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Health & Fitness

The RTM Comes Through and Funds MISA.

Monday night the Representative Town Meeting approved a $ 9.8 million supplemental funding for the project to upgrade the auditorium and musical instruction space at Greenwich High School, known as MISA, by a vote of 118 to 92 with one abstention, which means that 19 members of the body were either not present or not voting. Furious opposition to MISA and the discovery of PCB contamination on the GHS site whittled down the pro-MISA majority from the 137 votes when MISA was approved a year ago or the 134 votes that defeated a motion to defund MISA in 2011.

The opposition tried to use the discovery of PCBs to derail the project by conflating the $ 5 million cost of containing the PCBs and the increased bids from an improving   construction market with the as yet unknown cost to remediate the PCB contamination at GHS. Others argued that the Board of Education should sacrifice other capital projects, such as the digital learning project, which the RTM also approved, to pay for the cost of remediating the contamination of GHS, as if the BOE (and our students) should bear the costs of remediating contamination the Town is obligated to carry out on a town-owned property. Some appeared to confuse the fact that the contamination was discovered during testing for MISA as if the MISA project was responsible for the contamination. Once the PCBs were discovered clean-up was mandatory whether or not MISA was funded.

With 230 members I have been told that the Greenwich RTM is the third largest legislative body after the 435 member U.S. House of Representatives and the 400 member New Hampshire lower house known as the General Court. I have always thought the size of the RTM makes it difficult for a minority, even a loud organized group like the MISA opponents, to demagogue substantive issues or to use the RTM as a power base. Common sense usually prevails if the RTM is called upon to act on a matter important to the town like MISA or the renovation of Nathaniel Witherell. The same may not be true for the infamous RTM "sense of the meeting" resolutions, where the RTM is asked to express an opinion about something with no actual legislation attached and no real consequences other than to seek to influence consideration of matters that do not require RTM action.

The Representative Town Meeting is hardly representative. One look around the Central Middle School Auditorium where the RTM meets will confirm that retirees, and particularly retired men, are disproportionately represented. Conversely, parents of school age children are under-represented. The RTM is elected every two years in a nonpartisan election. Nevertheless, a recent study concluded that 63% of the body are registered Republicans, which means that Democrats and particularly the unaffiliated are under-represented. Many members of the RTM have served a long time in town government, including a former First Selectman and former  members of the BET or BOE and other boards and commissions.

One thing you can say about the RTM is that it is filled with people who care about our town. They may not always agree and their votes may represent no one's views but their own, but collectively they really are the conscience of our community.


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