill Sage nor Barbara Venturi offered much in the way of a parade of horribles

Except that Venturi offered the Comprehensive Plan as an example of something so complicated we need continuity of leadership to insure its implementation.

Really?

Work on the Long Range Plan began in 2006. One of the inputs was an elaborate survey that Barbara designed. The draft Long Range Plan appeared just before the candidate filing deadline. The list of things to do looked a lot like previous lists in our file cabinets going back twenty years. Apparently continuity wasn't much of a problem.

After the election, the Long Range Planning Group continued its efforts. Anyone following the effort would have had a hard time telling what changed between drafts.

One constant theme of the drafts was to protect and enhance public access to public trust waters, particularly to protect public access at each of the street ends. This continued on into the effort that turned the Long Range Plan into a Comprehensive Plan.

The list of streets to be protected for the public specifically included the end of South Avenue, the subject of the Town's successful suit against Lacy Henry.

On May 5, 2012, the Town Board voted to adopt the Comprehensive Plan, including protection of public access to the harbor at South Avenue. The vote was unanimous. Barbara Venturi voted yes.

Later during the VERY SAME MEETING, someone introduced a motion to hold a public hearing to close both Avenue A and South Avenue.

Barbara Venturi voted for that as well.

I conclude that "continuity" may or may not be a problem from one term to another, but it is evidently a serious problem from one motion to another at the same meeting.

I doubt we could do anything to the Charter to fix that.

Did I mention that when Bill Sage brought the idea of staggered four year terms up in 2008 none of the Board members spoke for it and at least four spoke against it?

This is the kind of legislative proposal often mentioned as a "zombie" idea - it won't die, but just keeps coming back.