Questionable Arrogance

Unlike Barbara Anderson’s well-known Citizens For Limited Taxation (CLT), that has been in existence for 30 years, the Hamilton/Wenham fiscal watchdog group Enough Is Enough (EiE) has been around for just under two years. But during that short period of time the group has been enormously successful in achieving its agenda of fiscal responsibility in the two towns. Membership has swelled to 400+ and supporters come from diverse backgrounds, age and income levels and family size.

Just before the two most recent town meetings in Hamilton the organization published and distributed what is known as the EiE Yellow Sheet, a voting guide with the group's recommendations for voting on key issues on the town warrants. Eleven recommendations on the two published Yellow Sheets resulted in ten wins for the group, an astonishing accomplishment for such a young organization.*

The reason?

Well surely there are many, but perhaps the group’s name serves as the best explanation: Enough Is Enough. Taxpayers in Hamilton and Wenham finally reached the tipping point after the 10 years of “budgeting by override” that has earned the towns a place in the Taxpayers’ Book of World Records. Those overrides cost the taxpayers over $39 million and counting since override costs are not one time events. They are added to the tax levy and you pay the override amount again every single year - year after year after year – forever...or for as long as you live in town.

In the past, the School Committee had displayed no small measure of arrogance regarding their requests for overrides (Remember their "only a cup of coffee" justification?). In a sense, they can almost be forgiven their arrogance and sense of entitlement. After all, if a bully takes advantage of another person, and year after year the weaker person allows that to happen, can you really blame the bully for his arrogance? Or sense of entitlement? On the other hand, if the weaker person finally and firmly says ENOUGH is ENOUGH and makes it perfectly clear that they will no longer be bullied, you’d expect the arrogance to dissolve, wouldn’t you?

Well, apparently not if you are the School Committee for the HWRSD. This group of elected individuals seems to believe that they are autonomous and unencumbered by the will of the people they represent. Here’s what their chairman has said about EiE and its members and supporters:

“We’re going to be contending with this group of people in the future and this is their tactic…They don’t care what the truth is.”

Actually, EiE does care what the truth is. The truth is that the residents of Hamilton and Wenham were promised more openness and transparency and that promise has not been kept. The truth is, EiE’s efforts to determine exactly what budgeted maintenance funding was spent on over the past three years have been stonewalled by a clever game of semantics and deliberate refusals of repeated requests for the information. The truth is that by publicly making statements like the above, the School Committee is declaring that their arrogance remains intact.

Recently, when EiE offered the School Committee suggestions and recommendations regarding the current negotiations with the teacher’s union over the contract that expires next year, the chairman had this to say:

“We will not be directed or distracted by a community group that seeks to undermine the process. We know what we are doing in this area.”

Well, we certainly hope they do since they are going up against one of the strongest unions in the state with what appears to be, by comparison, extremely limited strength in the area of contract negotiation.

Just a thought…Do you think the School Committee would consider hiring an expert contract negotiator with a proven track record of success representing other towns in similar negotiations? What if EiE was willing to pay the expert’s fee? Or would that be considered an attempt by EiE, as also stated by the chairman, to “compromise what we intend to be a successful negotiation process”?

These statements and others represent the kind of ARROGANCE that most would agree the committee is no longer entitled to.


* The one loss was the motion to permit secret or private balloting on articles requiring large expenditures or appropriations, such as overrides and capital debt exclusions, over $250k.