MAINE: Skirmish on Munjoy Hill

Like many another U.S. city, Portland (pop. 77,000) 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.

Toilets & Trash Baskets. The crowd voiced its feelings with acrimony on other subjects: unclean school toilets, school bus service, street trash baskets, abandoned trolley rails. But the people of Munjoy Hill did more than complain. By a show of hands, they worked out a compromise plan for night automobile parking on public streets: repeal of a present city ban except in winter when snow plows must reach the curbs. They decided they did not want to spend tax money on lights for a softball playing field.

With an air of achievement, the crowd left the hall. The first town meeting last year persuaded officials to rewrite the $7,000,000 budget and include construction of a $600,000 sewer project. Portland had achieved no miracles, but in trying to recapture the sturdy spirit of the New England past, it was proving that any citizen could still have his say, and at times even have his way.