It’s distressing to watch how Julie Dunn’s claims of accomplishments have aggrandized into an argument for leadership.
First it was the claim that her stint in corporate banking readies her for on-the-job training in everything from issuing municipal bonds to collecting bills to crafting a town’s monetary policy.
Then there’s submitting grant requests for the public schools and making sure what money received is spent for the stated purposes—valuable work, but not leadership, not the record of decision making we want from our elected officials.
Maybe the confusion of competency for leadership begins with the candidate herself. Ms. Dunn has stated that she would like to be Arlington’s treasurer whether elected or appointed; one makes decisions and stands by them for the voters, the other takes direction and orders from the Selectmen’s subordinates.
Finally there is her claim to have eliminated the fee for all-day kindergarten, growing from no mention at all in her ACMi candidate profile, to being “a leader” in the League of Women Voters debate, to full credit and having “initiated the successful move” in a printed campaign piece last week.
Not so. Ms Dunn was a member of a committee that Bill Hayner convened, and which he directed. It was Ruthellyn Jacob who brought the enrollment calculations that Melrose was using to this committee. Those calculations, applied to Arlington’s school population, qualified for enough state reimbursement to eliminate the kindergarten fee. The School Committee has affirmed this, as recently as their meeting of March 27 of this year.
Being in the room, sitting on the committee, running the numbers; that’s honest work, but it’s not initiating or identifying anything. It’s competent, but it’s not leadership.
This letter was published Thursday, April 3, 2014.
