On Tuesday, December 3, the Camden Select Board, by a 3-2 vote, countersigned the Special Town Meeting Warrant called for by the Five Town Community School District for January 14, 2025.  I spoke against this and voted against this for several reasons, most notably for scheduling a short notice election at a time when many citizens are away and with no absentee ballots available, making this warrant vote the antithesis of Democracy.

Camden Town Meetings are usually scheduled to be held twice annually, in June and November.  These regular meetings allow interested citizens to plan their schedules for them, research the ballot initiatives, and order and submit absentee ballots if they need to or choose to. 

This Special Town Meeting, that Maine law allows school districts, but not municipalities, to call, does not provide for any of those things. 

The idea of an election in January, when very few people know it is coming, and without absentee ballots available for citizens who might be away, is, again, the antithesis of Democracy in action.  Not only will citizens who are away have no knowledge of the election, they will have no way to vote, shy of returning to Camden on January 14.

This is the second time in the past 9 months that the School District has come to the Camden Select Board with an agenda item that they are requesting to be rushed through, outside of our normal process for public hearings and regular town meetings. 

The last time they were in a hurry to get the Elm Street School zoning change on the June town ballot, ignoring the proper Public Hearing process because it did not meet their arbitrary deadlines, never mind that they could have just started the planning and design process earlier themselves. 

This time it is to get started on the bonding process for new projects at Camden Hills Regional High School, including installing artificial turf in place of the grass on the football field.  In neither case has the School District planned appropriately around a regular and well-known election calendar.

This latest request from the School District for a Special Town Meeting ignores the very democratic principle of having absentee ballots available, and it does not affect just Camden citizens; it also affects citizens of Rockport, Lincolnville, Hope, and Appleton. 

My hope is that the Select Boards of the other four towns will do better than Camden and make a stand against elections without absentee ballots and without the appropriate time and resources for their citizens to educate themselves and then vote, by refusing to countersign this Special Town Meeting Warrant. 

Refusing to countersign will not stop this undemocratic election, but it will send a message to the School District that our local leaders and citizens want real Democracy, with adequate time and resources to vote, and with absentee ballots available for citizens who are away.  It would also send a message to the State of Maine, which allows school districts to call these impromptu elections, that citizens want well planned and Democratic elections.

We all know that January, after the Holiday Season, is a prime time for citizens without children to be away skiing or enjoying a little warmer weather somewhere, but, certainly, citizens with children in school will be here on January 14.  This puts an air of suspicion on the School District's timing of this irregular election, but, intentional or not, with no absentee ballots, disenfranchisement is built into this Special Town Meeting.

The School District fully well knows the annual elections schedule, yet they chose to ignore it.  The explanation given by the Superintendent at the December 3 Camden Select Board meeting was wholly inadequate, focusing on the bonds and her desired election outcomes, not the proper process. 

I work in the contracting field, so I know that if the School District had started early and put a September deadline on pricing their projects, they could have had these ballot questions ready for November; a regular election with as broad a turnout as we ever get, and with absentee ballots. 

This is what municipalities like Camden have to do, and this what the school department is asking our children to do, when they give them work assignments with deadlines.  Yet, our School District, unlike our town and even our children, seemingly cannot do proper back-planning to meet known deadlines.  

I think one of the mistakes we often make in politics and in life is valuing outcomes over proper process, and, in this case, I feel that this has been done.  The journey is more important than the destination.  

On January 14, please go vote on the school bonding issues as you see fit, but hold your nose while you are doing it, for the stench of this anti-Democratic vote that could have been so easily avoided with proper planning by the Five Town Community School District.

Tom Hedstrom is a Camden Select Board member