We had a tremendous win on the campaign trail today: a proposed addition to Town Hall that would have cost nearly $3 million was defeated by a vote of 308 to 646!
That is me standing in front of my Jeep that I plastered signs on saying “Avoid tax increase VOTE NO on TOWN HALL”. My Jeep was parked in front of Town Hall last Sunday. What a commotion it caused! The first selectman showed up around 10:00 am to photograph it and I ran down there. Sean followed me to make sure I wasn’t making a scene. Moi? Make a scene? Then the architect walked in, followed by the town clerk and right behind her was the cleaning lady. (The cleaning lady???) So, I told Sean that I was going in there to take a pee and see what was going on.
So I went in and there was no one in sight. So, I did my business and when I came out the town clerk was standing there with the cleaning lady. I told them that as a citizen I was exercising my constitutional right to free speech using my Jeep and if there was any problem with it, I was right here and just let me know. The clerk said that if this was part of the campaign, I needed to say who purchased the signs. I indicated that I got the signs for free (which I did) and that they were not part of the campaign. (Actually, I had to go rogue to do this because the campaign did not think this was a good idea. They thought it was too risky. Fools!) Then the cleaning lady (!?!) said that my Jeep had been out there for 3 hours and I was going to get a ticket because the signs were for 2 hour parking only. I pointed out that I was not parked in between the signs. She countered with, then you are parked illegally. I said, well it is not posted, but I will move my car. So I went outside and backed my Jeep in between the signs. From then on, I moved it every hour.
Also, we had teams at the town dump handing out cards with bullet points on why not to vote for the Town Hall addition.
Then Tuesday, I parked it at our polling place, the library. Everything was fine until Sean went down to check on it at 5:00 pm and called me to say that someone had ripped off the signs. I ran down there with the one extra sign I had and we filed a police report immediately on the stolen ones. Then we both stayed there until 7:00 pm and he stayed on until the polls closed at 8:00 pm and called us with the results.
This result bodes very well for our campaign overall. The people have spoken and they want no new taxes. This is what we have been saying all along. If all the incumbents can muster is 300 votes, they are in big trouble come November 6th. There is still lots of work to be done before then. But, the future of our town looks far brighter than it did this morning.
