BRATTLEBORO — Appeals and suggestions for reducing the financial burden to the home-owning taxpayers by several representatives at the Brattleboro Representative Town Meeting (RTM) had no effect.
Why? Do people not listen to reason? Or subscribe to spending within the confines of one's resources? As one representative said, “We cannot buy a Cadillac on a Chevy budget.”
With so many expressing concern that Brattleboro cannot afford a $16 million budget (in addition to more than $15 million for the school budget), I had hoped Town Meeting members would act wisely with their authority and responsibility to reject the budget, insisting the Selectboard be frugal and design a truly viable solution to the challenges we now face.
Why wouldn't we do the right thing and demand the same from the Selectboard? The revision process can certainly happen before July 1, 2014, the date the new budget will take effect, although it would entail another meeting of the RTM.
Why would intelligent, compassionate, courageous people jeopardize the future well-being and viability of Brattleboro? Were they unwilling to commit the time for another meeting?
The answer came to me the very next day from a presentation on “The Roots of Poverty.” Most Americans, 92 percent, believe we all have more money than we actually do, imagining the middle class to be more than twice as wealthy as it actually is.
The truth about wealth distribution in the United States is that the top 1 percent of the population has 40 percent of all wealth, the next 19 percent below the 1 percenters share 53 percent of all wealth.
This means that the wealthiest 20 percent of U.S. households control 93 percent of the nation's wealth, while the other 80 percent of America shares 7 percent of wealth. (This group includes what used to be known as the “middle class.”)
These facts show the current system to be egregiously oppressive, morally and ethically offensive, and in need of change.
At the same time, it explains why nine out of 10 representatives, as well as the Selectboard, interim town manager, town attorney, and others have not taken seriously the pleas of people who know that Brattleboro cannot afford the current runaway spending habit. Their choices have been made from a skewed perception of reality.
These good people with good intentions made mistakes because they thought they knew, but they did not. They did not understand the real truth.
With the truth in hand and in mind, remedies can now be found.