All Animals Are Equal

But some animals are more equal than others

My email inbox of correspondence from readers has been phenomenal lately. One told a story of past political infighting involving someone described as a “sniper” who got people fired and then urged me to “be careful.”

Another contained allegations about a town employee the writer says they are in fear of, giving some details of their criminal activities. I can’t seem to say anything else about the contents because it might allow the supposed criminal to identify who leaked this to me.

And I got my first rage unsubscribe:

“A social club with a civil function”? What a fatuous remark. You have no clue. Please unsubscribe me.

There’s a saying that when you’re taking flak you’re likely over the target. As there’s now a clue that I’m over the target, I’ll make a second pass.

In the United States, fire departments historically arose outside of government, as volunteer community service organizations. Some of the earliest organizations were even called “fire clubs.”

After an extensive fire in Philadelphia in 1736, [Benjamin] Franklin created a fire brigade called The Union Fire company with 30 volunteers…. The idea of volunteer fire brigades gained popularity. Not wanting more than 30-40 men per company, additional companies were formed in Philadelphia….. Each of the companies paid for their own equipment and located it throughout town at strategic places. Most early fire companies in Philadelphia and other cities had professionals, wealthier merchants and tradespeople serving in the volunteer fire department. These citizens were able to afford to purchase equipment and pay fines for missing meetings and fires…. Before 1850 no city in the United States had fully paid, full-time firefighters.

Notice in this history how volunteer organizations originated as all-volunteer efforts, with no support from government. These were social clubs with civic functions.

Because of the immense value of these civic functions, and improvements in firefighting technologies, local governments started giving money to these clubs, first in the form of equipment and real estate, then onward to paying wages. Eventually, fire protection became a major portion of municipal budgets. All of this was done incrementally. Events happened over time that the early organizers of fire clubs and volunteer fire departments could not have foreseen.

I compared these origins of fire departments with the Pawtuckaway Lake Improvement Association. It, too, is a social club. It has bylaws, like the fire department has. It has members who “must be in good standing.” It has programs that have civic benefits. These involve people doing work, such as being lake hosts, weed watchers, scuba divers, etc. that benefits the community.

Because the organization benefits the community, the citizens have voted to give the organization some tax money, just like what happened with the early volunteer fire departments. Here’s an example from the 2022 town ballot.

This all seems perfectly reasonable – right now.

But let’s imagine how things might be 100 years from now, in a society that places far more emphasis on the environment than we do now.

The lake host program has grown into a staff of full-time employees paid for by town government. There’s now a municipal marine patrol organization that oversees all activity on the lake, including entry and access to the lake, with boats and staff paid for by town government. To fix the problem of high bacteria near the beaches, the town has installed expensive water purification systems and has a paid team of water quality experts. A law got passed to turn responsibility for the dams and dikes over to the town. Public attitudes about Canadian Geese have changed. They’re now considered to be a public menace. There’s full-time paid staff who trap the geese and transport them to Canada, where they belong.

At each step along the way, each task was incrementally added to the responsibilities of the Pawtuckaway Lake Improvement Association, which is still being run by volunteers despite now having a huge budget, paid for by the taxpayers.  Every step in the transformation was the expedient thing to do at the time, but one ends up with something unintended and strange – and susceptible to conflicts between the career staff members and the volunteer leadership due to differences in values, perspectives, and reward systems.

Sure, my hypothetical example is a bit far-fetched, but Benjamin Franklin was an exceptionally talented man. He couldn’t foresee the kind of firefighting organizations we have now. He did what was sensible at the time.

Times change.

Yet, there are not only emotional attachments to doing things the way they’ve always been done, the system still depends on huge amounts of volunteer labor. The volunteer labor depends on the psychic rewards available under the conditions in which the labor is provided, which will be degraded if status and authority are removed. Replacing that volunteer labor with paid labor will be expensive for the taxpayers. Nobody likes paying more in taxes. Nobody likes losing power and status.

Nobody gets rewarded for pointing out problems that are going to be difficult to solve. Best to just kick the can down the road and pray you’re not holding the time bomb when it eventually blows up, resulting in an expensive bill for the taxpayers.

Like what’s happening with our facilities maintenance issues. Or what happened decades ago about not following proper procedures for designating public roads.

Should it really be “fatuous” to consider that 2022 Warrant Article #5 might have produced some unintended consequences?

To mix metaphors, I sense there may be an elephant in the room. The elephant may be a sacred cow. It’s much easier to dismiss anyone who tries to describe the situation as having “no clue” than it is to try to talk about the elephant in the room.

On Tuesday night I saw Matt Curry step up to take a job on behalf of the citizens of Nottingham that not only comes with risk of injury or death, there are reasons to fear it might come with risk of character assignation as well. He did not seem to want that job. It looked to me like he took the job out of loyalty and devotion to the citizens of Nottingham. There was no one else in town who matched the respect and trust he had, and above all at this moment the town needs someone respected and trusted in that role. Even at that, he got only 7 out of 15 votes in the department. Four people wanted options to vote for someone else. Three votes even went to an option that doesn’t seem to have been legal.

What a tough situation for him to be in.

One of the famous lines from George Orwell’s Animal Farm is “all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”

We have a governing body in town where the staff not only gets to vote for its own leadership, they also have debates about who gets to vote, and the people who spend a greater portion of their time doing the functions of the organization don’t get to vote. Who knows how those who couldn’t vote feel?

Nah. That couldn’t possibly have anything to do the situation. The true story is the Vilchocks are evil… No, the true story is that it is the selectmen who are evil…. No, it is the blogger who is evil….

Evil, evil, everywhere! There couldn’t possibly be anything wrong with the way things are done in town. Everything bad that happens in Nottingham is because of the evil actions of bad players! Any criticism about the way things are done is a criticism of the evil person who is doing those things! If you talk about the mechanics of those processes, you’ve picked a side and you’re now supporting the evil-doers.

Or you have no clue.

So you shouldn’t even bring the topic up.

We don’t want to hear about it.

“Unsubscribe me.”