Ever heard the expression.......?

Change the way you see everything and everything will change. That's a deep thought isn't it? And yet lots of people never do that. Last night our town had its monthly meeting and things got rather heated. Angry words were exchanged and some of the board members walked out. I wished that I had been there but I had a conference call I could not miss; not that my being there would have made a real difference but you never know.

The bottom line here is that some of the elected officials refuse to follow the law regarding public meetings (like that an agenda must be posted and no agenda means no meeting) and what a motion that is seconded means. I don't care for politics especially politics in a small town but what I know is that unless these people start seeing each other differently nothing will ever get done. Each has locked into an idea of how the 'others' are and nobody seems willing to give that up. So what we have now is a feud brewing that could really hurt people.

What is being missed here is that for our town, the people on the board are usually the volunteers. There are some that do things around town that aren't on the board but mostly its board members. And understand that there are no paid positions in town at all. So if it snows, someone has to plow. If it floods, someone has to clean up the mud and logs left behind on the streets. Plenty of properties have been bought out by FEMA and are now grenspace. Those must be mowed. All of this is done by volunteers. And many people are mad at each other so some that do most of that volunteer work and not doing it. And the few that are end up having to do much more. Many hands make light work you know. It is August and the town dock is nowhere near the water.

The sad part is that these people are creating their own crap and blaming others for it but its the town that suffers. Its time for people to look at things with a new set of eyes I think. Instead of thinking about the problems and getting upset why not think about some solutions and focus on that. If everyone would just start at a place of understanding that we all want to live in a nice community and that only happens through cooperation then maybe we can work something out instead of just fighting and making things worse.