Thoreau – Concord's
DNA

The Concord Campaign

for Quality Governance

Welcome

Quality of governance can be ineffable. Certainly it varies from the eye of one beholder to another. But it matters – ask anyone who has felt the sting, when it went the wrong way.

Quality governance starts where we live – for us, the town of Concord, Massachusetts. Our method in this campaign? We look at cases that may offer insight, to wit:

Breaking news –

» Town Manager tries to mislead – compares cost of wind power for Concord to Cape Wind, at 27 cents. In Concord Patch article.

   In fact, from the wind developer community in New England we learn:

Concord's cost for wind power would be about the same as for solar, in the range of 7.5 cents to 8.5 cents. And this is before further credits in both cases. For wind, subsidy credits.

Article 33 delivers both sustainability and affordable cost.

» New language for the motion under Article 33 is now online. To see, go here – it is decisive.

• Article 33, for Concord Town Meeting 2012
• 
  for Concord green power
• 
  how to choose

The cases in the Concord Campaign, 2010 to the present

• From 2009/10, our first case: The Art. 64 proposal, to install a utility scale solar array in Concord
• In late 2011, a second case: Citizen Petitions and the Board of Selectmen

Article 33 – 2012

Article 33 addresses both sustainable electricity supplies and town governance, to help us get to green. Of course this follows up the first case, Article 64 from 2010, just below.

1. Article 33, for 2012, is about reducing greenhouse impact.
2. It repairs the damage from two years lost in the now-defunct Article 64 project, as documented and as below.

To get started on Article 33 – access to the full presentation as previewed above, the charts, and article text – go here.

I – The Solar case

Concord Town Meeting April 2010 voted to install a solar array. Now over two years later, and perhaps a thousand hours of town staff time later, that Article 64 project has been declared officially dead. For events leading up to the 2010 Town Meeting, there is an antecedent web site replete with preparatory material.

Installments – 2010

For the story in 2010, the Concord Campaign looked at five installments. To get a quick overview of the starting points, see the pdf Summary. Also, you can come up to speed on some background, essential to the story, at Carbon and cost.

If for you the topic is relatively new, you may want to start with 2010. Or even go back to the prior site. Otherwise if familiar ... you may want to go directly to the present Article 33, for the 2012 Concord Town Meeting.

Installment – 2011

At an innovative session September 14, we started a dialog on Concord's process for choosing a sustainable electricity supply [detail not yet posted].

II – The Citizen Petition case

At the Special Town Meeting November 7 2011, the Board of Selectmen – the BoS – castigated a citizen for bringing a petition the BoS said was unnecessary and should instead have been handled within town committees. Outraged citizens rose to reject this BoS behavior.

Contrary to Concord Journal reporting, saying the vote was close, in fact the petition passed Town Meeting handily, as Town Meeting formalized rejection of the BoS action. Then at a Selectmen's meeting December 5 2011, the matter came to a head.

To begin, here is video of eight citizens, commenting at that BoS meeting Dec 5.

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