Interesting, but are not the words ‘aux citoyens’ not a stumbling block? 
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Nope…
eg: our citoyens receive a Christmas Parcel if they’ve reached “a certain age”… no matter what nationality…
Free access is authorised to everyone provided they behave properly and keep quiet.
Frankly, if anyone really feels that Brexit has stopped them being welcome at a Council Meeting or anything else… why not ask the question at the Mairie…
Come to think of it, so do we.
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Unless you get involved with your local community you probably wont feel "qualified ", but its all about your commune and does effect you directly (I didnt feel particularly qualified or confident but then I got myself elected for 2 terms, and came to realise how important it is/was). Unfortunately the voting option has now been removed from a lot of us living here.
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Hi Stella. I think that you are very fortunate to have such an open and consultative Conseil. Here we have the opposite. Only the absolute bare minimum of notices posted about meetings. Little if any debate, as it has all been decided by the ruling group beforehand. Minutes of the meetings are often very brief indeed, and may not be published for weeks or even months afterwards.
On the rare occasion when they do actually hold a public ‘consultation’ about a big project, it isn’t a consultation at all, but rather a presentation of what they have already decided to do. Sometimes they do publish a plan of works in relation to something major, but then they don’t worry about following it, and what is actually built doesn’t match the published plan at all.
Add in the fact that they all speak at 100mph in a gutteral Vendeen accent, and it is not surprising that members of the public don’t bother attending meetings.
The only way to get anything changed is to personally lobby a council member and get them onside, and of course one has to be ever so careful as to how one goes about that as no French person can ever be wrong about anything.
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@Robert_Hodge
Yes, our commune is very fortunate to have an excellent Mairie and Conseil Municipal.
It’s taken time and hard work (and courage) to achieve this.
For many years prior… there was a period when a “clique” ruled the roost, often seemingly more for their own benefit than for the Commune…
Voted-in again and again by their cronies, it was difficult to dislodge them. (sounds similar to your own situation).
From what you say, your own council is not doing its duty and, frankly, the situation needs addressing… but until folk are prepared to stand up and be counted, it ain’t going to happen.
I hope that “someone” comes forward and forms another List asap… it might be surprising how many abstainers/blancs would support such a move.
Incidentally, it’s not only the non-French Nationalities who can’t follow some of the verbal flow… 
maybe now I understand some of your reticence about matters French… and that is such a shame.
As with the commune @Stella resides in, ours in 16 too is very engaging with incomers - our maire speaks perfect English and encourages our participation in local events. The minutes of our local Conseil Municipal meetings and other informations Municipals are sent out by email to people who subscribe to the service (encouraged by the maire) and all other events in the commune are open to us, should we choose to engage.
IMHO sitting back and not engaging (because you think they are not interested in you) is the wrong approach. Keep whittling away at any apparent resistance and, if even slowly but surely, changes in attitude will happen.
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Village life can be quite tricky…
On the day we arrived to view the house (and made the decision to buy, on the spot)… we met the neighbour living opposite… he wandered over and asked the Immobilier who we were… when he heard we were buying, he then turned to us and said in very clear French… “I hate the English”… and walked away.
That neighbour turned out to be the deputy maire… 
Anyway, the Immobilier was quite obviously horrified… possibly worried we would “walk away” too … and he would lose his commission.
but, we’re made of sterner stuff… nuff said ! 
Have you ever asked anyone?? Here we had endless discussions before last elections for mayor about one list or two, and eventually the two factions decided to agree. Which in a small commune is better.
I have found that generally people want those that live here to be involved, and are quite welcoming (certainly to paler skinned people).
I wasn’t able to vote in the presidential this year, but did get my card before the législative elections. When I walked in to the room everyone who was there clapped and cheered because they were pleased that I had got my vote back. It’s actually not just about you feeling “you understand” enough to vote, but also a way to show you are committed to the place you live in. And after 158,000 british votes are rarely going to make a difference anywhere - mine certainly didn’t!
To be honest it is probably my attitude that has changed.
I don’t like being given a public dressing down in the street by the Mayor in front of a half dozen of his cronies just because he doesn’t like the alterations made to the front of my house in accordance with a planning permit which he himself signed. I asked him to wait a moment, fetched the planning consent notice, and showed him his signature and Mayoral stamp, at which point he flatly denied that it was his signature and claimed that he had never seen the document before.
I don’t like the way that the Mayor feels that he is entitled to walk straight into my home uninvited. He only did it once, as since then I stand four square blocking the doorway.
I don’t like it when I am criticised by the Mayor for repainting part of the front of a neighbour’s property (with the owners consent), at my own expense. I just became fed up with having to look at the pitiful state of said wall, and as clearly no-one else was going to spend the time, I simply did it myself.
I find it impressive, but not favourably, when one bothers to write a letter to the Mayor gently suggesting some traffic calming measures and does not even receive an acknowledgement let alone a reply.
I have asked the Mairie (very politely) if they could let me know a couple of days beforehand when they intend to totally close off our street and physically block all vehicular access to our property for some special event or another. Has it made a ha’porth of difference — not on your nellie.
I am no doubt very well known to the council, as due to the fact that numerous polite requests were ignored, it was necessary (together with my neighbour), to make formal complaint about the behaviour of the clientele of the bar across the street that is actually owned by the council. I’m fairly broadminded, but drunken fights in the street, tremendous noise of vehicle horns and general bellowing until 2am, simulated oral sex between men in their underwear in the upper room, simulated anal sex between men in the church car park, and people urinating on our front door is all a bit much.
The Mayor tried to fob us off by saying that he really had no power to deal with the matter. He was rather surprised when my neighbour then spent ten minutes detailing the powers of the Mayor and how he could easily force the situation to improve. The Mayor enquired as to how my neighbour had acquired all this legal knowledge and was somewhat taken aback to discover that my neighbour was a Colonel with the Gendarmerie, and that he had in fact only recently been discussing this type of problem with the departemental Prefect.
I get on very well with many of the locals through my involvement with our village Franglais Association, but I have no doubt that I am ‘Persona-non-grata’ as far as the Council is concerned. Interestingly, a couple of the Franglais members were also councillors, but they stood down from their positions when they realised the way in which the council is run.
Does the situation worry me — not at all. I am quite accustomed to being a social pariah for at least 50% of the population due to my previous occupation.
So yes, I think that my attitude towards the local council has indeed changed, and the fact that the local people keep voting them back into power also tells me something, which is that I will probably never understand their mindset, and thus will always be an outsider.
Just ‘The Anglais with the classic car’.
There are those who love our climbing roses though. 
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Good grief… you have my deepest sympathy… your Maire really does need sorting out…
perhaps your neighbour can lead the way… via the Prefecture or whatever.
If enough complaints/reports of clear breach/misconduct/whatever are levelled against him, the awful man must surely warrant an investigation and that could well set other things in motion…
of course, it’s not unknown…
But it’s so sad when “good” folk do get elected, then feel they must step-down…
and I can’t understand why they do this, as it always seems such a wasted opportunity…
To win votes/be elected to represent/fight for what is right (in their eyes…)… and then to walk away.
Your Maire will get sorted eventually, and hopefully within your lifetime
We have a neighbour like that… so far up his own arse he can tickle his tonsils
He tried to pull a similar stroke with the size of our garage which abuts his land so has a mono roof. We sent him the plans at the same time they were submitted for planning (I know he got them because we placed them in his letter box personally) and we complied with the other planning requirements such as placing the board in a prominent place at the border of the land and the road as advised by the maire.
Many years later we had a stand-up argument abut the size of the garage and I knew full well that he hadn’t a leg to stand on since the time had long passed to complain - so we told him so and that if he wished to complain now, he well knew the process by which it could be done.
That shut him up on that point so he then tried to suggest that we had “stolen” some land from the commune (totally untrue of course) so we told him the same - go make my day, report us and they will make you look the fool - we have photo evidence of where the boundary wall, the tree we removed (all with permission) and the keystone for the corner of the demolished barn which ran alongside the lane remains for reference. Haven’t heard a peep from him since about these matters.
In actual fact, the lane width reduced because the other neighbour had let their tree boundary overgrow on the other side of the lane to us which we had already discussed with the mairie who are responsible for cutting the grass.
We call them “the Clampetts” (remember the 60’s series The Beverley Hillbillies? He’s always tinkering with something or other…
It’s clear he doesn’t like having les anglais as voisins although that said, the French neighbour who sold us the land which hadn’t been occupied for 40+ years and contained a number of fallen down ruins and vermin infested warned us to watch out for him - then they sold up and moved!
His big problem is that the neighbours on the other side of him are Portuguese so as a foreigner hating Français he’s somewhat of a laughing stock and will go to his grave a very unhappy man 
Face - bothered? If he can’t be bothered to even acknowledge our presence as we drive past him when we wave to him (he turns about face to avoid eye contact and pretend he didn’t see us ) it won’t change our view.
We still wave to him and perhaps as he just seethes inside it makes me smile even more. Supercilious pratt just about covers it 
As for you maire, it reminds me of the mairie in the film Chocolat - remember what happened to him and smile… They fall off their high perches sooner or later and their “friends” soon melt away leaving them isolated and deeply unhappy.
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Graham, a two fingered wave? 
Nah Nigel - more regal, a bit similar to a wrist exercise 
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I have often mooted … “killing with kindness”… and I know it does work… proof in our own commune.
Always being polite (even when ignored) and never saying anything bad about said person, even when pressed by others to do so… "il a son caractère… " said with a gentle smile is about the worst I’ve uttered about our English-hating neighbour… over the years…
and he nearly choked to death when his visiting father-in-law, marched across the road and gave me a very robust hug… (we’d previously met elsewhere and got along very well…)
EDIT: we’ve had one or two public confrontations… where I’ve stood my ground… but which have left me shaking inside. The man’s a bully.
It’s been years now… and we’ve finally reached a level of acceptance… he seems to accept that we’re not too bad… and we’ve accepted that he’ll never change…
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that probably sums up our errant hillbilly neighbour too…
As said chap has lived here forever, he had many friends who were, at first, treating us with caution (although not quite as lepers… )… while the rest of the commune welcomed us with open arms…
Those friends have gradually seen the light… especially when orange cake and/or chocolates etc are on offer…
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you, you, you temptress you… 
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Cripes, that sounds terrible (as does the rest of your post).
It does touch on something which worries me, especially as an occasional visitor and also one who accidentally bought a notable property in the village which is how one is perceived as a newcomer. It’s not limited to rural French villages of course - places in my native Yorkshire are just as suspicious of new arrivals (even from other parts of Yorkshire).
But your Mayor sounds like a right piece of work.
You’ve already visited your property… and (hopefully) introduced yourself at the Mairie. If you’ve met your neighbours… been polite and genuinely nice… all should be well.
One good French friend I made here… had come from Alsace I think, during the war… the whole family lost everything… fled here as a teenager and married locally. She confided in me that I was more acceptable as an English person than she was… felt she was still considered an outsider and having lost her husband (the love of her life) some years ago, she now had quite a sad time of it…