Code of conduct

The town formerly known as Madrid held its last official get-together Saturday. Having voted itself out of municipal existence last year, the purpose of this year’s gathering was to divvy up the late town’s estate — trucks, buildings and all the rest. A primary factor in Madrid’s vote to de-organize was the difficulty of getting people to serve on the various boards and committees it takes to run a town.

A recent story out of Aroostook County on the number of municipal positions begging for candidates is all too familiar to small towns in every county. People willing to be selectmen, school directors, zoners and planners are increasingly hard to find.

The reasons given are many — people lead busy lives, good times make contented people, people don’t like the long meetings, some are uncomfortable being on TV, even if it is just local access cable. Valid reasons no doubt, but they merely disguise the root cause for this growing disinterest in public service — talk to anyone who’s been there and you’ll quickly find that public servants are getting fed up with getting kicked around.

A brief survey of stories on March town meetings turns up numerous occasions in which voters cut the tiny stipends for town officials merely out of spite. Imagine, as selectmen in one town did, spending countless hours doing the most mundane, thankless work imaginable for an annual stipend of just $575 and being told by some townspeople that it was only worth $550 to them. Or how about the town that cut its entire budget for stipends for all boards by 10 percent and told the board members to lump it.

A few dollars one way or the other won’t make the difference in getting good people to serve their communities, but a reasonable show of respect and appreciation will. The decline of civility at public meetings and the rise of abuse is a serious issue — so serious that Portland is considering adopting a code of conduct for public meetings. The proposed code addresses simple things like not interrupting, not making baseless accusations, not casting aspersions on the character of someone with whom one disagrees.

The code almost certainly will not be enacted; several city councilors already have stated concerns about heavy-handed government attempting to stifle political debate. Those are genuine concerns, the council would be wise to err on the side of open and free expression.

Besides, no town or city or state wants to be known as a place that had to pass a law to get people to treat each other with respect. Elevating public discourse back to a level that allow views to expressed fervently but without rancor might be a good project for local service clubs or school civics classes. As children, everyone learns to take turns and not call names. Maybe some adults just need their memories refreshed.