That’s pretty much how regionalization of schools in Harwich was put to Chatham voters at town meeting a year and a half ago. We’re not voting on regionalizing schools, we were told – just looking. Just taking a look. Let’s look. It won’t hurt to look. That sounds reasonable. OK, form a committee for that purpose. It’s OK to look.

But what wasn’t mentioned at the time was that this committee was empowered by state law to call a town meeting to vote to regionalize all on their own. An unelected committee of three able to put a major portion of the taxpayers money on the table was given this authority without any disclosure to the voters.

That town meeting would be called without the consent of the selectmen. It would be called by far less than the minimal number of voters as required by normal petition. It would be called without a single hearing by the finance committee on the fiscal soundness of the claims of great savings being made. And although it could have been done with ease, it would be called without ever asking the parents of the roughly 600 children in Chatham schools what they want.

I’m a parent of a Chatham student. The school has my e-mail. They have my home phone and cell phone numbers. They send home reams and reams of paper every day of notices for this, that and everything else. So if anyone actually wanted to know what I wanted for Sofie, there were many ways to go about it. I am only left with the conclusion that they haven’t asked parents because they don’t want to hear what they have to say.

And holding a public hearing – during the information age – is the barest of efforts, and about the most pathetic attempt at civic engagement available. But this isn’t about what students need, or what parents want for them, or consent of the governed. It is about rushing to the altar before we have a chance to think this through.

This was about looking. Just looking. It was not getting into an arranged marriage. Sorry, no, Harwich, I like you. But as a friend. I know we’ve lived next door to each other, and some well-meaning people who don’t know us very well think we’d look great together, but, well, you’ve gotissues.

I know you need a new high school, and I feel for you and your kids. But marrying for money is not the solution. And you know what they say, “Lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part.” Really, I can’t take your protestations of a rosier life for Chatham’s kids and your kids together when you seem to be in a perpetual state of economic meltdown.

Honestly, this seems like nothing more than a money grab by you, and power grab by Chatham school officials who don’t want their budgets as closely examined by their own finance committee and voters at town meeting.

You see, I look up the road a little from you and I see Dennis-Yarmouth. And that’s just a disaster. But you say we don’t have to be that way. We’ll get along. We’ll have a nice new high school. Well, that’s the thing – we already have a good high school in Chatham. And a new middle school. We paid a lot of money for it. A lot, and it was not without some headaches to build it. What’s more, if you want to talk about cost savings, look at Falmouth, who ended paying an extra $19 million in cost overruns for their high school.

Sorry, Harwich, but we in Chatham have our plates full as it is. We’re doing a lot of building right now, what with a new police station, a new town office annex, a new fire station, and a major sewer expansion. Getting into a permanent, open-ended commitment just doesn’t seem like the wisest thing right now.

I know you like all this talk about regionalization and cost savings and such. Maybe you’re right. You could be right. So prove us wrong. Go tell the state that we turned you down. They said you had to first ask around before they’d give you money for a new school. So you did. Go build that great new school, and put in all the cool things you mentioned. Show us you can stay within budget. That will impress Chatham.

But what’s more, show us and everyone else on the Cape that you are top-notch educators at your spiffy new school. Beat us in graduation rates and test scores and college placement.

Do that and, because of school choice, Chatham parents will be beating down your doors. And DY parents. And Nauset parents. You’ll have more students – and more money – than you’ll know what to do with.

I know, I know – a few people from Chatham came to you and got you all up for this and want to set a date for town meeting vote and everything. But they don’t speak for us. Regionalization with you just seems like too big a risk. We were just looking.

Read this and other columns at The Cape Cod Chronicle.

Note: A snap vote has been called for 4 PM on Thursday 10/21 by the Acting Chair of Chatham’s Board of Selectmen.  To voice your opposition, go to the meeting, call (508 945-5100) or email their office (rmcdonald@chatham-ma.gov).

It has been a crazy ride for this scrappy band of Cape Codders.  Our series, Hit and Run History:  The Columbia Expedition, has gone from just the barest of documentary ideas in 2008 to today as the centerpiece of the history site of a PBS-powerhouse.

With a great reception by audiences to our second episode this spring, we caught a break. At one of our last screenings, held at the South Shore Natural Science Center, we were approached by a content producer at WGBH.  She asked if we would consider doing our show as a web series.

We started in a month later on a collection of eight short biographies.  This series wouldn’t be our old episodes cut up for the web.  Instead, they’d be profiles of lesser player in the story of the first American voyage ’round the world.

Captain John Kendrick, born on the shores of Pleasant Bay, may have commanded Columbia when she left Boston Harbor on October 1, 1787, and Third Officer Robert Haswell of Hull may have written the log, but we were looking now to the men behind the venture. The dreamers who inspired it.  The capitalists who financed it.  The other officers who would run it.

That brought us up to the Massachusetts Historical Society and Boston Public Library Special Collections Room in June, the Massachusetts State House and Fort Griswold outside New London in July, Manhattan and Brooklyn in August, and to the Naval War College in Newport in September.

The series premiered in early October with our introduction on “The Medallion” — the rarest and oldest of all American medals, the Columbia and Washington Medal.  It was minted in Boston in 1787 to commemorate the first American voyage around the world. Today, less than 20 survive.

I’ve been working on the story of John Kendrick and the Columbia Expedition for 15 years, and it is great to be able to bring this story to a wider audience.  Books have been written in the past, but the story has always seemed to elude the greater public consciousness.  As we worked on Hit and Run History, we realized it was because, despite a compelling story of adventure at the dawn of the American republic, it was being told in the typical armchair historian style that would typically drive away younger audiences.

We needed to get out there, show how this story can be encountered here and now in small places.  Be Gumshoe Historians and as we say “Practice History without a License”.

Talk about what motivated these guys.  Visit their homes.  Show how you do this.  Make them and the story relatable.  And from what we’ve been told time and time again my audiences, educators and museum staff — we’ve done it.  We’ve cracked the code of Columbia.

The 10-episode series runs weekly through December.  Check back at WGBH.org/history or on the Hit and Run History fan page on Facebook at facebook.com/hitandrunhistory.