Man, how can a person keep their sanity with this council? The chair was not voted on unanimously since councilors William Watson and Kathy Wilson did not want her as chair for some reason, I can only think, they wanted that spot. That being said, at the recent Styrofoam debate debacle, Topsham residents were allowed by the chair Brayman to speak in order to influence councilors to pass this ban. Now the chair told us only Brunswick taxpayers could speak on this issue, but she allowed out of towners at the podium, then she said, the town attorney said it was illegal to not allow out of towners to speak at a public hearing. What gives?

Both the chair and town manager should be clear and not keep trying to hide information from the public. Now Brayman wants everyone to say where they live, meaning their addresses. I think that is awful. The only thing we need to know is if that person pays taxes in Brunswick with real estate ownership, or rental folks, and it should never matter how long a person has lived here. Chair Brayman backs down too easily on her own words, I guess trying to be too nice to out-of-towners. That Styrofoam group asked those folks to be there in force to intimidate our councilors. Well, it worked. Now, I believe in recycling and banning Styrofoam products, but not the way it was done at this last council meeting. Now, Bowdoin College serves a lot of meals on their campus, does that apply to them also? That was not brought out by the chair, nor the town manager.

Problem with the town manager, he is a spender, he came from a spending background, and he knows how to fool these councilors during budget deliberations, also when he describes something, he repeats himself three times — yes I said three times — as if he feels these councilors are too dumb to understand the first time. Last, in order to save time holding these funny meetings, dept. heads such as the BDA should not spend so much time explaining about their organization. Look, you bring an item up to the council for review, quickly in a paragraph explain what it is, ask councilors if they have questions, or do they want that department head to read off a two-to-three-page letter, that should be up to council. Anything to shorten up these meetings would be a very positive thing. We now live in 2016, and not 1950, we still conduct town business the same old way, and that needs to change.

Bill Perreault,

Brunswick

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