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A Poison Pill

It is axiomatic that one does not kick someone while they are down. Usually after a bruising election, it is time for winners and losers to win and lose as gracefully as possible. In the Sept. 12 primaries, all but one of the Board of Selectmen (BOS) incumbents was resoundingly defeated and that incumbent barely survived only by default.

The following evening, in its first meeting as a lame-duck BOS, the selectmen voted 3 to 1 to place the petitioned charter revision proposals on the ballot in November. They did so believing that the proposal is fatally flawed. The town counsel, wittingly or unwittingly, botched the review and allowed the proposal to advance with no effective date set. This means that without a specific set date, 30 days after this passes that it by default goes into effect by state statute.

That does not provide adequate time to appropriate funds to pay a town manager or to search for and hire a town manager. By statute, this referendum could have been delayed up to 15 months to give the town time needed for these actions.

At the end of 30 days, with no town manager and all authority stripped from the BOS, no one would have authority to negotiate or sign contracts among other powers. This is a poison pill designed to either sabotage the town manager proposal at referendum or to create a crisis for the new BOS.

This scorched-earth attempt is a parting shot by a repudiated BOS whose service I would otherwise be using this space to graciously recognize.

That is also why I am so grateful to the voters of both parties for filtering false accusations to give Clinton better choices for the general election on Nov. 7.

Kirk Carr

Clinton

Kirk Carr is the Republican candidate for first selectman.