Winds of fortune are about to change

To the Editor:

The legal case regarding the Black Mountain Initiated Article is over and the town is now cleared to give them the $51,000. There will not be any appeal.

Now before anyone starts in with all kinds of assumptions and proclamations and so on, let’s look at the facts. In the June ballot, Article 19 was defeated, according to the Charter. A petition was passed do declare an emergency. After the petition was submitted, three of our current selectmen decided to send it straight to the ballot box in violation of the Charter.

Five citizens brought this to the attention of the court and a Superior Court Judge agreed with them; he granted an injunction to stop the vote and he ordered the town to hold a mandatory meeting. After the special town meeting, a ballot was held and this time the motion carried. But the same five citizens did not feel that there ever was an emergency and they pursued the case in court.

While the case was pending the selectmen, who disagreed with the citizens, put forward a Charter change to correct future votes with three options so that this would not happen again.

What happened on December 23 was that the judge decided that the Charter does not provide a means by which to determine whether an emergency exist or not. This means that anytime 500 Rumford citizens sign a petition saying that there is an emergency, there is one. This means that we the people now have a court confirmed means to change anything that we don’t like in the town of Rumford and there is not a thing that the Board of Selectmen can do about it.

At the first meeting of the board in January, Selectmen Greg Buccina will most likely use his so-called selectman’s moment, to go on one his tirades about how much this whole thing cost the town; he has been very concerned about the cost.

Ironically, when he was part of the Board of Selectmen that violated the Charter, he lost in court to a group of citizens and that cost was never mentioned. But his way of doing things has come to an end; from now on, 500 of us can change the direction this town is going in and they can’t stop us.

No longer will three selectmen and a fake “committee” hold the town hostage to special interest. Now after listening to Mr. Buccina read a four page epistle that someone wrote for him, we can brush that aside and do what is right for the town.

The winds of fortune are about to change in the Town of Rumford.

Ron Theriault,

Rumford