Representative democracy works when the will of the people and the actions of legislators broadly correspond. As elected officials, that’s all we can hope for — that the votes we take from one day to the next reflect the hopes, wishes, and views of the community. At the end of the day, most of us are volunteers, and we can’t help but make mistakes; when we mess up, we trust you, our constituents, to let us know — and let me take this opportunity to thank you for never failing in that duty!
Minority voices are necessary but when an individual ceases to represent their particular constituency, they can expect to be voted out. Every so often, a group as a whole will, for any number of reasons, defy or appear to defy public opinion, and that’s where section 7-8 of the charter of the city of Greenfield comes in. It gives citizens the right to collect signatures in protest of a City Council or School Committee decision and, if enough signatures are gathered, to put the issue up for referendum. Democracy’s not perfect, and there should be a mechanism to second-guess decisions that the public, in number, deem not just imperfect but wrong.
As a city councilor, I trust the wisdom of the people to, when necessary, compensate for the occasional short-sightedness of its representatives. As a citizen, I want the protest petition process to be demanding, to keep it from being a tool for the minority to use to gum up the works. I want the signature threshold to be set high enough to indicate that a successful petition is not a frivolous protest but one that the community as a whole may agree with. And I want the provision to be written clearly, in language that is not easily litigated or misunderstood.
As vice-chair of the Charter Review Committee, I was proud of the work that Allen Woods and David Singer did to clean up the language of section 7-8. As a committee, we had vigorous, in-depth public discussion around what the right number of signatures to require might be, and we made our recommendation: 10% of registered voters. Prominent voices in the community argued for a lower number, so City Council suggested a compromise: 7% of registered voters. As a councilor and as someone who is about to step down from council, I support this compromise, and encourage you to vote for it on Nov. 2.
In a democracy, we, the people, have the say. In a city as small as Greenfield, government works because of us, not in spite. Vote Yes on 1.
Otis Wheeler represents Precinct 7 on the Greenfield City Council.