Today, the American story does more than turn a page. It begins more than another chapter. It opens a new volume in which our nation’s vision of itself will be enlarged and ennobled.
Watching television on the warm spring evening last June when Barack Obama became the Democratic nominee for president, I realized that there was only one place to be at that uniquely American moment. And it wasn’t the living room of my Buffalo home.
Building on our Lancaster success, and to maintain momentum for our petition efforts next spring, I’ve spent the past several weeks in Cheektowaga and Amherst. Meeting with council members in each town, I renewed my effort to downsize both boards from 7 to 5 members.
This week, on their third try, politicians succeeded in delaying people’s right to decide the size of government. This delay will be brief. And along with everything else they’ve done, it will only serve to make citizens more determined to demand change.
On the eve of politicians’ final legal effort to stop citizens from deciding the size of their government, I’m determined, hopeful, and determined.
These past few years, I often find myself in a town hall parking lot. It’s usually after a town board meeting ends, all the sound and fury subsides, and the once-crowed lot has emptied. I sit alone in my car, thinking about where our reform cause is, and where it’s headed.
“How did it come to this,” I wondered as we filed court papers yesterday to ask a judge to order politicians to put our downsizing proposition on the November ballot in West Seneca.
Last Wednesday we visited the tony town of Clarence, where citizens and town board members had perhaps the most spirited downsizing discussion of this tour.
My mother was an educator before she was a mom. She knew much about Western New York history. So she always took pleasure noting that the Town of Marilla was named for an early school teacher, Marilla Rogers. “Any town that bears a teacher’s name can’t be all bad,” she would say.
I am a soon-to-be high school senior, and I have lived in the Town of Tonawanda all my life, in the same house my mother grew up in. My father grew up a few blocks away. Kevin Gaughan’s presentation in Tonawanda on June 16th really made me think.
Last week took us to historic Holland, named for the Dutch land company that first took title to property throughout Western New York, and struggling Alden, which has seen better days.
