“A fox should not be on the jury at a goose’s trial.”

Thomas Fuller, English preacher and author

Another week goes by in Windham and it looks like the political dust is far from settling. I, for one, wish it was pixie dust instead, but it appears it will be quite a while before that ever happens in this town.

What Windham residents might have to worry about more is smoke and more than likely secondhand smoke, and I don’t mean from cigarettes. I mean the grow-it-yourself substance, marijuana. I seldom agree with one town councilor, but his recent statement in this newspaper about Windham’s Retail Medical and Adult-Use Marijuana Establishments Task Force is right on. What I wonder is why Windham town councilors allowed it to happen in the first place.

This councilor stated that the marijuana committee was too ‘”biased” and “aggressive.” There’s no doubt it would be because of the way it was allowed to be formed. Don’t get me wrong, please, because every citizen should have the opportunity to be on a committee that they feel they could contribute to. What happened in this case, though, is that all of the community members of that committee are involved in one way or another with marijuana, which means that they not against it at all.  I must also state that I don’t blame any one of them for being on that committee, especially since it appears for the most part that marijuana will be their livelihood.

And now for the other side of the story. Did that councilor overstep one of those invisible barriers of politics? While that’s not my determination to make, I certainly am allowed to have an opinion on it. I think it just might be the first time that a sitting Windham town councilor has ever made such a statement about a committee on which the councilor is an active member. So I have to wonder if any “political” lines were crossed. Don’t get me wrong, I agree with his remarks, but not his method.

In the end, which is where all things end in one way or another, what type of action should the Windham Town Council take as a whole? Oops, when it comes to a whole that is something that they are not, unless you believe as I do and that they are operating out of a hole of some type. All one has to do is look at the councilors’ discussions about the 24 acres or so of land the town purchased abutting the Smith Cemetery in 2005. Windham really plans quickly, doesn’t it? I would love to believe that 14 years would have been plenty of time to discuss the uses of the acquired piece of property, especially to decide what portion would be for expanding the cemetery but also what to do with any excess land.

Lane Hiltunen of Windham believes that the government at all levels has too many foxes raiding our henhouses.