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Spaulding officials heavy-handed

I attended a football game this weekend at Spaulding High School in order to collect signatures on a petition supporting S.175, a bill to require that citizens get to vote on supervisory union budgets. As I always am while collecting signatures, I was polite and not pushy. And I fully intended to stop collecting signatures, as I always do, before the opening kickoff, so as not to disturb fans.

The people I asked to sign received me well. But the athletic director of Spaulding High School came up to me, berated me and told me to leave. This he did after a supervisory union board member, who had moments earlier harangued me herself, spoke to him. What ambassadors for their school.

No doubt, supervisory union board members and school officials feel that voters are not wise enough to oversee the nearly $2 million budget that they alone control.

When we can no longer gather signatures on a petition on public property, our democracy is in trouble. And it is in trouble in Barre, Vermont.

Curtis G. Hier
Fair Haven