Selectmen deny citizen warrant request
By Elizabeth Prata

New Gloucester--In New Gloucester, with the Selectmen form of government, citizens have the right to ask Selectmen to place items on the list of warrant items to be considered at Town meeting. Selectmen usually have a list of items that they want considered, mostly related to the budget.
Monday night, citizen Penny Hilton asked Selectmen to consider placing a warrant item to the list entitled, "A Resolution To Protect Maine National Guardsmen And Their Families."

The resolution came about, Ms. Hilton said, from feeling that the protracted use of National Guardsmen overseas has had an enormous impact on many local families. Ms. Hilton said that the repercussions in their lives are being felt and will be felt for a long time, but that as fellow citizens she had felt powerless to do anything substantial. After expressing her feelings to others, and hearing that many people also felt the same way, she decided to craft a Resolution that addressed the situation (see sidebar).

"With Town meeting coming up, it is a larger venue and voice to make the statement that this is not the way we as citizens want this to go."

Chair Steve Libby said that he would not state a personal opinion as tot he Resolution's contents, but that he felt it was not he appropriate forum to address it. "It is not a Town issue," Mr. Libby said. "The other warrant items are fact-based and generated by staff. This is not. It is from a citizen and is opinion-based."

Ms. Hilton said, "I disagree. We have gotten used to having warrant articles put forth by the Town governing body. These are usually procedural, legal, and expenditure-related." However, warrant items need not be limited to only that. There was a resolution passed at town meeting regarding making New Gloucester a nuclear free zone. It was from a citizen and it was not strictly town-related.'

Mr. Libby said that the nuclear free resolution had "more neutral" language in it. "This isn't neutral."

When the other two Selectmen weighed in with similar concerns, (Lynn Conger and Stephanie Bryan were absent), Ms. Hilton could see that she was going to have to take the other route to placing items on the warrant for town meeting consideration: petition.

Ms. Hilton will need to gather 69 signatures to get her issue placed on the warrant had have those signatures submitted to Town office by April 7. Ms. Hilton met with the Town Manager the next morning and is planning to go ahead with her petition.

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A Resolution to Protect Maine National Guardsmen and Their Families

In light of the events of the last three years, the citizens of New Gloucester, with unconditional respect for, and in unconditional support of, all Maine citizens who serve in the National Guard, Military Reserves, and United States Armed Forces, assert the following:

--that there is reason to believe that Guardsmen and women have been deployed for active duty without sufficient training under battlefield conditions;
--that there is reason to believe that military leaders knowingly deployed these same Guardsmen and women without appropriate protective personal and vehicle armor;
--that the extended deployment of these Guardsmen and women has caused extreme economic and psychological hardship to their families;
--that, further, the extended deployment of these Guardsmen and women has additionally caused economic hardship to their employers, and to the economy of the State of Maine;
--that, in addition, such wholesale, long-term deployment of state militia is incompatible with regional and homeland security;
--that unprecedented cuts to the benefits available to these veterans on their return home constitute an act of outrageous and cynical treachery on the part of the responsible governmental bodies which we, as their friends and neighbors, will not tolerate.

Therefore, we, the citizens of New Gloucester, respectfully direct our Senators and Congressional Delegation to:
1) pursue inquiries into all of the above complaints and make full and public reports of all findings to this body;
2) require that the US Military permanently replace All National Guardsmen currently deployed in theaters of active combat, including Iraq and Afghanistan, with full-time US Military forces;
3) pass all laws necessary at the federal level to assure greater State control over national Guard deployment;
4) pass legislation making it illegal for any tax cuts made within the last 6 years to become permanent while benefits to military personnel, veterans, and their families are insufficient and underfunded.