GranolaBox

Jo Moseley-Wall plays two important roles in our little town. She’s our little town’s alternative press, and she keeps tabs on our town government on important issues that the rest of us tend to overlook in the more mundane world of small-town politics.

Jo is the chief writer, editor and publisher of The Now and Then; Naples Neighborhood News. She writes this under the name Lappe Parish, and has graciously given me permission to reprint articles here on GranolaBox as guest blogger. She has a marked disdain for computers, so the Now and Then is always impeccably hand written.

Printed when needed (usually bi-weekly), the Now and Then provides us Neapolitans with insights about the goings on in the area, local news, nature and the area’s history. Best of all she includes timely rants concerning local politics that help the rest of us keep our local politicians on their toes.

While the rest of us don’t pay much attention to our Town Board, and don’t mention anything about our local taxes until they go up from year to year, Jo stays on top of it. Last month our village voted to borrow $1.7 million to make state mandated changes to our water treatment system.

The mandate is unreasonable for small towns, especially those like ours with around 525 water consuming households. Our mayor chose to bend over and take it, and the rest of us would have to do likewise if Jo’s alarms hadn’t gone off at full volume. With interest this measure would have cost several thousand dollars per household.

Citizen Jo in action. (At Jo’s insistence, the names on the petition have been covered to protect the innocent)

Jo circulated a petition around town and got enough signatures to delay the vote until the town holds a public hearing on the matter. The petition caught the eye of the local weekly, and many locals joined the editor in tearing our Mayor and Town Board a proverbial new one. Now he and the Board have to hold a vote within the next 60 days, in which he’d decide to come up with some suitable alternatives.

People (me included) in small towns and cities alike don’t pay attention to the more mundane activities involved in local government that begin to add up, especially in a town like ours where there are a lot of people experiencing hard times. With immense looming national issues like the war in Iraq, it’s important that we take a step back and be cognizant of things going on in our own front yards.

That’s why I’m glad I’ve got Jo Moseley-Wall watching my back!

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Filed under: Politics, Citizen of the Week, Lappe Parish on August 20th, 2007