By Deborah Carney
As a former Town Council President, former Chair of several committees and current active member of several committees, and as someone who has been involved in our community for well over a decade, I was outraged by the September 7th decision of 3 Town Councilors to deny the request for Tim Quillen to speak on behalf of the Charlestown Democratic Town Committee.
Greg Avedision was the only councilor at that meeting to support free speech. Anyone can view the video of this meeting and see and hear for themselves the entire discussion. Some of Mr. Slattery’s comments were extremely disturbing.
Mr. Slattery stated, “That political committees of any denomination, Republican, Democrat, Moderate Party, Independent Party, shouldn’t be sitting up here speaking on behalf of the party.” Why? Who is he to decide what groups are allowed to send representatives and what groups are not. All groups should be treated equally. Notice he left the CCA, a political action committee, off his list of those who could not speak. Of course he used to be the president of the CCA.
Mr. Slattery further stated and I’ll paraphrase, “that a specific topic as an individual is fine but that individual shouldn’t be reading from a statement from that particular political commission.” Why? Mr. Slattery frequently reads prepared statements. Last time I checked there was no law, nor a Council Rule against reading a prepared statement. Aside from being absurd, that sounds like a bizarre dictatorship.
The Town Council minutes of June 9, 2008 state the following, “Mr. Slattery read a press release that the Charlestown Citizens Alliance has put together.”
The Town Council minutes of December 14, 2009 state the following. “Tom Gentz presented the results of the CCA survey on Wind Power.”
Reading a statement on behalf of a political committee was acceptable for Mr. Slattery and Mr. Gentz, but not for Mr. Quillen. That’s hypocritical.
Nowhere in the Council Rules and Procedures does it say that a citizen can NOT speak on behalf of a committee. That would be ridiculous and it would be discrimination.
Further Mr. Slattery and Mr. Gentz ran as CCA candidates. The CCA website states that, “All the people of Charlestown need to have a voice in their own government.
Town government should encourage communication on the issues, both to and from the citizens.” They’re right, it should, but the two CCA supported members of the Council are preventing it. Once again, dictatorship comes to mind.
The CCA website states, “In Charlestown we need to create a government that serves the people. We don’t have that yet and until we do, a group like CCA is needed to create a town meeting where anyone can speak, for as long as they choose, on any topic they want.” Do they really believe anyone can speak? Seems they believe only certain groups can speak. Their actions on September 7, 2011 speak louder than their words. It seems like a little self reflection is in order here.