Future election terms
To the Editor:
Now that the election is over, but still fresh in our minds, this might be a good time to consider what changes we might consider to improve Shelter Island’s electoral process. I have several thoughts, but to keep it simple I’ll focus on the most obvious one: why, when we are perfectly happy to have our Town Council people serve four-year terms, do we make our hard working supervisor jump through political hoops after only two years in office?
A fairly common criticism of Congressional politics is that representatives barely have time to draw breath following their election before the claims of the biennial calendar start to dominate their agenda. Shelter Island, with its much lower need for fund-raising, is a less demanding arena but even so politicking takes time and has to be distracting from the task of being the Island’s chief executive.
I have heard various complex arguments advanced supporting the idea of two-year supervisor terms, all of which seem to boil down to the possibility that we might have elected a lemon and need an early opportunity to throw the rascal out. Since these all seem to assume that we have a dumb electorate, I would have thought it in our own best interests to prove that the opposite is true, which we could do by trusting our chosen leader to continue in that capacity for at least as long as do his fellow Town Board members.
I would make the same argument about our highway superintendents, but prudence tells me to tilt at one windmill at a time.
So, why not let our supervisors stay in office for four years so that they can spend the second anniversary of their election serving the people of Shelter Island rather than attending tedious meet-and-greets and fundraising cocktail parties?
MICHAEL H. COLES
SHELTER ISLAND