The week between Christmas and New Year’s is, in the newspaper world, often referred to as “dead week.”
While it’s a happy time for most folks, it’s almost universally true that life slows down for these seven days, shopping centers and malls being the universal exception. People take vacations, travel to see family or are just plain checked out for a truncated work week. News makers don’t make news, and save for the sad fact crime and tragedy are omnipresent, there’s just not a lot going on.
Then, of course, New Year’s rolls around, and reporters dutifully travel to the swearing-in ceremonies of local elected officials.
For us here at The Spotlight who speak with local leaders day in and day out, these ceremonies can actually be a refreshing bit of news, soft as it may be. The new year can really be about new beginnings, and so it’s nice to think for a moment that starting tomorrow, everything will be different.
We certainly hope that’s the case in the Town of Milton, which recently welcomed several new leaders in just such a swearing-in ceremony. As Marcy Velte reports this week, newly-minted Councilwoman Barbara Kerr caused consternation amongst some in the audience when she referenced some of the recent legal troubles of past and present town officials.
While we must first and foremost warn that Highway Superintendent David Forbes is innocent until proven guilty of charges he was involved in a drug distribution ring, we’d also applaud Kerr for bringing up this subject in such a public forum.
Mr. Forbes’ legal troubles may well be his personal business, but now-former Supervisor Frank Thompson was also under investigation for allegedly failing to list his wife’s part-time job on a financial disclosure form (oh, and she pleaded guilty to stealing about $30,000 from an elderly woman, by the way).
So to those who clucked at Kerr on Sunday: You know, she just might be on to something.
We here at The Spotlight hope the new guard in Milton resolve this New Year’s to make a clean break with some of the practices of yesteryear. These certainly include closed or obstructionist administration of government, as our reporters will attest to, and a financial planning system that is so void of foresight the town nearly wiped out all its savings in a single year (and still hit residents with a tax hike).
It’s certainly easy to dwell on past mistakes at the start of a new year — it’s what we’ve done in this editorial — but it’s truly better and more productive to look ahead to what’s to come, and how to make it great. We hope leaders in the Town of Milton can do just that.
