Tuesday's bit

Well, seems I missed the turnout prediction by 3%. 

As noted, glad to be wrong with that one.  I would have preferred to have been totally off base with it, but at least the turnout here was in the high double digits.  

Acushnet and Freetown were both in single digit turnouts. 

It is what it is folks, which is apathetic at best.  

The margins of victory are worth some note. 

Small turnouts are often not the most reliable indicators of public sentiment.  Small turnouts with large spreads however do provide more reliable data.  To have changed the outcome, you would have needed double the turnout with an exact opposite spread, plus one vote.

First let us all be thankful it didn't come down to a plus one vote. 

But next let us note that would have meant a 38% turnout, something that would have been significant in and of itself.  It also would have taken something highly unlikely in the realm of the next 19% turning out and voting exactly opposite of the the first 19%.  

In the selectmen's race, taking into account the 70/30 margin, one could reasonably assume some serious campaigning might have resulted in about a 10% shift but probably no more than that.  

Point being that large a spread indicts it would have taken a very serious effort by a very serious candidate in that particular race.

The challenger would have needed another early concession speech, sorry concession stand speech, along with a RISDI letter type revelation for another upset.  Even those two things might not have been enough for pulling a rabbit out of a hat this year.

As to the B of H, well the challenger did all the things you are suppose to do campaigning.  Simple fact is this town is burned out on the turbine issue.  Right, wrong or indifferent, that is what this one was about again.

More than a few people noted to me they were going to vote for the incumbent simply because they didn't want any further political turmoil than there had to be on the issue.  People are simply burned out on this issue.  It really does come down to that.  

As noted in past blogs, we have one more election cycle that the spinning blades are going to dominate. Next year's election will bring to the forefront the people in office elected during the first election cycle dominated by the turbines.  

Expect the B of H race to be essentially about nothing else if the incumbent seeks re-election. It should be a dominate issue in the selectmen's race. 

Yes we are all ready talking about next year.  If you have been paying attention a whole bunch of people have been chattering about next year for about half a year now.  As I have said here and has been said many, many times by multiple commentators elsewhere a year is an eternity in politics. While it may be impossible to cast the roles that will be played next April, the script has nonetheless been pretty much written.

Anyway, this years election cycle is done, in April no less.  Something to be happy about just with that.

Putting yesterday to rest ... well nearly ...

Con Com met last night.  Determination according to the newspaper is Con Com has no jurisdiction over the proposed 30 foot wall around the business abutting the waterfront.  On to the Board of Appeals it seems.  

Will have to try and pay a bit more attention as this one progresses.  Could be some interesting arguments made.  

Anyway ... 4 Saturdays and a handful of weekdays until Town Meeting. Oh joyful, joyful!

I actually look forward to Town Meeting.  You may not like what happens, and you may wonder what the heck goes on at times.  For me, it really is the last bastion of the seeds of the concept of government by the people.

What looked like potential chaos several weeks ago is firming up into a more organized battle fronts.  Certainly the town administrator and BPW article will get some deserved attention.  The capital planning committee article could be on the front burner.  

A few spending articles have some heads scratching.  The Roger's building committee (no point in adding Oxford to this anymore) funding request is shall we say a bit interesting. It is what is its, and that in the scheme of what we call government, is still pretty special.

Kind of out of time this morning.  A bit of a piece today guess.  But hey, it was just a bit of an election too.

Be safe.