Letter: Spare Tiverton from TTA tyranny — don’t ‘recall the recall’

Posted 12/11/19

To  the editor:

Tyranny is when one person or small group of people as too much power. It becomes relatively easy to abuse that power at the expense of innocent citizens. The best way to …

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Letter: Spare Tiverton from TTA tyranny — don’t ‘recall the recall’

Posted

To  the editor:

Tyranny is when one person or small group of people has too much power. It becomes relatively easy to abuse that power at the expense of innocent citizens. The best way to avoid tyranny is to implement a governmental system of checks and balances, similar to the one employed by the United States.  In such a system, each branch of government keeps the other branches in check with no one group wielding too much power.

Allowing town council leaders to simply appoint whomever they like to governmental positions without allowing citizens to have input may make them feel as though their rights are being neglected or abused — like the many citizen-contested appointments by the TTA hiring their friends as solicitor and appointing unqualified people to boards over the objections of citizens and more qualified candidates.

The residents of Tiverton rallied and recalled  Katz and Coulter to head off tyranny.  There is a political philosophy that holds that the people have an actual right and even a responsibility to overthrow council members that are acting in a tyrannical manner, to stop and remove members that are not operating in the people's best interest.  In the Tiverton charter, we have the ability to hold a recall election which residents did in a proper manner and for justifiable reasons.

You may say tyranny?  Seems like a strong word, but the tyranny refers to the actions of an individual or group that is self serving, oppressive to the will of the people, and self-centered. 

Mr. Rom, in an article in the paper, stated that the retaliation recall is to reset the balance of power to the original 2018 vote. Problem is, it wasn't balanced. It was a TTA a majority that did as they pleased without the remaining three council members being able to intervene as a minority with basically no power to have a say for the people.

We've witnessed the abuse of the TTA majority vote in numerous matters.

Donna Cook, at the November 25 council meeting, stated, I don't need to listen to what others have to say about something before the council to make a decision.  I will do what I want.  This has been the TTA's attitude toward taxpayers from day one and why their majority rule had to be broken.

The TTA has an agenda of gaining absolute control of every facet of Tiverton government, through council majority and by appointment of their disciples to boards and committees and trying to displace those who are more qualified and would have opposed them.  Mr. Rom has already been running people off from the library board to make room for more unqualified TTA disciples.  They have engaged in acts of retaliation against those who have signed the recall, they tried to unseat the zoning chairwoman to appoint their disciple Joel Bishop, who demonstrated he had no clue what the zoning board did during the public interview.  They almost got away with it but they were called out by the citizens who know BS when they see it. 

I find it hard to understand how anyone could think having one group like the TTA, with a cult-like following and structure, being able to run the town any way they want and forcing their personal ideology down the throats of residents, is good for the town. That's not the way government should run in a democratic republic. 

So I would ask, don't sign retaliation recall.  It is a power grab to put TTA back in power as a majority vote on the town council. By their own admission, this would put them back on track to implement a total takeover agenda. No one group with a single ideology and goals should ever have the absolute power of a majority vote on every action or decision. Doing so regardless of how the residents feel about it stinks of shades of tyranny.

William  McLaughlin

Tiverton

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