I write in response to the Paris selectboard’s rejecting Jean Smart from the Policy and Procedure Committee and Janet Jamison from the Budget Committee. We residents of Paris are now deprived of the committee work of two of the most well-informed, intelligent and hard-working citizens of this town.

Without bothering to ask either chairman about the quality of Ms. Smart’s or Ms. Jamison’s contributions to their respective committees, the board simply rejected them.

The reasons?

None given (for Jean); she’s too “confrontational” (for Janet).

Since when are tough, probing, even confrontational questions good reasons for getting rid of committee volunteers? As the Nov. 28 Advertiser Democrat editorial pointed out, town committees are not convents.

Ominously, these decisions are part of a much larger pattern of behavior by both the Board of Selectmen and the town manager.

“We listen to citizen opinion,” the board members say over and over again. They may listen, but do they really hear what concerned citizens are saying and then use what they hear in their deliberations?

There are 18 vacancies on Paris committees. Given this board’s treatment of two of its most valuable committee members, is it surprising that applications are not flooding in?

Sometimes it seems we are speaking to the wind, which carries our voices away, and the board then does what it was going to do all along.

Anne Stanley, Paris

Member, Policy and Procedure Committee