Another committee?

Last week the conservation commission presented a revised set of buffers regulations to the selectmen, prompting at least one member of the board to suggest creating another committee.

These revisions have been a long time coming. During my near 4-year tenure on the commission, the buffers regulations were the greatest source of contention and no part of Falmouth's conservation regulations were more confusing or open to interpretation. So, several members of the commission volunteered to revise those regulations and clarify things a bit.

When presented with the revisions, some of the selectmen seemed to be, well, clueless. Not only did they seem to have no idea how troublesome these regulations had been, at least one of the selectmen - Chairman Kevin Murphy - suggested that a committee be formed to see if the regulations needed changing.

Yep, another committee.

No revisions to any regulations should be taken lightly, especially when those revisions are being done by unelected volunteers who do not answer to the people. However, our elected officials - the people who supervise those volunteers - should either trust in the people they appoint (or not appoint them in the first place), or spend the time necessary to know the issue at hand.

To his credit, Selectman Mustafa did the former, and suggested that the board should trust the people it appoints to do the job they were appointed to do.

As I mentioned earlier this year, one of my pet peeves with the selectmen is their lack of oversight. A number of the town's appointed committees have a member of the board of selectmen assigned as a liaison, but the selectmen almost never show up at any of the meetings. The board is supposed to oversee the people they appoint, but that oversight is limited and, frankly, pitiful.

Moreover (and I've previously written about this, but I'll say it again), if there is so much for the selectmen to do that they need to create a committee to help them make a decision, then we have one of two problems with town government:

1) Our present system of town government (selectmen/town meeting) doesn't work for Falmouth, or
2) the selectmen are not up to the task of governing.


P.S. - Chairman Murphy did it again last night when he suggested appointing a committee to review the issue of real estate signs.