Nothing is moving forward

To the Editor:

Peru citizens:

Obviously most of you are not aware of what has been happening in our town. To put it in a nut shell, Peru's Board of Selectman, through self-serving actions, has become too powerful.

At present, the board cannot operate efficiently because the chairman of the board refuses to make an employee abide by an ordinance voted through on June 12, 2012, and said employee/select person is unable to vote on any of the current issues.

The ordinance in question was combined with a people's petition which essentially made it impossible for an employee of the town to hold an elected position for the town. The people's petition had over 160 signatures and over 300 people voted to have this ordinance on the books. At first, the signed petition was hard fought for to even be put on the June ballot. An agreement was made between the chairman and the people.

The chairman had submitted an ordinance to be voted on which dealt with political activity. They agreed to "marry" the wording from the petition with the chair's ordinance as long as he did not change the wording of the petition. However, the wording was changed and put on the June ballot as to be confusing. This forced the people to circulate information among the townspeople so they would be more informed before voting.

Once the ordinance passed, the chairman changed his tune and started using the excuse that current board members who were employees would be able to serve out their term because the wording on the ordinance wasn't "quite correct" and there was no effective date. According to legal questioning, the ordinance should fall under the same expectations as the warrant articles do—effective immediately!

After selectman questioned why advice was not sought from MMA prior to the vote, paperwork was then found, which showed that MMA did advise the board concerning the ordinance. And low and behold how was the board advised? They were told to change some of the wording and to add an effective date to the ordinance.

This advice was obtained at the end of April, long before the vote, but was withheld from the board discussion and from one of the selectman, to keep the petitioners in the dark. Now there are problems every week, nothing is moving forward and the anger among citizens toward the board is building.

Would pressure from townspeople push the chairman to do what is right or should the people take legal action? We'll see.

Peruvians for Honest Government (PHG) by Martha Witherell