The Democratic Process

This past week, two critical votes happened in my life; one professional and one personal. First, the professional one. The Town of St. Johnsbury passed a $3 million bond for school safety improvements, a new boiler, as well as system and control upgrades for one of the youngest school buildings in the state of Vermont. The vote was very close: 411-400.

The idea of a bond has been a part of my professional world in St. Johnsbury since I started serving here last year, part-time. The Board has been thoughtful throughout the entire process. As far as I know, there were no other schools that had a bond vote this week, so after the thirty day reconsideration period, we will be working with our architects to prepare Requests for Proposals to be considered as early as January 2020. The Board is hoping that with no other schools putting out RFPs at that time, we will benefit from highly competitive labor rates.

As Superintendent of Schools, I cannot try to persuade any voter how to vote. In the words of Joe Friday, "Just the facts ma'am." So I spent time over the past few weeks in St. Johnsbury establishments with a sign that read: I'm Brian Ricca, Superintendent. Ask me about the bond vote on Tuesday, November 5. I was in the public library, I was in two different coffee shops, I went to a lunchtime spot and spent an afternoon in a bookstore. Some people were surprised and had no idea about the bond. Some people were not even St. Johnsbury residents. But by far, the number of people I spoke to were thoughtful and considerate, even if they disagreed with the idea of the bond. I had conversations that were respectful, engaging, and thorough, again, even if we disagreed.

In my personal life, on Wednesday of this past week, we had a meeting of our neighborhood association. We have lived in the same neighborhood since 2010, and it has been a joy to watch our children grow up in a place where they are close to their friends and can ride their bikes to school. The association was considering what to do with the common tennis courts, and we've seen e-mail messages for months, letting us know we needed seventy households at the meeting to make a decision. In a neighborhood of 139 houses, we needed a majority to be present to move the discussion forward.

With two young boys in our home, we had an interest in the courts being resurfaced and in one of them being turned into a multi-purpose court, with more options than just tennis. To be sure we had a quorum, for the two weekends before the meeting, our family went around to houses and checked in about the meeting. We talked about the option we were hoping for, and if folks were in agreement but couldn't attend the meeting in person, we asked them to sign a proxy.

I arrived at the association meeting with thirteen votes, one for my house, and twelve proxies. We had a majority of households present, and the meeting began. After much discussion and debate, a motion was put on the table, and it was seconded. Further discussion and debate followed until finally, someone asked if we could vote. The vote was counted, and the motion passed!

I know that not every vote is going to go my way, and not every outcome in an election is going to be the outcome that I hoped for. But given the polarization that we see on the national, and somewhat on a state, level, there was really something very fundamentally American about the way these past two elections played out. And it's given me something else.

Hope.

Photo courtesy of www.nhpr.org