Raymond Selectman abandons town email account
Via Kennebec Journal (January 09, 2010):
Hear ye, hear ye, good citizens of Raymond. Henceforth, Selectman Dana Desjardins is officially offline.
“I’d just as soon talk to people,” Desjardins said this week. “The people in my community, if they want to talk to me, they can call me up. They know where I live. I’m pretty easy to access.”
Desjardins, now in his ninth year as a selectman, recently let it be known via the Lakes Region Weekly that he has abandoned his town-provided e-mail address. He pulled the plug, he said, for two reasons.
The first is that Desjardins, who works by day as an electrical contractor, has far better things to do than come home each evening and spend two or three hours responding to e-mails from constituents. He’d much rather they give him a call or, better yet, pull over in front of his house to chat while he horses around with his kids.
Secondly, Desjardins is fed up with what he calls a “secret society” among elected officials — including, at times, his fellow selectmen — who prefer deliberating in cyberspace to getting down and dirty in a public meeting.
He’s not alone.