By now, Rockport residents are used to seeing the Rockport Resource newsletter arrive in their mailboxes a few times each year. Launched in 2020, the stated intention of the taxpayer-funded bulletin was to provide updates and useful information to town residents.

Increasingly, though, it has become a means for the town’s Select Board to lobby its own voters—at taxpayer expense — to adopt policies that the Board favors. Simply put, the Rockport Resource has essentially become taxpayer-funded political propaganda, encouraging residents to vote a certain way on town issues, with opponents of those measures being given no equivalent voice or any acknowledgement whatsoever.

I first raised this issue in January of 2021, when the town was in the midst of an ill-advised and ultimately failed attempt to regulate short-term rentals. I noted then that the Rockport Resource contained a letter from the then Select Board Chair that, “was not an information item or update, but was, rather, a one-sided argument in favor of the proposed ordinance, without any dissenting views described, despite public testimony providing plenty of rationale for opposition.”

My concern, I wrote back then, was not about the ordinance in question (though I opposed it), but the “use of a public, taxpayer-funded newsletter” as “a vehicle for what is essentially political advocacy” by the town’s own government.

Fast forward to 2024 and here we are again.

The newest edition of the Resource, which arrived in mailboxes this past week, contains a five-page letter from the Select Board, including colorful charts and maps, encouraging voters to support a ballot article going before them on June 11.

The letter is entirely one-sided, no opposing view is included. Rockport residents opposed to the article in question—a controversial $51 million wastewater treatment project—are essentially left to campaign against their own town government, which is using public tax dollars against them.

The Board might argue that their letter is simply informational, but any doubt about the Board’s view on this matter is dispelled on page 14 of the Resource, which includes what amounts to a full-page political advertisement in favor of Article 3, in which the words “approve Question 3” and “YES on Question 3” are bolded.

How this blatant, one-sided electioneering in a publicly funded town newsletter is legal is beyond me—the town’s own government is literally telling its residents how to vote—but at the very least, it is entirely improper.

Worse still, it undermines the trust that voters have in their town government. As a resident, I have to assume at this point that the only information I will be provided with through the Rockport Resource is information that advances the Select Board’s agenda. In the world of the Resource, there are no dissenting views.

I’ve lived in Rockport for nearly 25 years. Over the course of those years, we’ve had Select Boards that wrestled with big, complicated, and sometimes divisive issues. But those boards understood that their role was to serve as a body representing the people, not dictating to them.

They understood that their job was to gather the facts, present them openly and fairly, and help town residents make well-informed decisions.

Recent boards, though, seem to have adopted the view that their job is to take a position on every divisive issue to go before voters and then harness the taxpayer-funded resources of the town to convince those voters to support the Board’s position.

I’ve never seen anything like it.

The good news, though, is that Rockport voters still hold all the cards. So let me do a little political advocacy of my own, at no cost to my fellow taxpayers.

1. Vote no on Article 3. Frankly, I don’t know what the right answer is on the wastewater issue, and it may well be that the current proposal is indeed the best approach. But with apologies to the folks who devoted a lot of time to developing this proposal, I cannot countenance the Board’s use of tax dollars to campaign for the article’s passage, so I will vote no on Article 3. 

2. We need new Board leadership and a new Board culture. There are two open slots on the Select Board. John Viehman is running unopposed for one, and there is a three-way race for the other. Denise Munger was one of the chief architects of the short-term rental debacle, and as current Board chair, she undoubtedly approved using the Resource as a platform for blatant political advocacy in favor of Article 3. It is time to thank her for her service to the town, defeat her re-election bid and move on.

Michelle Hannan recently served on the Board, is running again, and would serve the town well.

3. It seems ludicrous that I even need to say this, given everything else we have to deal with, but we obviously need a policy about the politicization of the town newsletter. We don’t need to look far for ideas on this, Rockport already has a “town office bulletin board policy” under which “postings that promote a stance on a public issue will not be displayed.” If only that same standard could be applied to the Rockport Resource!

I’m happy to help draft a policy for review by the newly elected board, and if they fail to act (as the 2021 board did when I brought this issue to them back then), I will commit to taking it directly to voters as a citizen’s initiative.

4. As for Article 15, which asks for a task force to further study the wastewater issue, I support it, but would go even further. It may well be time to look once again at the Town Charter and determine whether additional language needs to be included that directs the Select Board and Town Manager to engage residents more proactively in controversial issues (as called for in Article 15), to be more resolute in their pursuit of regional solutions, and to be more transparent and even-handed in their presentation of issues to voters. It never occurred to me when I was on the original Rockport Charter Commission 20 years ago that language of this nature would need to be included in that document, but here we are. 

5. Lastly, it is not enough to sit on the sidelines, I realize, and all of us need to take an active role serving our town, especially given the challenges we face. There is an open, uncontested 3-year term on the town’s Budget Committee, and although I did not take out papers for it, I would welcome your support as a write-in candidate for that position. How the town spends (or does not spend) taxpayer dollars is a critical question for all of us. I’d welcome the support of Rockport voters for a seat on that committee.

Rockport should be thankful that we have such an engaged public, one that is so committed to the town’s well-being. Helping to keep voters informed is in an important duty for municipal leaders, but we clearly need to put some boundaries in place and restore the people’s trust in town government. We can start that journey on June 11. Please vote.

Stephen Bowen lives in Rockport