The All or None petition that has been circulated by The Bethel Action Committee has reached the required 600 signatures and was filed with the Town Clerk, Lisa Bergh, on Friday afternoon.
The petition calls for the following actions:
According to the Bethel Codes section C6-6, E, “Upon receipt of the certification by the Town Clerk of said petition, the Board of Selectmen shall call a Special Town Meeting to be held not less that ten or more than thirty days from the date of such certification; provided that said Selectmen may hold one or more public hearings on such proposal prior to its submission to a Special Town Meeting.”
Section F explains that the the Town Meeting will state the proposal in full and call for a yes or no answer. If the majority votes yes, the proposal will take effect 10 days later.
Billy Michael, the founder of the Bethel Action Committee, said that the petition will only effect a small window of time. “This restricts government speech during the 7-10 days when the town meeting decides to hold the referendum. Every group in town, the Democrats, Republicans, the Friends of the Library, the PTOs, can say what they want. But you can't use your neighbor's money to speak and reach a certain constituency.”
Michaels said that the petition is a resulted in a letter stating that the school district could not advocate their position to a select audience of parents and school staff with public funds.
Michael, said, “The petition simply means that if you are sending information to a certain constituency then you have to send it to everybody.”
There are various rules that elected officials must follow in order to comply with State and Municipal regulations. You see, sadly, that does not happen in Bethel. What happens in Bethel is that Town and School officials many times overstep the line and act as politicians, expressing a political point of view via publicly-funded media and resources. This is not their role, but rather the role of PRIVATELY-FUNDED political action committees. This ordinance will not cost one cent to the taxpayer UNLESS the elected officials decide to send emails to their mailing list reminding them to vote. If parents want to form their own political action committee and use private funds to alert people to vote, OR if they want to pick up the phone themselves, there would be NO restrictions whatsoever. Go crazy! Your idea about the newsletter being printed and handed out is a bit flawed, as that would not accomplish the idea of reaching all postal patrons. Unless, of course, the originator of the newsletter agreed to go door to door and hand them out individually. Get out your old American History textbooks and read the part about Free Speech. You'll feel a lot better about All or None.