While we all sat in front of our flat-screen televisions watching Obama‘s inauguration for hours, most of us found a new source of hope for our future. I am confident that on a national level we are in good hands, and we always did get well researched information on that level. On the local level however I find it impossible to get well researched balanced information. Barack Obama will change the big picture by changing politics in Washington. We all need to bring change for the good to Holland.
I‘m shocked to see how little residents know about the most important issues affecting our town far into the future, and how most of them follow blind and trusting our corrupt officials. The proposed truck stop is a perfect example. Another example was the proposed tax levy override that would have passed if it wasn‘t for the flyer Jim Foley and I mailed to all voters in Holland. I can not afford to spend out of my own pocket app.$ 950.- to print, fold, and mail a flyer each time an important issue gets unnoticed because informing the community would not be in the best interest of the selectboard.
Doesn‘t that sound weird? “[I]nforming the community not [be] in the best interest of the selectboard?” Who are they serving? , which brings us back to the disharmony of reality and truth I mentioned earlier. Earl Johnson made the following statement during the selectboard meeting of January 30, 2008: “You have up to now given us a lot of trust and you have ... basically when you go to town meetings you listen to us and you usually vote the way we ask you to vote.”
With the help of the residents of Holland, this blog could become a tool to re-establish that harmony of reality and truth for the god of this community. It was only eleven years ago when I opened my first e-mail account. By now the internet has become more and more an indispensable part of most people‘s life‘s and it will continue to do so. The internet is the perfect media to disseminate information. Once the infrastructure is in place, individuals can get information free, fast and paperless. Providing information is possible without a huge infrastructure such as is needed to produce a newspaper.
A web-page has even more advantages over a newspaper. A web-page can be interactive as this blog is. A web-page can also provide information that would be very costly to a newspaper to print, such as scanned images of original documents, reports etc., in support of a particular news-piece only of interest to a few. This blog has also RSS feed capabilities.
This blog will be uncensored. Only comments or news pieces that are clearly in violation of the law or are clearly offensive will be removed. This blog will be strictly local. Everybody can mail me, e-mail me, or call me to submit a news-piece signed with his/her name or anonymous to be published. My contact information is on the left in the Main Menu. Anonymous submissions will be subject to research and change as needed prior to be posted. I will keep improving this web-page and will also implement changes to accommodate the needs of our community. As soon as possible this blog will also offer video recordings of past selectboard meetings so residents can watch the meetings at their convenience. You will find useful links to local web-pages that relate to our town and beyond. If I missed an important link let me know and I will add it to the list. Town election results will be posted on this blog immediately upon their release. Or you can follow the numerous lawsuits filed against and by the town of Holland and form your own opinion based on official documents and judges decision and not the selectboard‘s misconceived and/or biased interpretations.
Peter Frei