I’m sorry for the time out. Wareham is in more trouble than many realize. Since my last post we are now about $700,000+ over budget for fiscal 2012 and we are only 27 days into the new year.

Andrews has hired an interim building inspector who was fired from his position as a Mass Building inspector. It is my understanding that the man has several worker’s comp cases pending, including his most recent, which stems from his appeal of his recent termination by the state. Evidently at his appeals hearing he fainted and injured himself when he fell. To add insult to injury, the man does not possess certified commissioners license. In other words, like Myles Burke, he also cannot sign Certificates of Occupancy. Our new interim building inspector is just that, a building inspector and as of December 31, 2011 he will not even be that. To retain your building inspectors certificate you must get 35, or perhaps its 45, continuing education credits every three years. This is to insure that the people running your building departments are up to date on laws, regulations and technology. Our new guy has not one credit in the past three years and only 5 months therefore to find the 35 credits he needs. He has already received his letter from the state telling him his license will become inactive on January 1, 2012.

By now you’ve all seen Myles conditional letter of employment (if not I have it) which clearly states his certification is a condition. Didn’t Andrews recently state that it was not a condition?

The point is that Myles Burke cannot issue COs and our new guy cannot issue COs and we have no one in Town who can legally issue COs, so maybe someone can tell me how 7 Lynne Road was inspected recently, and the CO was issued by whom? Yep, it has a CO.

The Town accountant: Remember when Andrews fired the Town accountant because we could not find $900,000 or so? Of course for a year he praised her abilities and job performance, but when the money was missing he simply fired her. Now she is suing us and we are going to settle because if she gets on the stand she will testify that Mark Andrews was fully aware of everything she did, in fact he most likely ordered it. We did not lose $900,000. What we did was move money illegally from specified line items in individual departmental budgets to pay other non-approved expenses in other budgets. Only the TA could order this behavior and it’s not legal.

The BOS, at the direction of Mark Andrews have been transferring money illegally for a long time and Andrews ether knows it is illegal and he continues to do it, or he does not know its illegal. In either case he has caused the BOS to commit illegal acts and he needs to be fired.

Transfers happen when a TA asks to move money voted by Town meeting from the line item or department for which it was approved and transfer it and use it in another department or within the same department, but for a purpose other than that for which it was approved by town Meeting. The Finance committee must approve all transfers, yet Andrews has not involved them in a single one and therefore all the transfers voted at his request by the BOS are illegal. To add to this mess, between the dates of July 15th to April 30 of any fiscal year, only Town meeting may transfer money. The reason for these dates is simple. The dates allow Towns to clean up small budgetary ooopsees that are completely normal at the end of or the beginning of a fiscal year. But the process always involves the Fin Com because they, not the BOS are your budgetary watchdogs. It is FIN-COM’s responsibility to insure that you get what you voted for and also the process insures that the financial managers of your money (FINCOM) are apprised of any discrepancies so they may plan for and make any necessary adjustments to the budget to keep us in balance. This process has been completely ignored by Mark Andrews. As a matter of fact, I’ll bet you that if we looked we would find that money was moved between and from departmental budgets between July 16th and April 29th and no one was told, not the BOS or the FinCom. This is where the 900Gs went. This is where the settlement money for Don Bliss went. This is why we cannot find 100 grand voted for the Water treatment facility and why we have unpaid bills the money for which was funded. It’s just missing. This is why we are now about $700,000 in the red for 2012. “Yes its a secret”
We have only two selectman who know the rules, as they have voted “no” for all these transfers.
Read MASS GENERAL LAW regarding transfers.
http://www.malegislature.gov/Laws/Gener … Section33b
Section 33B. (a) For Cities and does not apply
(b) A town may, by majority vote at any meeting duly held, transfer any amount previously appropriated to any other use authorized by law. (This refers to a TOWN MEETING) Alternatively, the selectmen, with the concurrence of the finance committee or other entity establish under section 16 of chapter 39, may transfer within the last 2 months of any fiscal year, or during the first 15 days of the new fiscal year to apply to the previous fiscal year, any amount appropriated for the use of any department other than a municipal light department or a school department to the appropriation for any other department or within a department, but the amount transferred from 1 department to another or within a department may not exceed, in the aggregate, 3 per cent of the annual budget of the department from or within which the transfer is made or $5,000, whichever is greater.
No approval other than that expressly provided in this section shall be required for any transfer under this section.                   

What most people do not understand is that a budget voted by the attendees at a Town Meeting is a promise by our government and a contract between them and the citizens to spend only those funds raised an appropriated and do so exactly where they were approved. This law is in place so our TA cannot fraudulently persuade a Town meeting to fund a popular $1,000,000 project and then allow him to take that million dollars and do with it as he pleases. This is what happened to the $900,000 and it’s happening again right now.

What most people also do not understand is that budgeted monies that are not expended, for instance we budget $44,000 for a salary expense in the harbormaster’s budget but we get an intern to do the job for $17,000, which means $27,000 is unexpended and it goes into FREE CASH. Every year all the funds, which are budgeted, but not spent, come back to the Town and become a vital part of the following year’s budget. Mr. Andrews is raiding FREE CASH too.

In addition to the date restrictions, towns may only transfer funds, which are not to exceed, and it’s not 3% of the Town budget; it’s 3% of the department budget or line item from which it will be taken and then it’s either 3% of the budgeted number or $5,000 which ever is greater.

Example: If the budget is $157,000 for Clerk’s office. The most that can be transferred in a year is 3% or $4,710, so it’s the greater $5,000. That’s it! More than that MUST be by act of Town Meeting.


Andrews breaks that rule all the time and insists his employees not tell the BOS.

The reason for all this is that the FIN COM is supposed to provide planning and budgetary guidance throughout the year and regularly monitor how the town is doing with the voted budget so if things go off the rails they can begin planning to re-balance our budget. Had this process been followed like we did in the past, we would not have fired the Town accountant or have lost all that money or the money we apparently lost last year and now this year too.

Next year is going to be a catastrophe!

So lets consider a recall. It is certainly time. We have a fundamental flaw in our form of government. Mass General Law allows for full time selectman and part time selectman, unfortunately both must be voted “AT LARGE”. What this means is that instead of having one selectman from each precinct, which would insure equal representation, we have the same group of self-interested voters continuously giving us Bruce Sauvageau, Brenda Ekstrom, Jane Donahue, et all.  So we need to be a bigger and better group.

We keep losing elections to people like Ellen Begley because the former people have a machine. They choose one candidate and get behind him or her and we usually end up with 4 alternate (anti) candidates who split our vote. We can fix this town and do it one person at a time. We simply need quality people who can check their egos at the door and do what’s right when elected. Personally, I’d like to see Begley and Schneider both gone, but going after both of them would give us a confused electorate.

This is what it takes:

If you are all of the opinion that the BOS is broken then we can do this by taking Begley out first. We do it one person at a time. We choose one candidate and we all, every one of us, get behind them and get them elected. We drive people to the polls, we rent busses if necessary and we work our butts off and we win!

We need a recall petition signed by 10% of the registered voters in Town. My guess is that’s about 1400 people. The Selectman will be looking to disqualify as many signatures as possible from our petitions, so we need 2000 - 2500 signatures to be sure.

1000 people are reading these posts. We need 100 people committed to getting 20 to 25 signatures each. More is better. We need people to be active in the campaign. We need to get a handle on our friends who might want to run and stop them from making a mess for us. ONE candidate! We need to raise money. $10 from 1000 people is more than enough $2000 will do it. I’m in for $100 anyway.

And after we replace Begley, we do it again and remove Schneider if necessary.

We send a message and state in no uncertain terms that their time is done and this is our town too.

What’s most important is that when we are done we cannot quit and go back to what we were doing or they will be back!

Last but not least we get rid of Mark Andrews and Myles Burke, and we find  real professionals who are interested in our interests.   “WAREHAM”

I have Supplied the Bullets, loaded the gun and which one of you are going to pull the trigger?

What say you?