Older generations in town saw our grandparents facing a very disconcerting rate of change throughout their lifetimes.  It seemed that days, years and decades brought change at a breakneck speed in a period when there were still horses, buggies, most people did not have telephones and electricity and change was expected to occur over the course of a generation instead of hour by hour.

They saw the Spanish Flu, World War I, the proliferation of cars and trucks, World War II, The Korean War, Vietnam, the Kennedy Assassination, the Sixties, Moon Walks, 9-11 the internet and the advent of "Fake News" and Covid.

Our parents saw the then seemingly slow pace of the early twentieth century accelerate to the point that it became almost impossible to keep up.   The economy became impossible to understand, inflation pushed prices for the most common products to stratospheric heights and no matter what your political party, lies and impossible promises became the norm to the point that the government seemed to be our enemy instead of our servant.

At the beginning of the twentieth century a printed sheet or two of paper would easily summarize the world's events and now, the Sunday paper contains more information than the total knowledge of the ages since writing began for your Sunday morning reading or for wrapping garbage.

It eventually became obvious that people were becoming uninvolved in their own government and it seemed impossible for them to have any roll in the making of their own future.

Springfield is like many small towns.  Government is not so much unimportant as a thing that does not really concern them.  It is the norm to sit down at the computer keyboard, spend an evening playing games, shopping on line or with social media whose contributors mostly talk a lot about the problems of the world or the town as something that others should concern themselves and they should just be outside observers.

I was shocked during the last Springfield Town Meeting when a woman virtually yelled to all of us that our selectpersons were elected to handle the government and we should just let them get on with it.  

This is a very lazy and irresponsible way of thinking of our government.  In State and National government, and in a simplified way, our town government, are designed with a set of checks and balances that are there to keep any one branch or individual from running away with the government for their own purposes.  The Legislative Branch, Judicial Branch and Executive branch of government have always watched the other branches to keep from  forming a dictatorship.

In town government, it is our job to keep an eye on the selectpersons to keep them from running amok with our tax dollars and from entering into wild schemes that will threaten out futures.  If we do not do this then any terrible things that happen to us are our own fault because we just sat back while it happened.

This site is concerned with the population of the town staying in touch with what is happening in our government.  I do not mean to suggest to anyone that they need to cram themselves into our bathroom sized town office on Tuesday nights and I do not propose standing on the lawns of our selectperson's with burning torches.  Trying to earn a living and maintain a property these days is a great effort and many people just cannot add another thing to their plate.  We need, however, to have a good source of information at our fingertips to keep track of what is going on in the town office.

When we were first approached by the selectpersons to authorize the building of a new town office, they asked us to authorize a professional survey to see if the lot which formerly housed the old gymnasium would do for the new construction.  Then we were asked to allow them to approach an architect or engineer who could supply us with a design for the building.

We were then showed a design for a modest ranch style building that could be built with the funds from the sale of the old elementary school.

We gave them the go ahead to continue the project.... Then there was SILENCE!

During the summer, an article appeared in the Lincoln paper that stated that planning was moving forward for a million dollar, 25% matching funds Federally funded Springfield Community Complex which would include a warming center, a firehouse and town hall.

We were never consulted on this project.  We have never been given comprehensive information on the details, the drawbacks or virtues of the plan. 

We have never had a legal vote on the plan nor have we had a serious discussion of the merits of the project.

We were never given a choice or allowed discussion of the location of the project. 

When we were told that we would have a referendum on the project, they stalled all summer, repeatedly missing possible deadlines for the vote until finally (again with no public discussion of it) it was reduced to a survey.  The ballot for that survey was manipulated to scare voters into thinking that a choice other than their plans would raise taxes and be inadequate when completed.

When I asked (on several occasions) why the people of Springfield had not been included in all these plans, I was told that The people of Springfield do not deserve to know what is going on if they are not attending the Tuesday night meetings.

In my personal writings for this site I plan to explore our rights as residents, how we have been excluded, the machinations of the selectpersons, the lies we have been told and how we have been repeatedly misled throughout this process.