Letter: Where is the Silent Majority?

To the Editor:

Running for selectman was a great experience for our Cliff family. We met many wonderful people and learned a lot about people’s perceptions of the issues we face, and our daughters got a firsthand view of democracy in action. To the many that supported Gordon with such effort and enthusiasm, we are grateful for your support and regret we came up 300 votes short. 

We always knew that to win we needed an above-normal turnout of what we like to think is the silent majority – those who care about the same issues we do, but may not have gotten to the polls recently. Nonetheless, to lose by only 300 votes in a town of 9,000 registered voters – with only 3,000 caring enough to show up at the polls at all – is bittersweet. 

There are no official pollsters in town, but we are fairly confident that a majority of the town share our views – the Keep Wayland Strong platform Gordon campaigned on: strong schools, open-spaces, and prudent fiscal management focused on sustainable operational improvements. We may be wrong, but we think the town majority supports a new DPW building and Town Center, and wants to give to the seniors a new center, just as they helped to give us a new high school. But we’ll never know for sure, and this is what is most discouraging to us about our loss. That 71 percent of Wayland voters didn’t bother to weigh in on issues that will have a significant impact on the community we share together is not something we feel good about.

We have seen the same dynamic now this past week at Town Meeting. By our quick tally, fewer than 280 voters attended on Day 1 and 260 on Day 2: that’s less that 3 percent of the town determining the long-term future of Wayland. (Editor's Note: This letter was submitted prior to session 3 of Town Meeting). 

Votes on Day 1 eliminated all taxpayer funding for retiree healthcare, and all funding for WaylandCares – by margins of 7 and 28 people, respectively. On Sunday afternoon, the town rejected a new DPW building; it lost by 8 votes. One cannot but wonder how reflective this is of the true Will of the People. We didn’t hear from more than 97 percent of Wayland – we didn’t hear from over 8,700 townspeople who could have been there and voted.

Many Waylandites are frustrated about the way town meeting works right now.  Many have gone to one or two meetings and decided they just can’t take it; we guess most haven’t bothered to do even that. This is too bad, as there is a small, tight group who do attend, and who seem to like Town Meetings just as they are. Certainly every registered voter is entitled to speak at Town Meeting, but when one hears the same five or six people speaking again and again on issues that should have been discussed in the Warrant hearing; as they dismiss the hard work of many town volunteers who sit on Boards and have studied the issues closely; and even as they are admonished for being out of order with their procedural red herrings - one has to wonder: is this really how we want our town meetings to run and our town decisions to be made? Where is the diversity of opinions, and the civil discourse that allows us to discuss pros and cons of an issue with candor and openness, and not gamesmanship and “gotcha” politics?

Where, at town meeting, is the collective community that has shaped Wayland for so many years? Where is the majority in town to support the issues most of us care about:  Aaa bond rating? Schools? Town Center? DPW? River’s Edge? Why isn’t the silent group joining us at Town Meeting? Why aren’t they voting at the polls? Why can’t we hear them?

Voting at the polls and Town Meeting are the laws of our land. If people across the community aren’t willing to come and exercise their rights, decisions will continue to go the way of citizens that do vote, and that do attend town meetings, small and contentious as that group may be. Will it only be when school classroom sizes explode, or important programs are lost, or even a lawsuit springs up that ratchets up our tax bills, that people will wake up and decide to be heard?

Our family agreed to enter the fray this election season because we care about the town -- and we wanted to make sure the silent majority had every chance of having a voice and being heard. Our disappointment is not so much in Gordon’s loss, as in the reality that most people in town just couldn’t be bothered to care – either on Tuesday at the polls, or at Town Meeting at the field house. To lose for this reason makes us sad. More importantly, it makes us more concerned than ever about the future direction our town will be taking.

Beth and Gordon Cliff
Highfields Road