Community Disorganization

Here’s how the All Point Bulletin summarized last month’s meeting of the Taxpayers Association in Point Roberts: “The board of the local taxpayers association shrunk again as directors declined to run for another term and no new blood came forward.”

Now we hear from the Point Roberts Voters Association, which held its monthly meeting last Monday. On the agenda, was a visit from the County Treasurer and the Deputy County Administrator, which constitutes a fairly intense level of county participation, I’d say. The Voters Association is perennially concerned with questions about whether Point Roberts gets adequate attention (which is to say resources) from the County compared with the funds that Point Roberts generates for the County. I’ve mentioned before that I’m not clear exactly why so many people are convinced that there should be some parity on this funds in-funds out.

Certainly it’s not true of the U.S. more generally where states like California and New York pour vastly more money—per capita--into the federal government than comes back to them, whereas states like Mississippi and Alaska (states whose spokespersons are highly committed to the idea that the federal government is their enemy and is taking away their freedom of action) get lots more, per capita, from the feds than they send to the feds.

Well, it’s hard to be a taker all the time and I suppose that explains all this to-do from these taking states. By contrast, it ought to be morally pleasing at the very least to be able to give more than you get. It speaks to doing well, to generosity, to a community’s status as part of the solution not part of the problem. Thus, it seems to me that Point Roberts is in a position to be less of a whiner that it sometimes seems to be.

Unfortunately, I was already gone to the Sunshine Coast by the time the meeting occurred, so I don’t know whether anyone was convinced by the Treasurer or Deputy Administrator. I did hear from others, however, that the meeting was somewhat less than successful. The important agenda item was the question of the Voters Association merging with the Taxpayers Association. Whatever Point Roberts is, it isn’t a place that is big enough to accommodate two civic action groups, so this merger made a lot of sense. Both groups have trouble attracting steady members, but between them they might have enough to sustain and achieve something. The recent history is of tension between the Americans (who constitute the Voters group) and the Canadians (who are strong in the Taxpayers group). Was it going to be time to get past all that? I certainly hoped so.

But it turned out not to be. Although the Taxpayers had been supportive of the merger, the Voters voted, 8 to 7 against doing so, I am told. What they probably also voted for was our continuing to have ineffective community groups. At least 8 of the 15 attending Voters members wished to let the rest of us know that we are not all in this together. Perhaps the other seven would like to consider just joining the Taxpayers Association instead. That group seems to be showing the right spirit.

Community Organization

Last night the Point Roberts Taxpayers’ Association held its monthly meeting. (I’m not down at the Point right now so I didn’t attend and can't report on what happened.) Both the Voters’ Association and the Taxpayers have recently been making considerable attempts to renovate their status, to reinvigorate their memberships, to become more relevant, more in-demand, more leaderly, for lack of a better word. Having put in a year on the Point Roberts Community Association, a group that continues to wither on the vine as I type these words, I can understand the desire of members to make these other groups work. But, there is also the reality of history.

As far as I know, there are no long-standing community-governance-type groups in the recent history of Point Roberts. By that, I mean groups that have even a 10-year history of creating, maintaining, and pursuing a coherent community-governance agenda. Which does not mean that there are not regular attempts to create such groups, but just that the results of such groups are spotty, at best. So, the prospect for the Voters and the Taxpayers does not look good. Currently, the two groups are considering amalgamating their groupness, thus metamorphosing into something that might be called the Point Roberts Taxpaying and/or Voting Association.

The problem with such fusion is, perhaps, that a single organization will not have enough slots for all the would-be chiefs. Two organizations? Twice as many slots. One organization? Half as many. The Taxpayers are apparently (according to their minutes) also looking into creating municipality status for Point Roberts: an option that may also create some problems around chiefs status, even fewer slots in the governance of a tiny municipality. Point Roberts may have more than its share of chiefs-in-waiting, or it may just be another by-product of American Exceptionalism—and thus found in every small and large U.S. community—whereby almost everyone thinks of himself as a potential leader.

I have been reading Winston Churchill’s books on World War II. Here was a leader. It is quite remarkable how committed he was to his vision of what had to be done. I suppose that is a good part of the definition of a leader, which may be why contemporary Liberals tend to do so poorly at the task—they always sound pretty apologetic about even having a view, let alone insisting on it, or, finally, about drawing others to their organization because of the strength of their commitment. It’s more like ‘Why don’t we all get together and see if there’s something we can agree to support/pursue/encourage/whatever.’ If the Taxpayers and the Voters get together, will they then have to figure out a mission they all can drum up some enthusiasm for? Tune in later, and see, I guess. But at the moment, if I had to pick among the Taxpayers, the Voters, and a revived Thursday night Bingo Game, it wouldn’t be a hard choice.