“The Smurfs are little blue people who live in magic mushrooms. Think about it.”
– Unknown author

I have to be honest and state that I wrote and rewrote this column several times due to the fact that the Super Bowl turned my mind into a stupor bowl.

I noticed on the 2nd of February the meeting schedule posted on the town’s website showed two things happening in the Windham town council chambers. OK, I know one was that the town councilors were going to interview the applicants that wanted to fill the vacant town council seat. First of all, I see absolutely no reason why that shouldn’t have been televised. The other was the Zoning Board of Appeals, and there was no meeting being played on Channel 7 to see so was the meeting even held?

Think about this: When a candidate runs for any political office, aren’t they in the public’s eye in the first place? It’s not like the town councilors were going to vote for someone that night. The councilors cannot legally vote during an executive session, so I suspect that they somehow came to a consensus during it, but that’s just my opinion.

As a taxpayer living in the town of Windham, I now have the feeling that I am being kept in the dark and being fed manure, to put it as nice as I can. So let me put it to you this way. The Windham councilors have interviewed the candidates and we know nothing of what they asked or how the candidates answered. Are we supposed to believe that somehow they will decide what person fills the vacant seat without the citizens of Windham knowing how they made their decision? I find that somewhat disturbing, but all levels of government do exactly the same thing.

Sadly, while waiting for the Zoning Board of Appeals meeting, I watched the material being shown on Windham’s local access station and was amazed as to what I saw. What I noticed is that there is a significant amount of information being shown that is, at a minimum, outdated and inaccurate at the least. It’s sad to state that some committees and organizations have people listed that are, well, no longer with us. The vacancies listed for various town committees differ greatly from the vacancies listed in local papers of last week. It is truly a shame that a town the size of Windham has so many vacancies with numerous committees.

But what is totally disappointing is that the ZBA meeting was never televised that night, and I have no idea if the meeting was held or not. Was it canceled? Did the television equipment fail? I was really interested to see the outcome of one of the agenda items for the ZBA that night and now I have no answer, so maybe we will never know. Is it time for new television equipment?

Maybe it’s also important to ask why applications to fill a vacant town council seat in Windham had to go to the town manager’s office. He has nothing to do with elections, and it appears to me all applications for any vacant seat should go through the Windham town clerk then directly to the Windham town councilors, period. The town clerk is in charge of elections, not the town manager, so I see an appearance of control by the town manager that shouldn’t be there. Things don’t have to operate the same way for decades and when changes are needed they should happen. Time will tell I guess. After all, don’t the committees respond to the town councilors instead of the town manager? If not, something is drastically wrong in the town where I reside.

Maybe every government office should have a camera in it. It’s disgraceful that so many people have to use the Freedom of Information Act in order to see what their government has been doing. That’s a future column.

Lane Hiltunen of Windham thinks the Mallison Falls Mill would be great for growing marijuana if the state sets up the rules.