from the Selectmen corner III

If one goes to the office of Templeton Town Clerk, you can ask to see the appointments made to the Advisory Board over the past years. You can see that in the past there have been some appointments made to said board by the town moderator in the middle of the year, say in August of 2011. There are other years that this has happened with different Town Moderators. This is and has been wrong if one looks at, reads and decides to follow the Templeton Town By-laws. Templeton town by-law, Article IV - Advisory Committee


Section 2 states The moderator of the town meeting when this by-law is adopted shall, within thirty days after such by-law becomes effective. This section also states that the terms of said office of said members shall commence immediately upon qualification and shall expire at the close of final adjournment of the Annual Town Meeting at which their successors are appointed.
(The above is a summary of section 2)

section 3 states The said committee shall fill any vacancy which may occur in its membership by vote, attested copy of which shall be sent by the secretary to the Town Clerk. If any member is absent from five consecutive meetings of said committee, except in case of illness, his position shall be deemed vacant and shall be filled as herein provided. The term of office of any person so chosen to fill a vacancy shall expire at the final adjournment of the next succeeding Annual Town Meeting and the Moderator shall appoint his successor to complete the unexpired term of the member in whose office such vacancy originally occurred.

So this means that in the past if there was any vacancy during the year after the Town Moderator made appointments, those vacancies would have been properly filled by a vote of the Advisory Committee, not the Town Moderator, period, that is what the Town by-law states and we need to follow them, Templeton has taken people to court for violating town by-laws, check town reports.
Since this is the committee that is suppose to have unfettered access to all town financial records, I would want them to follow the town by-laws. Just because appointments may have been made in the past in the middle of the year or when any vacancy occurred prior to the next town meeting does not mean that is the proper way to continue. Just because we may have been violating town by-laws for 30 years does not mean we should continue down that road when we now know it is and was wrong to do so. Follow the by-laws or get rid of them. I will deduct from the fact that since Kate Fulton wanted town council to look at that by-law indicates she was unhappy with being removed from the advisory committee because she was originally appointed in the wrong fashion. I would think that a newspaper reporter of all people would understand the need to follow the rules and do so in the open. Admit mistakes have been made and correct them rather than keep repeating them. That is my opinion anyways. The by-law also states that the only one on the advisory committee who is to receive any compensation is the chairman of said committee so it would be my opinion that if Kate Fulton received any sum of money from the advisory committee while serving on said committee, she should give it back. Again the rules are there for anyone to read and as such, the effort to follow them should be made. Bad enough three selectmen, wilder, mullins & columbus voted to violate town by-laws, we should not allow more committees to violate them as this could lead to the rules and laws being broken so often, people may tend to believe it is the right thing to do simply because we have allowed it to happen so often for so long, as Barney Fife would say "nip it in the bud"

regards; Jeff Bennett