Time to decide, folks

Tomorrow is Election Day. I have to agree with Mary Baker Eaton; there is a lot at stake in the upcoming election. On the City-side, particularly At-large, the choices are fairly evident. You have candidates who are pretty fed-up with the lack of accountability and failure to create municipal solutions to municipal problems, who recognize that the school/city dichotomy is just another way to keep from making hard decisions. You have candidates with good hearts, who couldn't craft a municipal, community-based solution to a problem like street-sweeping without convening an advisory group to make recommendations that can be ignored.

This election finds Newburyport at a fragile, yet tremendously exciting point. We can no longer deny the problems we face; economic shell games don't work any more. We need new strategies to deal with these issues we, we need leadership that understands a good leader listens, and doesn't make decisions in a vacuum.

Folks, we're in the economic poop so deep, that if we don't find a way to help each other out of the dung pit, we're here for good.

So, I won't vote for the polarizers, the politicians who promise you things they can't deliver, who pander to the worst in a person. Here's an example of what I mean.

Will there ever be a need to pursue an Override to meet basic City needs? Maybe. Probably. But anyone who tells you to your face that "if you vote for me, there'll never be an override in this City again," is lying through their teeth. It may feel good to hear them say that, but a politician who uses the word "never" to describe any option to resolve a municipal crisis, without anticipating what that need may be, regardless of how distasteful that option may be, is blowing smoke up your tailpipe. There may places in government reserved for this particular brand of moron, but my preference is frankly to keep them at the federal level, and not let them get anywhere near a vote that could affect my family directly.

Let me clear. Do I want an Override? No. Would I support one if I felt sure that every efficiency had been wrung out of the city and the school side of the budget, and that all other options in place would not meet immediate needs? Uh. Yeah. I would. For a simple reason, one I've shared with y'all before.

This is the first generation to pass on a world, an environment; a culture that is so much worse than the one we inherited, that our kids better get the best education they can, better than the best. Because they'll have to clean the mess up. I doubt that I'll live to see my great- grandchildren; but I surely want them to benefit from the rigorous education it will take to solve global and local problems. I'm not ready to have my great-grandchildren turn the world over to beetles and cockroaches. I got a pretty good education; I want theirs to be ten times better.

In a crisis, everything is on the table. In a crisis, you can approach resolution two distinct ways. You can list the reasons why something won't work- that is the simplest approach- or you can spend a little time entertaining what it would take to make the resolution happen. You might end up at the same place; but if you take the shortcut, you burrow a little deeper into that box that you never leave.

I will cast my vote for those candidates who offer a vision of what we can be, and how we might become that, as opposed to those who will continue to apply the same metrics to solve new problems that don't even work to solve the old ones.

Get out and vote, friends. We're all in this together.

We are at a crossroads, we people of Newburyport. And the people who have moved here recently, and the families that go back five generations need to find that vast expanse of common ground, that 85% that we actually agree on, and not let the the 15% we disagree on paralyze us. We can take care of the needs of seniors, of students, of those in need of affordable housing. We can become a greener tourist destination that protects it's history like the treasure it is; we can attract business into the community that will contribute. Leadership, common sense, sacrifice, transparency, and political will is all it takes.

Or we can continue to allow polarizers, demonizers, to keep us barking at each other about the 15% we haven't come to an understanding about, and let them take us away from the things that we agree on.

Personally, I'm done with that, I'm tired of it. That dog doesn't hunt any more for me. Time to grow up, and be a responsible adult. Time to quit the name-calling, acting out of self-interest; time to move over onto that common ground we all share to mutually, respectfully find solutions that work. There is plenty of room for everybody, including those who think they are smarter than everybody else, or those who are thought to be dumber. Come on in, the water's fine. Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain, he's just blowin' smoke.

Get out and vote, friends; vote as if your kids, your grandkids, your neighbor's kids, your neighbors, and your grandparents matter. Vote as if whoever is living in this town 50 years from now matters; vote as if those future residents will look back on this time as the point when we faced reality and rebuilt a community.

Thank you, all of you for the support you've shown over the last six years. Thank you for giving me the chance to advocate for our students. Thank you for your well-wishes, your votes; thank you for letting me run a campaign on the cheap, but based on honestly discussing the issues we face. I guess I broke the rules about campaigning. You're supposed to knock on a door, introduce yourself, and have a brief conversation. I found there were afternoons when I'd spend two hours and see five people; but engage them in a discussion about the issues, learn, help them to see another viewpoint. In the end, I probably didn't convince many of those folks to vote for me; but they sure as hell better understand what is happening in the schools, why it happened, and what we need to do.

I have never forgotten, nor will I ever, that public service is both a privilege and a responsibility not taken lightly.

I'll post the election results tomorrow as soon as I can.

Catch y'all on the other side.