Democracy is Fickle

By not participating, you are participating

This is my eighth year on the town council in my small town of about 37,000 people. We are elected every two years, so this is my fourth term of office. When I started serving in December 2017, there were eleven Democrats and ten Republicans. As a Democrat, we held the slimmest of margins, but we had flipped the script having gone from a 15-6 minority just the previous term.

Two years later in 2021, we were able to grow that majority to our own 15-6 majority. This enabled us to be able to make significant reforms including major updates to our town charter. It’s amazing what you can do in a democracy when you have the votes. It turned out to be our one window to get the job done.

Democracy, as it turns out, is fickle. The next term saw the return to an 11-10 majority, but the Democrats still held the majority. In the following 2023 election, the script would again be flipped, and it would be about as close as an election can get. After all the votes were counted, each party held 10 seats on the town council with one district too close to call.

In the final district that was yet to be called, the Republican candidate held a one vote lead. By law, this triggered a recount. After an exhaustive hand recount, the Republican candidate actually picked up another vote. That meant that the control of the town council would shift right with the Republicans holding a one seat majority by the votes of two town citizens.

Fast forward to 2025, and one of the biggest issues facing the town was whether to build a new Senior/Community Center. Our current senior center was in an old school building built over a century ago. It had become a veritable money pit with constant repairs, water leaking up through the floor, and nowhere near the space to accommodate the needs of the seniors in the community.

This was a project that had been discussed and bandied about in town for decades. The building committee tasked by the town council to manage the project was itself over 10 years old by now. Over those years, many sites were reviewed and the project even progressed as far as a design concept for the new facility. Eventually, after many false starts due to battles over the site location, a property became available that to many on the committee seemed an ideal solution. It was within a short walk from town hall and the library, and it even abutted a senior community full of people who could benefit from it.

It wasn’t a slam dunk, however. Nothing in politics - particularly local politics - ever is. There were the usually detractors including some who lived next to the proposed facility concerned about the usual things which included property values, noise, traffic, and of course the cost. It would not be cheap, and it was complicated by the fact that the townspeople had just approved the building of a new middle school that was going to cost over $100 million. While this project was a fraction of that, the additional burden on taxpayers was, as it always is, a serious concern for many.

Even so, it seemed like this was the moment where a long-standing desire of the community was going to finally come true. All that had to happen was for the town council to vote to approve the authorization of a bond to pay for the project that depended on the voters to either approve the project or not in a referendum. In our town, every project over $15 million automatically triggers a town referendum so that taxpayers can have a say over major expenditures.

To be clear, the town council was not meeting to vote on whether to spend the money and build the new center. All the town council was tasked with was to allow the question to be put before the people. After all, it is the taxpayers’ money that would be spent on the project. They are the ones who should decide whether this project should move forward or not.

Republicans on the town council didn’t agree. Just as it seemed that the resolution to authorize the bond and send the question to the people would pass, the fickleness of democracy would return. Republicans introduced an amendment to postpone the resolution to a town council meeting in two months. In addition, they added a significant amount of new work for the building committee. In essence, they sent them back to the drawing board.

In Greek mythology, there is a little known goddess named Peitho. She was known as the goddess of democracy, and she was usually seen accompanying Aphrodite. She personified persuasion and seduction. It is significant that democracy would be tied to the goddess of love. Love is fickle, as is democracy. It can change directions unexpectedly, and it is anything but predictable.

The Republicans passed their amendment on a straight party line vote of 11-10. This meant that the committee would have to reengage architects, cost analysis consultants, and return with new ideas about the time the referendum had originally been planned had the original resolution passed unamended. What it really meant was that the project had once again been derailed. The project that had been identified as a serious need for the community for well over a decade would again have to wait.

Which brings us back to the 2023 election. If three people out of nearly 2,000 had voted for the Democrat in our town’s third district, this would not have happened. That’s a margin of less than 0.2%. Three people. If you ever find yourself sitting on your couch on election day trying to decide whether it’s worth it to participate, think about that.