Sunday, April 06, 2008
Boones Mill slate needs to grow up
Shanna Flowers
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There will be columns in which I just go off because I find something so incredibly ridiculous. -- Me, May 3, 2005
In my three years of columnizing, nothing comes to mind as more silly than the exercise in civic absurdity under way in Boones Mill.
Blowing up the democratic process over a speeding ticket?
I don't think that's quite what Thomas Jefferson had in mind when he wrote, "The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive."
According to Times' staff writer Ruth Tisdale, three town council candidates and one mayoral candidate have formed a slate to overturn the council. Nothing unusual or wrong there.
But the slate -- Virginia Carroll, Sarah Eames and spouses Robert and Patricia Hogan -- is touting itself as an all-or-nothing deal.
"If one of us doesn't get elected, then none of us are going to take office," Carroll said.
Come again?
Is this a town, and a government, or a classroom full of petulant fourth-graders? (No insult intended, fourth-graders).
Is it just I who detects a whiff of bullying that's more common on elementary school playgrounds than at the polls?
What if Boones Mill voters -- all 20 of them -- choose Carroll and the Hogans, leaving Eames out in the cold? The others would refuse to take office.
Mayor Ben Flora said he believes the quartet wants to abolish the town.
Honestly, why a town with 280 people can't be absorbed into Franklin County is a reasonable question.
But whatever the rationale, the all-or-none gimmick makes a mockery of the democratic process. Boys and girls, Civics 101: The top vote-getters win the election -- and serve.
Anyone who follows Boones Mill politics knows there's an undercurrent to all of this.
The Hogans and Eames quit in a tizzy a year ago after the council refused to fire the town's police chief. They wanted to fire him after the chief issued a speeding ticket to Robert Hogan.
It's like, how dare the police chief enforce the law?
The trio didn't have the fourth vote they needed to force the firing, so they picked up their ball and sniffled all the way home.
That's where Carroll comes in. She'll help the Hogans stack the deck so they can fire the mean cop. They'll show him, darn it. And maybe they'll even abolish the town so nobody can hire him back ever.
As for "the spirit of resistance to government," Jefferson added, "It will often be exercised when wrong, but better so than not to be exercised at all."
But I doubt even he would sign off on the childish antics in Boones Mill.
