from Con

In a small Town, very often any given lawsuit or proceeding initiated by citizens simply does more harm than good. A group of Woodstock Citizens most closely associated with woodstocktruth.com fails utterly to realize this nearly self-evident dynamic (And BTW, WHY do they call cafe.com ‘Aljazeera’? - that says much about their bigotry and prejudice…)

Is there any specific data regarding the Total amount of Legal Fees spent on matters involving or initiated by Town citizens? Our Teachers always said “It takes 2 to fight” and when there was a costly fight, the first question was always “Who started it?”

Absolutely it is a citizen’s perogative to initiate lawsuits when the situation calls for it and all other alternatives have been fully explored and exhausted, etc. and no one should be treated unfairly or live with a bad situation. Taxpaying citizens deserve to trust that tax dollars are not to be wasted on lawsuits which are unnecessary or in which the Town wrong or has done wrong; Citizens also deserve to know that fellow citizens would only initiate expensive proceedings only as an absolute last resort and, ideally, are as narrow as possible, only to correct an existing, materially bad and costly problem and NOT merely to prove that they are in the right, to correct some minor problem/situation or to retaliate.

Ideally, citizens in a small town understand that the Town is simply not equipped to deal with costly lawsuits and, though possibly unfair, such citizens would go the extra mile to avoid costly proceedings by taking all factors into account. Ideally, citizens would put the interests of the Town’s taxpayers above such citizen’s interest in merely proving the town wrong, setting some precedent, ‘punishing’ the Town for inappropriate behavior, etc. It simply does more harm than good.

When complaining about 1) The high costs of Legal Fees; and 2) Whether the Town’s Law Firm is competent, ethical or honest, then notions of Transparency, Fairness, Honesty, Conflict of Interests and Full Disclosure call for the full disclosure of not only how much these discreet matters cost taxpayers, but also a comprehensive description of the steps taken/initiated to avoid such costs, such as the very well-developed area of ‘Alternative Dispute Resolution’, Mediation and the like and whether the persons complaining has been engaged legal battles with the town (and how many and the cost). Ideally, those complaining would take responsibility for their share of these costs. Regarding the Law Firm, involvement as a legal opponent of the Town (and therefore the Town’s attorney) might influence and bias the opinion that the attorneys are no good.