These are the words with which Duncan Coolidge opened Andover Town Meeting 2015 on March 10.

First, I want to thank all of the various local government volunteers and elected officials for their selfless and generous effort over the last year serving the town and our community. It is through their gift of time and dedication that we are able to function in the remarkable and continued way we do. We owe them our respect, trust, and gratitude for what they do out of a sense of responsibility to others.

Also, I am very enthusiastic about two busy young local businessmen and family men, Chuck Keyser and Chris Caron, for being willing to step forward and contribute their time and intelligence to help the town forge ahead by joining our newly-formed Capital Improvement Committee, chaired by Doug Phelps. Theirs is an enormously important task, developing a rational plan for our use of limited financial resources in a responsible way to maintain and improve the quality and infrastructure of our town.

My personal thanks go to our remarkable Town Office staff, who are the backbone of our local government; our Andover Libraries staff; our Road Agent, John Thompson, and his crew for their tireless effort in dealing with a difficult winter; our dedicated volunteer fire department guided by our intrepid Fire Chief, Renee Lefebvre; the life-saving efforts of our emergency services crew, directed by John Kinney; and our boys in blue, the Andover Police Department, who keep us safe and encourage us to behave ourselves.

My sincere personal regards to you all, and from the Select Board for the opportunity you have given us to serve the town. We are dedicated to the community. We work hard, and we are admittedly far from perfect. We each bring different skills to the table. Many of our efforts go unseen but are nonetheless critical parts of our responsibilities.

My deep gratitude goes to Jim Danforth, whose tireless attention to straightening out things has been a challenging but very important process. While a little tough to accept at times, the gift of his insight into consistency and fairness has been a core feature of his tenure. I have great respect for his intelligence and what he has contributed. To acknowledge that the Select Board wants to present  him a heartfelt gift of some fine Pentax binoculars.

Rusty Trusty Old Spike Awards

The first of two yearly awards which I have titled the Rusty Trusty Old Spike Award are to be given to acknowledge the selfless contributions made by local citizens to our Town government. They are unadorned, mounted rail spikes, salvaged from the cold waters of the Blackwater River, that came from the rail bed of the Northern Railroad, later called the Boston and Maine. They did their job faithfully and without expectation of acknowledgement or reward, just as have the recipients.

These rusty, trusty old spikes are not pretty, and that is by intention. They are rusted and worn, but solid and worthy of respect, like these citizens. In sum, the spikes supported a railroad, and in their same way the recipients have supported our town.

I have chosen to award two rusty, trusty old spikes this year. The first goes to Ed Hiller, who diligently and intelligently serves on the Andover Budget Committee but shuns the limelight. The second goes to the humble and rock-solid Dennis Fenton, for his determined efforts as a Selectman for many years.

Both Ed and Dennis set examples for us of what true citizenship is and what it demands of us. They should inspire each of us to become involved as active builders of our community. It is our community, and we will only have one, which we have earned by the sweat of our combined efforts. Everyone is busy, and everyone can find excuses. It is your town, and what it becomes will be no more than what you do to make it the town you want.

Finally, thank you all for being here and thereby expressing your sincere concern for the well-being of our town and our community. It is the finest example of true participatory democracy that exists in the world. We come together to decide as a community, within a set of established laws, how our town will function for the common good.

It should not be a time squandered to promote personal agendas, self interests, or just complain and find fault without being willing to actively contribute by shouldering responsibility. It is a unique opportunity to determine among ourselves how we want our town to be.

With that, I wish you all well and offer my hope that you will all have security, prosperity, and good health in the coming year.