Five fingers make one board
Five-member selectboards seem like a hallowed tradition harkening back to Pilgrim days. But that’s not true.
’Tis the season of town elections. Dozens of stalwart souls have been running around seeking office, bless’em. They’re brave to a person, the best expressing heartfelt community commitment, the worst driven by a single-issue ax they want to grind.
Most races focus on boards of selectmen – selectboards is a word I’m glad is taking over. Having watched these boards in action in almost every Cape town for decades, I continue to find them fascinating, though I wonder whether the candidates understand how tough and thankless the job can be.
Selectboards are like human hands. There are five members so five digits, and to work well they need to have an index finger to point the way as well as a sturdy opposable thumb. Sometimes they have to raise their middle fingers, or wear a ring. They need to shake, beckon, wave off, or make a fist. Some fingers are more useful than others but all play their roles, and the best boards don’t duplicate digits.
Five-member boards seem like a hallowed tradition harkening back to Pilgrim days. But that’s not true. They are a recent invention. How and why this structure came to be is the story of how and why Cape Cod changed its fundamental personality in the 1970s.
For generations, selectmen in our towns were full-time, paid officials. There were three of them. The pay wasn’t great, so town selectmen often were people without a lot of prospects but plenty of family history, perhaps the guy who hadn’t succeeded at much else, maybe the neighbor at the end of a working life still needing a little more income and engagement.
If the term “good old boys” comes to mind, that often would be apt.
Selectmen were supposed to be seated in their offices like any full-time employee, and whenever they were they had a quorum, they could make decisions. Open meeting laws and detailed agendas weren’t much part of the picture. They also wore other hats like assessors, tax collectors, licensing agents, which held a lot of authority and capacity to impact people and businesses. There was little or no professional administration, partly because those three salaries sucked up the budget, and besides everybody knew everybody, fancy rules and process would only get in the way.
By the early 1970s, new arrivals began flooding Cape Cod. Some were retiring, some were buying second homes, some were seeing this beautiful place as a new year-round life. Funny thing, but no one mentioned that the towns where they had invested real money and big dreams were being run by a handful of people who weren’t much interested in seeing new faces in town hall. The status quo idea was simple: As a “washashore,” your role was to pay one of us “natives” to buy “our” land, use one of us to be your realtor, another your builder -- then quietly pay your taxes, feel privileged to be here, and enjoy the beach.
That couldn’t last forever. These people showing up had a profound interest in their new homes, plus many of them had led successful lives and weren’t of a mind to be ignored or shunted. They also had the gall to look around and see things they didn’t like, particularly the rush to subdivide whatever open space local developers could get their hands on. It didn’t matter how many times they were called hypocrites, wanting to shut the bridges but only after they got their little piece. They had fallen in love with Cape Cod and didn’t want it turning into the kind of suburbia many of them had just left.
But it couldn’t be one of them to break the “native” hold on town government. That had to begin from within, a most unusual combination of personalities who could push “good government” while touting the necessary of old school Cape Cod cred -- and political muscle.
Of all places, it started in the town of Dennis.
NEXT UP, IN PART TWO ON FRIDAY: HOW FIVE-MEMBER BOARDS BROKE THROUGH, AND WHAT COULD THAT POSSIBLY HAVE TO DO WITH JIMMY BUFFETT?
(Illustration by Ellen LeBow)
Remembering now when Morris Wiley and Luther P Smith plus one other were the only select board I knew growing up in Eastham (16 yrs before leaving for college). Was not around when the board expanded. Recently had a visit from Luther's nephew and heard amazing stories, amusing-from-a-distance, that reinforce yr 'good old boys' premise. Frances and Luther were beloved neighbors from whom we bought our house. Still, some stories are too good to be lost to posterity! Looking forward to Part II, Seth.
Yes, and so much local government is just a stew of rules and regulations, requirements and constraints, that are all about land ownership, and it snowballs: once land is acquired, the landowners want to exert more control over it and any possible future division or subdivision; hence, NIMBY. It's much less caring about your neighbor let alone the service worker who can never afford to become your neighbor. We are happy to consign them to the laboring class, and not care necessarily where or how they live, so long as the soup gets served hot.