Town Moderator Jon Rockwood’s decision not to re-appoint five members of the Finance Committee was no doubt a difficult one, and very unexpected. The Town Moderator will likely suffer politically as a result, and I anticipate there will be some in town who will try to run against him as moderator next year using this incident as a part of his or her platform against Mr. Rockwood. Perhaps we will even see a recall effort in the coming months.
It is always sad when the town loses dedicated individuals who were willing to serve their town selflessly by contributing their knowledge and expertise. Our community now must fill a tremendous void in the absence of these five members.
Mr. Rockwood is an honest and fair individual, and I don’t believe that his decision was in any way intended to eliminate people he didn’t agree with. Rather than continuing to give the same old people a pass to continue their work at Town Hall, it is sometimes necessary to instead find new voices for a new perspective on the issues.
There are a lot of rumors flying around as to whether Mr. Rockwood had ulterior motives in making the decision he made. Many of these rumors seem untrue based on the facts, as all five of the members not re-appointed actually did not have all that much in common in terms of views on the issues and votes on major controversies. None of the five were singled out and re-appointed, rather, as a group, they were all eliminated, which would indicate that Mr. Rockwood didn’t actually even glance at their votes or positions on the issues when deciding whether to re-appoint them. Furthermore, as Mr. Rockwood has pointed out, his decision was not unprecedented.
Some of the best ideas for our community don’t always come from the same old people who have been working at Town Hall for years. I hope that whoever Mr. Rockwood chooses to replace these five departing members will truly bring a fresh perspective on our town finances, as they have big shoes to fill.
The five people who will be leaving will be sorely missed, and I wish them the best of luck in the future. But all good things must eventually come to an end, and, in this case, hopefully in favor of newer and better things. We will never have known what we are missing if we kept re-appointing the same old people to the same old committees. Change is sometimes hard, but needed.
In this town, the Town Moderator is given supreme authority to appoint members of the Finance Committee, and there’s nothing we can change about that. Sometimes leaders make decisions that are not popular. Those who disagree with Mr. Rockwood’s decision are welcome to run against or vote against him next year.
I, for one, fully respect and support his decision, even though I, like most residents, am disappointed about the loss of five great people who contributed tremendously to our community. If I was in his position, I probably would not have done what he did. But I fully intend to vote for him for Town Moderator in next year’s election, which will be the first town election I will be eligible to vote in.
I am also very sorry that Mr. Rockwood’s family, which is made up of very nice people, has to go through this. Both Mr. Rockwood and his wife, a local school teacher, were blasted in a letter to the editor written by former Selectwoman Catherine Winston in this week’s Times. I can’t imagine what it would be like if my dad was the moderator and my mother was a local school teacher, and they were being publicly blasted in a similar fashion by someone as highly regarded in town politics as Catherine Winston. I feel sorry for Mr. Rockwood’s kids, but I hope that they understand that this is small-town politics at its best, whether we like it or not - neighbors turning on neighbors when controversial decisions occur.
