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Oak point clubs: we have plenty of room for your pictures and announcements! See Clubs for more information.

Page three of the latest COA newsletter tells the sad story: "Due to budget cuts, we no longer have an Activity Coordinator and all trips and events have been canceled until further notice".

Middleboro's library has also seen cuts, and there's more bad news on the horizon: the Fire Department needs a new ladder truck (which will probably run around $750,000). Further cuts will absolutely be necessary unless more money can be found.

There are some in the town who say that the problem is waste. They publish silly articles like Saturday's post in the Cranberry Times that complains about $116.00 being spent on donuts and coffee for the police officers hired for July's Special Town Meeting. Being stingy over such petty expense is not going to put Middleboro back on track, but this kind of small minded nonsense is rampant.

We have a Special Town Meeting coming up November 5th. As you might have guessed, this meeting is supposed to deal with "warrant items carried over from the annual town meeting, the supplemental budget requests and unpaid invoices". I have no idea what the general tone of that meeting will be. It may be more of what we saw back at the time when a group was trying to increase Oak Point taxes, where the general mood was tight with the purse strings and angry at town leaders. Or it may be that people have opened their eyes and realized that the town needs money, and it needs money now.

I don't like to see voters mobilized by selfish issues. I don't want Oak Point voters turning out just because the COA has been cut to the bone. I would like to think that we'd turn out in high numbers because we know that Middleboro is in trouble and that we live here - we are not an isolated island, and we should participate.

But if it takes being selfish to get everyone out there on November 5th, so be it. Better a selfish vote than no vote at all.