What Was She Supposed To Do?

 Skip Murphy from Granite Grok has another excellent piece on Croydon. 

“…You’ve admitted to knowing, before the meeting, of your husband’s proposal yet you deliberately kept it from the public”

What was she supposed to do – ride like Lady Godiva or Paul Revere screaming at the top of her lungs going through town: “The budget cut is coming, the budget cut is coming!”? Get real.

As I told that single mother at the end of the last school board meeting, the school board manages the district – YOU are supposed to defend that budget.”

No, not at all. This lady, like all of the others that heatedly and angrily spoke at the first School Board meeting, is still projecting. THEY think that she was supposed to “inform” them of a proposal? Utter nonsense.

They are taking it out on Jody Underwood, Chair of the Croydon School Board, when they should have been taking it out on themselves.  THEY didn’t bother to go to the Town Meeting.  Almost no one did as it took only 20 votes in the affirmative to cut the school budget down to $10,000/child average cost instead of the original $21,250.  Why does it take that much for a government school when charter schools, private schools, and religious schools do a better job for far less?

That’s the question that ALL government-run school systems want to avoid being asked – and even more so in giving an answer.

And the answers from some of those folks that I videoed were just as bad:

1. Oh, there was a blizzard
2. I had to work (that’s reasonable if you’re a single parent)
3. I didn’t think I had to
4. This kind of thing has never happened before.

Well, you let yourselves both get snookered and snockered yourself. You all willingly brushed off your responsibilities and became, as the Union Leader put it, “no shows”. We are a representative Republic using democratic processes to get things done – and you all allowed something to happen by not being there and NOW you’re majorly ticked off STILL?

 

Full Disclosure: I’ve known both Jody and Ian Underwood for years and I have found both to be always forthright and honest, friendly and humorous. And Ian writes for GraniteGrok BECAUSE he makes my head hurt with his ideas – he makes you think (and if it isn’t hurting when you read his articles here, you’re not asking yourself the right questions).  If Croydon residents voted for him for Selectman, they should have known what they were getting when they did – but did they bother to ask what his “selectman philosophy” like the Republican Senators asked of Biden’s SCOTUS nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson?  She avoided all those questions but I can assure you he would have been completely honest and open and TOLD you how he sees things.

So I maintain, not caring what Croydon residents would say, that this is ALL THEIR FAULT.  Snooze, you lose. Make stupid decisions (like “I’m not going”), get stupid [sur]prises. So stop taking it out of the Underwoods.  I’m not talking as a friend here – but as an outside observer that watched their reactions to their own inaction.

Our style of governance DEMANDS an informed and active citizenry – they were not informed and instead of being active, were slothful.

But, like in a lot of things nowadays, they refuse to stand up and take the lumps they so richly deserve for not just operating on autopilot but for turning off the computer that resides between their ears.

H/T Granite Grok.  To view the video in the story click here.

Cathy Peschke