#1 2008-11-19 21:30:59
Well, Ethics in Wareham has not just taken a holiday, but an extended 2 year and counting vacation ever since this crew took charge.
But the events of the past few days really take the proverbial cake. Let's talk about 1) Town Meeting and 2) Last Night's Selectmen's Meeting
1) TOWN MEETING - Mr. Moderator is an utter disgrace and has got to go. He should resign immediately. If not, someone should run against him. There are enough people on both sides of the political aisle in this town that are so sick and tired of his "deer in the headlights" looks and longwinded nonsensical explanations that change from minute to minute that a good candidate would have a strong chance at beating him. While the selectmen's races will always be contentious, a person who can actually run town meeting and not let it become a circus would have bipartisan support from both sides.
Mr. Moderator is clearly in the bag for the Ruling Hackocracy in Wareham. If you rise to speak in disagreement of the Selectmen, watch how quickly the rules change for you and how quickly new rules are made up.
In what universe is there a rule that says you cannot debate on whether to dissolve town meeting? Moreover, in what universe does a moderator say "Well we have 2 choices, we can dissolve the town meeting or postpone it." Excuse me? Has anyone been to any other town meeting where dissolution was thrown out as an option when there are tons of articles left on the table?
TRANSLATION - The Brocktonite was too dumb to remember to move to dissolve town meeting on her own and needed a reminder.
The ethics violations are overwhelming. A petition article to limit the moderator's authority on issues when a selectman he is married to is involved? A petition article that would make it easier to recall Mrs. Moderator from the selectboard? And he asks for a vote to dissolve the meeting, and ignores a seconded motion to adjourn the meeting to another night?
The papers seem to be pushing this "the moderator made a math mistake" thing. It's hard to take seriously, though in his defense, his misadventures and mistakes as an assessor are legendary in the halls of buffoonery. Math has never been that man's best friend, and the town suffered from his assessing incompetence.
Someone buy that man a calculator.
But I think in this case, unlike his other math mistakes, this "mistake" was on purpose.
Interesting side note - Our town has the office of Deputy Moderator - a person who could run town meeting if the Moderator is indisposed, or if he has an ethics dilemma. We had a Deputy Moderator, Margaret Ishihara, but like many who disagree with this ruling regime, she was pushed out the door.
Too bad. A Deputy Moderator could have prevented the trampling of our rights in this case.
If there is any justice in the world, the Attorney General will investigate this.
Note to selectmen - Your microphones work well and pick up every little nasty remark. Get yourself a copy of the tape sometime and listen closely to the little running commentary from the selectmen's table - It's pretty much a running dialogue of "We're going to get that person, we're going to get this person, yeah, we'll get her, we'll get him, oh that person we're going to get, etc."
2. THIS WEEK'S SELECTMEN'S MEETING - Town Meeting didn't slow the Selectmen down at all as they were back at it Tuesday night.
There's quite the controversy regarding Brock Tucy's hearing. Before the meeting started , the selectmen and the opposing party and opposing party's attorney got into a lengthy ex-parte discussion on how they were basically going to stick it to Tucy, what they were going to do, how they were going to do it, and they declared that Mr. Tucy using a different road than what he wanted was a foregone conclusion before the hearing began! (Tucy and his counsel were not yet present).
I guess the selectmen didn't realize, or didn't care, that there were people already in the room and they alerted Tucy and his lawyer to the discussion - THE SELECTMEN'S THIRD OPEN MEETING LAW VIOLATION!!! (Hiring McAulliffe behind closed doors, the Swifts Beach minutes going "missing," and now this.
Tucy's Lawyer read the selectmen the riot act - an event that was truly fun to watch. He demanded a tape of the conversation and was told there was none. He demanded a transcript, told there was none. So he told the board he'd subpoena them six ways to sunday to find out who said what.
At that point, Mrs. Moderator got up and left, and in a direct quote, said "I don't want any part of this."
Probably a good idea, Mrs Mod.
Long story short - the selectmen who, before the hearing swore up and down that Tucy would be doing what they want, but after they were called out by Tucy's lawyer, Tucy was given what he wanted and was allowed to use the road he wanted.
Now, I don't know enough about Mr. Tucy or his business to accurately have an opinion on what the outcome of this hearing should have been - but doesn't it seem quite unethical that the selectmen apparently thought their way, but then when caught red handed in an open meeting law violation, they gave Tucy what he wanted instead? Most likely they did so in the hopes that his lawyer wouldn't report them to the DA.
Here's hoping he does anyway.
Final thought - In all of this, with open meeting law violation 3, where is that so-called "journalist" who, after open meeting violation 1, declared that "he'd be all over" the selectmen if they were to ever violate the open meeting law again?
And why don't the other papers look into this?
Apparently Testicular Fortitude in Wareham's Press Corps took a holiday as well.
Last edited by Hamatron5000 (2008-11-20 08:16:31)
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#2 2008-11-19 23:44:41
We're on our own hook here, Hamatron.
Both Donahues have, in their own inarticulate way, pronounced Town Meeting dead, and declared their intention to replace it with a mayoral system.
To that end, they've done everything in their power to break it, successfully, too.
State and local courts will not help us. We've got to document what these turds have done and give next Spring's voters credible alternatives.
Because if we don't, we're fucked.
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#3 2008-11-20 06:51:17
What We Need Is A Recall People. There Is No More Democracy In Wareham. You Cant Even Count On Town Meeting Anymore. If You Value Democracy You Will Vote Everyone Of These People Out!
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#4 2008-11-20 07:57:13
Mr. Bill and Mr. Slagerhater,
Mr Bill is right, they do want to turn Wareham into a city, with mayoral government. Why, because it works so well for Brockton and New Bedford? No good will come of it. The only possible good thing to come of it will be to watch the undoubtedly brutal battle between Brucey and John Boy when they have a clash over who runs for Mayor. We'll have to rent a hall and get some popcorn and 3-D glasses to watch that footage. We could make a profit putting that on pay per view.
But seriously, I think we have a ripe and rare opportunity to make a change in Wareham government by supporting a new and qualified candidate for Town Moderator.
True, the Ragman himself has criticized John Boy's lousy moderating skills, but when the chips are down and he gets his marching orders from Bruce, the Ragman will rally around JohnBoy and trash anyone who runs against him. Suddenly, he'll say that JohnBoy is the world's greatest orator and the most impartial man ever.
You could run Mr. Robert, the author of Robert's Rules of Order himself, and Ragman would trash him as a lousy power elitist.
But, here's the thing - most good candidates never come forward to run for selectman, because they know the trashing won't stop after the election. Your "prize" for winning is that you get to sit next to Bruce and Brenda every Tuesday night, and you know they and the Ragman will be plotting against you every step of the way, thinking up bogus allegations and complaints to use against you. If you go to the bathroom in town hall, they'll report you for misappropriating the town's toilet paper.
But in the moderator spot, you only have to put up with the trashing a few nights a year - if you have the moderating skills of a cactus, (which is way better than what our current moderator has), you won't have meetings that run for weeks and weeks, so you won't be trashed all that long.
Think about it candidates - you can make a difference in our town and you'll get trashed only a few nights a year, as opposed to the marathon trashing all day, every day that a selectman candidate will get.
I hope some decent candidates will come forward. Often lawyers run for the spot, but you don't need to be a lawyer. After all, last I heard, our current moderator isn't. That pesky bar is apparently just too tough for him. If you're a good speaker with sound judgment that will be fair to everyone (yes, even to those morons on the other side, though lord knows they aren't fair to us), then please come forward and send this lousy moderator packing.
Last edited by Hamatron5000 (2008-11-20 08:23:19)
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#5 2008-11-20 08:51:05
Hamatron5000 wrote:
I hope some decent candidates will come forward. Often lawyers run for the spot, but you don't need to be a lawyer.
Lawyers are the worst possible candidates for elected positions in a place this size. Their legal clients quite naturally expect them to respect attorney client privilege, especially when they have business before the town. See the problem?
We have gifted public speakers and passionate citizens here who are revolted by the thought of watching this crap, never mind participating. Only way to get them involved again is to identify exactly what went wrong in the first place.
The current mess didn't metastasize in a vacuum.
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#6 2008-11-20 09:35:48
Yes, and unfortunately, that is the Catch-22 we face. People want to fight these losers, but nobody wants to be the first one to do it. And who can blame them? The result is that alot of intelligent capable people that could help the town are disgusted, they see what is happening and don't want it to happen to them, so they decide to not get involved.
Every town has a pack of scumbag losers. The difference is, the press in those towns usually sees right through them and exposes the truth to the voters.
Our situation is tough because one of the scumbag losers is the press.
We probably won't see Wareham make a turn around for the better until the Ragman is out of business. Luckily, it appears that will be soon.
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#7 2008-11-20 09:50:33
Hamatron5000 wrote:
Every town has a pack of scumbag losers. The difference is, the press in those towns usually sees right through them and exposes the truth to the voters.
That's not true anymore.
The nation's newspapers are in worse shape than Detroit. Isolated media markets like ours, forget it.
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#8 2008-11-20 11:41:36
Indeed, unethical journalists (and lazy journalists) have run amock throught the entire journalism industry, but our nasty old Ragman definitely takes the cake.
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#9 2008-11-20 20:08:42
billw wrote:
Lawyers are the worst possible candidates for elected positions in a place this size.
Do you know what you call 1000 lawyers at the bottom of the ocean? A good start!
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#10 2008-11-20 20:14:48
Sadly we need candidates with their own newspaper.
The BOS violate ethics laws all the time, but do they ever get punished? Anywhere?
It's clear to me that they a motivated in making their positions paid. The interpret the Charter in their own unique way so they make the public and their own feable minds believe they are in charge of everything, and they answer to no one.
That way when they say, here's what we are going to be paid, they can say "who's going to stop us."
You can tell me the charter does not allow for this, but with the current trend they are setting...
They will do what they want, for as long as they can, until they are forced by lawsuits or a higher government body to stop. That could be years and years.
And what they will do is, when the heat gets too much, they will quit and be free and clear.
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#11 2008-11-20 20:59:59
Common,
This has always been about these scumbags getting paying gigs off the town's tit. They can each become a city councilor for $50,000, and Bruce and John Boy can fight to see who gets to be mayor for $100,000.
$350,000 a year so we can get the benefit of the pontifications of complete and total morons.
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#12 2008-11-20 21:10:46
Not to mention that each city councilor plus the mayor would each get their own personal army of secretaries and coatholders. We'll be lucky if it costs us under $1 million.
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#13 2008-11-20 21:41:37
If positions like that were to be created, I would hope HOPE, that the votes would take more of an interest in the positions and performances of said positions.
It's easy to get elected to non-paid positions because no one cares enough to vote. When voters have their money on the line, you would hope it's different.
The flip side is, they don't care what the non-paid BOS is doing with their money, so most Wareham voters probably don't care in general.
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#14 2008-11-21 13:28:48
Common,
They don't care now when we have one town official living in another town and another town official that was caught snatching dirt. Oh wait, I forgot that in our topsy turvy upside down town, if you mention that one of our officials has a record, that means YOU are the bad guy. Whoops!
Last edited by Hamatron5000 (2008-11-21 13:32:11)
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#15 2008-11-21 22:55:18
If Bruce becomes the real Mayor , he could rename Wareham "Brockton by the Sea" !!!
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#16 2008-11-21 23:59:47
Great, when Bruce becomes the mayor, we'll have to shell out for a car to drive him to town hall and back.
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#17 2008-11-22 20:33:28
Hammtron5000,
Recall will be too kind. I think we should get some tar and feathers and ship the BOS to Brockton on the Trash Train. (Sorry if I repeat myself)
Last edited by waterview (2008-11-22 20:34:08)
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#18 2008-11-23 22:12:50
Waterview,
The only thing worse than Brockton trash moving to Wareham is when Brockton trash moves to Wareham and runs for public office.
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