The town now has a subcommittee to study the corner of Birch and Second, and the subcommittee, as of Monday, has three members and an empty fourth chair. The Mayor would like to fill it, for balance. We would like, respectfully, to leave it empty.

Three is a fine number for a body that must actually decide something. Three cannot tie. Three can meet in a booth at the Daybreak without anyone having to pull up a chair. Three is, not for nothing, the number of stop signs the corner has gotten along with since 1957.

A fourth member introduces the possibility of a 2–2 deadlock, and a deadlock on a subcommittee is how a question that should take an evening comes instead to take a season. We have seen it before. We have, in this very matter, seen it before for sixty-nine years.

We yield to no one in our respect for balance. But balance, on a question like this, is what you get when three sensible neighbors look at a corner, agree that it works, and go home in time for the game. We urge the Mayor to let three be three, and the corner be the corner, and the fourth chair stay open — for company, if anyone wants to come watch.