Article 6 on the Turner town meeting warrant asks the town to dissolve the “Turner Center for the Arts Board of Directors.” The article explains that this “would allow the Turner Center for the Arts to become a nonprofit entity.” The TCA already has nonprofit status because it is a town entity. The amount of time and energy needed to organize and fund a “new” TCA and find a group of volunteers to make it happen seems unlikely.

TCA has 125 members, 19 from Turner. With revenues over $54,000, it has paid its operating expenses without any taxpayer money. As an asset to the town, it hung 25 exhibits in 2007. TCA has no paid employees.

Article 7 asks the taxpayers for $12,825 for Turner Center for the Arts. TCA never asked for that money and doesn’t need $12,825. Interestingly, the board of selectmen makes no recommendation on that article, and the Budget Committee recommends $0.

As a TCA member from Poland, I can’t stand at the town meeting and ask the questions that need to be asked. I attended the members’ meeting on March 29, and I don’t understand the motivation or the politics behind the articles. The TCA has cost the town of Turner nothing since it opened on Oct. 2, 2005.

Hopefully Turner’s taxpayers will see the benefits of the center and vote to keep it open.

Michael McAllister, Poland