Ghost of Midnight

Can’t beat an informed electorate with a stick

The good people of the Town of Westford are engaged in a running debate about deciding some local issues, like the school budget, via traditional town meeting vs. Australian ballot.  Front Porch Forum has hosted many well-conceived postings about this from a variety of angles.

I was struck by Mary’s posting on the FPF Westford Neighborhood Forum today where she hammered home the importance of citizens getting educated on the issues before weighing in, whether it’s at Town Meeting or a ballot box.

She went on to say…

Front Porch Forum is an excellent tool for distributing information, but obviously it does not reach everyone in town.  Which leads to sending out much information to the public to prepare them for what they are voting on.

I will say between info mailed, The Forum and added meetings helped out tremendously with preparing us for the [failed school] unification vote.

An idea to share:  check with your neighbors and see if they belong to Front Porch Forum.  If not, highly recommend they join.  If you know of elderly people who do not use computers, offer to print out the forum postings once a week or every other.  They would probably love to read this info and people’s postings.

About one-third (270) of Westford households subscribe to Front Porch Forum so far, with more joining every week.  Last month, FPF published five issues of the Westford Neighborhood Forum per week, each issue comprised of about five postings from residents.