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Town Council to Divide Town Over Budget Committee Appointment
In his roundup of outcomes of the election in Tiverton, Sakonnet Times reporter Tom Killin Dalglish highlights the fact that Dave Perry’s election to the Town Council means that he’ll leave behind a vacancy on the Budget Committee. Two of the five councilor-elects — Joan Chabot and …
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deMedeiros Campaign Finance Reports
Question: Why is Denise deMedeiros listed as “inactive” on the state’s campaign finance Web site? One has to wonder how many people who consider serving their communities by running for local offices decide against doing so when they find out about hurdles like ethics and campaign finance filings. …
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A Telling Dismissal of O’Dell’s Complaint
Tiverton’s Home Rule Charter has a simple and straightforward process by which residents can file complaints against elected and appointed officials and town employees for violating the rules by which the town operates. Unfortunately, people in positions of authority typically don’t want to tie each …
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Where to Vote
Question: For the upcoming election, where do I go to vote? Sometimes it seems as if the hardest part of fulfilling one’s civic duty to vote is knowing where to go. Between changes in precinct lines and different locations for primaries, general elections, and financial town referendums, even …
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Personnel Board Applicant Says Town Council Conniving
In the midst of turmoil over the Tiverton Town Council’s determination to appoint a specific person to be a full-time planner for the town, resident Donna Cook applied, as a volunteer, to fill one of two vacancies on the Personnel Board. The Personnel Board selects …
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Explaining Issues Versus Falsehoods and Rhetoric
One of the challenges of serving your community by getting involved in civic debate is that it’s so much easier for people to say things about you that are wrong and misleading than it is to actually explain issues. Honest people are at a disadvantage, …
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Assertions Are Cheap; FakeCheck and Tiverton 1st Are Misers
In keeping with our suggestions about ways in which readers can determine how much credibility to assign to political writers, the first post on FakeCheck says more about the people producing that site than about the people they’re attacking. Of course, because they lack the integrity to …
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Students Leaving Tiverton Schools?
Question: I would like to know how many kids who graduate from Tiverton Middle School go to a private school after 8th grade graduation? Tracking the students who leave Tiverton’s school system is more difficult than it might seem, especially if our interest is mainly in …
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UPDATED: Who’s Saying What About the Data?
As if their intention is to provide us with helpful examples for our arguments, the folks at FakeCheck have a new post that could serve as a classroom exercise for my earlier essay. I’ll address the substance of the argument elsewhere, but for my immediate purposes: …
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Learning from Tiverton FakeCheck
Probably everybody agrees that the main thing that makes politics objectionable is the dishonesty of it all. We’re supposed to be coming to agreement or compromising, and that’s near impossible when it seems as if everybody on all sides of an issue is doing their …
