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The town has already collected $4 million of a possible $13 million in extra money hidden from the budget process.
News & Commentary
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Our View
Getting Tiverton on Track When the Public’s Shut Out
Nothing illustrates the two factions in Tiverton politics better than the Town Council’s policy for public participation. When members of the Tiverton Taxpayers Association (TTA) held the majority, we changed the policy so anybody could speak on any item on the agenda. President Robert Coulter let people talk at length (a privilege people often used to attack us unfairly). Nonetheless, the other faction — those who supported a recall election — went around saying we were restricting free speech. Their justification? At the few meetings when we had closed-door executive sessions at the end, we didn’t have an open forum at the beginning. People could still talk on any item on the agenda, of course, and over the months, we found that almost nobody has any use for an open forum if they’re able to participate in the discussion when a topic is scheduled to come up anyway. Now that the other side is back in power — under President Patricia Hilton and Vice President Denise deMedeiros — it’s worth checking in on the state of free speech at council meetings. The open forum is held at every meeting, yes, but that is the only time the public can talk …
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Resources
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Resources
Documents
Links to documents relevant to town government that may or may not be available elsewhere.
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