By the People

When the snow is melting and the sap is running in the maple trees, town-meeting time comes to New England. Gone are the uncomplicated days when every municipal decision, big or little, was threshed out at weekly meetings; but most towns of less than 5,000 population (and some larger towns, too) still hold yearly or twice-yearly meetings at which the citizens elect local officials, vote appropriations and taxes, and turn a watchful eye--and often a sharp tongue--on the town administration's performance. Some meetings held this month:

P: In Freeport, Me., the citizens took thought for their pocketbooks, voted against increasing the power of the town street lights from 60 watts to 100 watts.

P: In Langdon, N.H., on the other hand, citizens disregarded their pocketbooks. Rather than spoil their 79-year-old covered bridge by remodeling it to meet state specifications for roadway bridges, the townsmen voted to build a new bridge and to keep the old one intact for its sentimental value.

P: In Hingham, Mass., 821 meeting-goers considered a proposal to grant eight families living on Abington Street, near the town boundary, a $7,000 loan so that they can have a water-piping system installed. Hingham's advisory committee opposed the loan on the grounds that it would "set a bad precedent." But then Mrs. John L. Kroesser told the meeting about the toil and trouble the lack of water pipes caused her and her neighbors: "After our wells went dry last August, we had to carry water from Rockland, about a mile away, and we kept this up until [December]." Fire Chief Albert W. Kimball said that he often lay awake at night "wondering what would happen if there was a fire on Abington Street." Dudley Alleman, a perennial speaker-up at Hingham town meetings, also favored the loan: "I'm not worried about precedent. If anything like this comes up again and we don't like it, by the Lord Harry, we can vote it down." The vote: an almost unanimous yea.

P: In Temple, N.H., sturdily keeping up the folks-are-folks tradition, meeting-goers blocked three successive motions by the town's best-known son: Bible-quoting U.S. Senator Charles Tobey of TV fame. Only on his fourth motion, a proposal to spend $2,000 for snow removal in 1953, did the Senator win his fellow townsmen's ayes. He did not seem to mind being voted down; in his half-century of town meetings, he has grown used to such treatment.

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