A follow up: Windham, Closing Down Ttransparency

Krich: Meetings are to long

It's been over eight months since I wrote a story about the Democratic majority taking away Windham's taxpayers right to speak a second time at town council and town council sub committee meetings.  WINDHAM CLOSING DOWN TRANSPARENCY , originally published April 17, 2012, quotes council member Charles Krich claim that to many concerned citizens were coming to meetings,  speaking twice and repeating themselves. In fact only 3 speakers over a 21 month period (Sept. 2009-Dec. 2010) repeated themselves.   Other council members added that  neighboring town, Mansfield  had recently discontinued their second comment period and that council meetings were just to long.

Recently I  looked back to see if town government has  improved its communications abilities.. Unfortunately nothing  has been attempted to improve the town's communication tactics.  Windham is still using outmoded video equipment, an ad hoc communications committee has not met in 27 months. While some boards and committees stride to publicize their  minutes in a timely manner the board of finance has not made their minutes public in six months.  The upstairs town hall audio equipment, which was recently stolen, was replaced by similar inferior equipment. At a September 3, 2012 public hearing citizens were asked to stick the microphone down their throats so that others could hear the audio from the "Toys R Us" equipment.

Digging further I  found that those councilors that voted to stifle town democratic rights have missed their, misdirected, goals:

•   Instead of streamlining  meetings, meetings  have actually increased  from an average of 2 hours:11 minutes (former 2 public comment format)  to 2 hrs:24 minutes (newly instituted one comment session) 
• Under the former two comment session there were 227 comments during the 1st comment session ( Jan 3, 2011-Jan 4, 2012) or an averaged of 7.83 comments per meeting . With the elimination of the second comment period,comments have decreased to 5.38 comments per meeting, a 31% decrease.
• While public comment has decreased there has been an increase in public comment by appointed and elected officials . Prior to removal of the second public session 19% of those speaking were politicians, after the removal of the second comment session that has increased to 21%.

A 2010 study by Mark Shibles and Robert Villanova for the State Board of education suggests that Windham's problems come down to a lack of communications. Report on District Governance lays it on the line, give and take is imperative to a true democracy.  It's not happening in Windham.

Read the entire story: Windham, Closing Down Transparency