A recent gathering in the new Keyport Town Hall prompts this letter. The meeting was held under the guise of local civics to assemble local business and property owners to vote on a municipal initiative and elect new members of a town business alliance. Simple enough, one would think. However, what transpired in the meeting was a disappointment, an embarrassment, and an insult to an objective democratic process.
At issue is a mandatory tax passed on to local business and commercial property owners in 2003. Its intention was to create a fund to promote Keyport through the Keyport Business Alliance.
To no surprise, this mandatory tax was not well received by the greater Keyport business community, many of whom felt the tax was arbitrary, unnecessary, not fully debated, and limited in the benefits derived by the stakeholders of Keyport.
The March 7 election offered these business owners an opportunity to exercise their civic rights and repeal this tax through the election of individuals who supported their position. Civics 101, right? Not so in Keyport, where municipal officials conducted a vague, whimsical registration process that restricted the voting rights of many of the stakeholders, surely affecting the outcome of the election.
If Keyport is to prosper in the future, its constituents need to be heard and not blocked by incumbents who have their own agenda.
As a businessman in Keyport who witnessed the March 7 charade, I ask simple question: Don’t we deserve better?
Dave Wischerath
Keyport