VERNON — Parliamentary strategies and tactics customary among savvy legislative pros are inappropriate at amateur Town Meeting.
At the May 5 special Vernon Town Meeting to reconsider the original article funding the town budget, it can be passed over, preventing reconsideration of closing the Vernon Police Department, or quickly amended to close it again and force an immediate and final vote.
Friends of grassroots Vermont democracy can defeat them.
To ensure that we can make informed and democratic decisions about how our money shall be spent to protect and serve us, Vernon voters can instead:
• First, invite the Vermont State Police, Vernon Police Department, and Windham County Sheriff's Department to begin the meeting by presenting their services and annual costs of a range of weekly hours of policing and law enforcement, then answering our questions.
• Second, amend the original town-budget line item for policing and law enforcement to create a blank to be filled in with whichever among these three policing and law-enforcement agencies receives a majority via paper ballots, initially or in a top-two runoff.
“In filling blanks, the number of alternatives is not limited; voters have an opportunity to weigh all choices before voting and to vote on them in a fair and logical order,” according to Robert's Rules of Order Newly Revised (11th Edition, 2011).
• Finally, further amend that line item to create a blank to be filled in with whichever among the budgeted annual dollar amount and others suggested by voters present to fund policing and law enforcement first receives a majority, debated and voted on from highest to lowest.
We also can cut our town budget as much as we please: Amend the original article to create a blank to be filled in with whichever among the budgeted annual dollar amount and others suggested by voters present first receives a majority, debated and voted on from highest to lowest.
For example: 1) proposed $2,112,785; 2) 10 percent cut to $1,900,000; 3) 15 percent cut to $1,800,000; 4) 20 percent cut to $1,700,000; 5) 25 percent cut to $1,600,000; 6) 30 percent cut to $1,500,000; etc. The first amount receiving a majority would be raised and appropriated.