Working Committees Are For Windham

More Democracy Not Less!

We have to address the elephant in the Town of Windham’s Council Room and that is the development of working committees and their role in good governance. New York State’s Town Manual outlines the powers of the Town Supervisor as being able to convene “Citizen Committees” for advisory purposes. Now, these committees have no teeth on the surface because these citizen committees lack the power of decision making.  But, in reality they have a tremendous power to shape popular opinion about issues and that is a power too. 

This is one of the most important aspects of the citizens committee’s role in governance– to help to sort out the ideas and wishes of a community and develop viable plans that are actionable by the Towns’ Board members. These actionable plans should include a survey of available grant resources from State and Federal Agencies, environmental analysis , economic impact analysis, and public surveys to understand the public opinion of future developments.  

A working committee as described above would provide invaluable tools to the public discussion of resource allocation in our community.  Currently we face just such a dilemma in our community over the location and redevelopment of our Mountain Top’s Little League Field.  This is a perfect case study of how we as a community can solve issues with the allocation of Common Pool Resource [CPR] in this case our finite open space within the town.  We should explore how a hypothetical working committee of Windham’s Citizenry can help increase Public Understanding in our community. 

Working Committee:

1. The Selection Process of Committee Members:  

•    Identity Qualifications Required For The Committee Members

•    Publically Request Community Members To Volunteer 

•    Town Board Public Hearing For Member Selection Process

      2.     Committee  Development Process:

• Town Board meeting sets a resolution to give authority to the working committee of citizens to explore issue x. The Committee is formally announced and its formal name is given to the town and its proper date and time of executive and public meetings are set. 

• Committee Convenes Executive meetings to establish the formal structure of the committee. This will be decided upon by the committee itself. The committee will determine how it structures its own sub-committees , fills specific roles such a secretary, chair of each sub-committee and general chair of the main committee. These executive meetings will have the minutes of the meetings recorded and displayed on the Town Website for all to download after each meeting.  Transparency is of the utmost importance. 

• The Committee will meet with the Town Board to discuss budgeting potentials and the scope of the project’s goals. 

3.     The Functioning Processes:

• The Committee will internally organize itself in a manner that best reflects the problems they are trying to solve.  

• The Committee will hold at least monthly one open public hearing to inform and address the rest of the community as to the developments of the issue we are trying to solve. These meetings may include comments from outside experts, concerned citizens or just simple rundowns of what options are open to the community and the methodology that committee is using to solve these issues. 

• Engagement with the community is a must. Therefore it is imperative that each public meeting be designed to encourage maximum community engagement. This engagement is the key to transparency and development. 

• Development of ideas based on expert input when necessary and community comment periods is imperative to help the proper functioning of these committees. 

4.  The Development of a Final Plan 

•  The Working Committee working with the best intent and information from the community to resolve the issue should present a final draft of their committee’s results first in an open hearing seating to the entire community.   The contents of the final draft of the plan having been distributed in full via the Town’s Website to the community and advertised in the Local Media Sources: Paper and Radio two to three weeks before the open public hearing is scheduled. This will give the community plenty of time to review the document and propose questions and concerns.  

•  After the public hearing the Working Committee will attach any lingering concerns the community have over the project to the final draft for the Town Board to consider.  

• The final draft should show the methodology the committee used to come to their conclusions for resolution of the issue. A path to execute the final resolution, a breakdown of the economic, environmental and social impacts of this resolution. An outline of the time required to complete the issue or project in question and availability of State or Federal Grant funding to offset the town’s own expenditures to execute the final plan of action. 

5. Town Board Review of The Final Plan. 

• Finally, the board reviews the final plan in an open meeting with public comment before making a final vote on the resolution. 

Now, in NYS Town Law the ability to have a mandatory or permissive referendum is primarily reserved for budgetary issues– it is not possible to create a true referendum process in our town without petitioning the Governor and State Legislature for a special law in Windham using the Municipal Home Rule law provision to do so. It is my position that we the citizens of Windham should do just that. We should petition the Governor of NYS to help us to instate the following law to prevent long term issues with shared resource development in our town.  I call this law the “Recreational Community Resource Law” and it would require the town do the following:

• Create a popular vote elected board of  “Community Recreational Resource Development” to study, oversee , and improve the recreational resources in our town. 

• That this recreational resource development board has at least one citizens working committee group to advise them at all times. 

• That all recreational development projects that require the use of CPR’s be mandatory referendums in the community.

• This Board will also be directly responsible to the people of the community while working in cooperation with the Town Board. 

It is my goal with this legislation that our community can build stronger connections to each other and develop our CPR’s in ways that benefit the entire community as a whole. It is my belief that greater civic engagement is the only way to reduce rancor in our community that is attributed to these difficult processes of resource allocation. Only a truly open and democratic process can give our community the tools required to develop our CPRs in the future in a truly beneficial manner for all. 

This is why candidacy is so important—it’s about building a vibrant future.