Sorry to 'waste' your time, ... but get used to it

Two selectmen sat in their corner office at Town Hall last week lamenting the amount of Right to Know requests they were beset with.

Do these guys (and I stress the word ‘guys’) think the good folks of Lebanon have nothing better to do than run around filling out Right to Know requests?

That we have personal vendettas?

That we like “wasting” their valuable time with silly things like full disclosure, transparency of government and due process?

That we would care if a $70,000 major Town Hall renovation project bid was awarded at a selectmen’s “workshop,” while a 90-percent grant-funded bid for firefighters’ breathing gear was opened at a regular meeting?

(On Dec. 4 at a regularly scheduled selectmen’s meeting, The Lebanon Voice asked what was the difference between a Selectmen’s Workshop and a Selectmen’s Meeting. Selectman Jason Cole replied that workshops were for day-to-day administrative tasks like signing checks, but sometimes a business owner might have an emergency request for a meeting. Maybe it was an “emergency” $70,000 bid award.)

Sorry, we digress.

That we would in the least bit be concerned that one selectman would investigate another selectman who had had serious grievances brought against him as the assistant rescue chief when he and the other selectman are longtime political pals?

That we would have cared that a former selectman was also the head of a town department while he was in office?

That we would ever blink an eye if a selectman were also a department head.

Maybe if they’d stop sending ‘em in (Right to Know requests), we could do our job, one selectman lamented.

Maybe if you started doing your job correctly, we wouldn’t have to send them in.  

Until you do, we will.