Like many another U.S. city, Portland worries about its people's failure to take much interest in
town affairs. Only 25% of its citizens bothered to vote in recent
elections. In their search for a cure, Portlanders recently
reinstituted an old down-East tradition, the town meeting. They began
holding three a year, each in a different section, with the idea of
covering the city's twelve chief districts in four years. Last week the town meeting was held at Jack Junior High School on Munjoy
Hill, an old, rundown, Irish-leavened working-class district. The
Hill's toothless, white-haired 84-year-old Councilman Billy O'Brion
afforded the meeting some rare advertising. “That section,” he cried,
“is well taken care of by yours truly. There are just a few windbags up
there who want to explode. All these town meetings are a frame-up.”
After calling Portland's City Manager Lyman Moore and the rest of the
council “a bunch of crooks,” O'Brion announced that the meeting would
have to get along without him. By meeting time, as a result, almost 500 Munjoy Hill residents had
crowded into the school auditorium and 100 had been turned away. The
excitement began almost as soon as the city manager, the councilmen and
other officials sat down on the stage. One Bob Rowe, a middle-aged
postal clerk who wildly opposes the city government, rose and said: “It
will be proved that Munjoy Hill has been neglected.” He heckled
persistently. Finally the crowd cried: “Sit down.” But a fat man named
William Holland was cheered when he rose, knocking a fellow citizen's
hat awry, and teed off on the city manager. Smiling Irishman. The city's snow plowing, Holland said, in a rich Irish
brogue, “is a disgrace to Portland. I shovel out my driveway and the
city plows fill it up again. I called the city garage and told them to
clean it away. The garage said, 'Billy, you're overweight. Clean it out
yourself.' ” The crowd roared with laughter. Billy added
good-naturedly, “We can drive you out of power on that issue alone.” But a majority at the meeting had come in a serious mood. They wanted to
talk about improvements, not politics, and demanded them in no
uncertain tones. At one point, when City Manager Moore noted that
Portland had two garbage collections a week, the men & women of Munjoy
Hill hooted with delighted sarcasm. “Once, Tuesday mornings,” piped a
little man in the third row. Moore seemed startled, and promised to
correct it. He was brought up short again when an irate citizen asked how long a
nearby rubbish dump was going to be permitted to burn. The city
manager, who lost his sense of smell apparently as the result of a
sinus infection ten years ago, did not realize that the stink
penetrated even into the auditorium. When he said: “It isn't
burning—the city is operating a wet dump,” new hoots of laughter
arose. He looked startled again, jotted down a changed opinion of how
the dump smelled.
