Lebanon voters should reject videotaping question

Have you ever wanted a kitten so bad you begged you mother for days on end until she finally relented and got you one?

Then when you finally got it, you wished you’d never asked?

That’s how Lebanon residents should feel right now when they look at the selectmen’s referendum on videotaping government meetings that will be voted on tomorrow.

Selectmen took a citizen’s initiative born of a want to increase transparency of government and morphed it into an expensive, unfairly funded and bloated government program.

Corinna Cole spearheaded the initial citizen’s petition and the referendum was approved 2-1 by Lebanon voters last June.

The referendum voters will decide on tomorrow bears no resemblance to that petition.

The referendum voters will vote on tomorrow calls for a 2 percent surcharge on the video portion of Lebanon residents’ monthly Metrocast bills.

Most residents will pay about $2 a month for the surcharge.

That’s about $3,000 a month into the videotaping coffers from the roughly 1,500 town residents who use Metrocast.

Cole was asking for a modest $500, which admittedly might not have been enough, but was a start.

You start with one camera and one person willing to step up to the plate.

And you grow that year by year.

Yeah, there may be bumps along the way, but there are in any program.

If residents approve the ordinance tomorrow we have a $36,000 a year videotaping money pot that two-thirds of town residents will pay for. That’s because a third of Lebanon residents don’t use Metrocast for their cable access video.

So if you’ve got Direct TV or a digital antenna, you don’t pay a penny.

But is that fair?

When voters approved this referendum at the polls last June, they voted to have it come out of all Lebanon residents’ hard-earned money, not just some. Or even most.

The point is we don’t want the kitten anymore. Take it away and give us the one we wanted in the first place.

Selectmen said the wording of Cole’s referendum didn’t allow for the appropriation and expenditure of town funds.

So fix the wording. You can do it.

Bring it back next June with $5,000 in funding attached. It will likely pass.

The people of Lebanon want transparency of government. They want public meetings videotaped. They just want it done fairly and not because it’s someone’s pet project.

Vote no on the Videotaping ballot question. Vote no on Question 1.

- HT