 |
| Council Reorganization one of the first items on the agenda |
By Will Collette
This Monday, November 14, our august Town Council will once again meet to deliberate solutions to the pressing problems of our part of the world. As always, the regular meeting will start at 7 PM in the Town Council Chambers.
In Part 1, I gave special treatment to an early agenda item, Jim Mageau's turn to stand up during the "Persons Wishing to Be Heard" segment. I absolutely guarantee that this alone will be worth the price of admission.
Though that's not to say the rest of the agenda doesn't have some pretty interesting stuff, including a presentation by my friend and Progressive Charlestown colleague Tom Ferrio, who will also stand up, before Mageau goes on, during the "Persons Wishing to Be Heard" segment. I also absolutely guarantee this will be good stuff and completely different than anything Mageau might plan to say.
And there's more.
 |
| "My time has come!" |
While we might hope that this might be the time when Tom Gentz, Deputy Dan Slattery and Lisa DiBello turn in their resignations, I wouldn't count on that.
Tom Gentz may decide this is a good time to swap posts with Deputy Dan Slattery. In recent meetings, Gentz seems to have slipped a lot, making frequent errors, losing his place and having trouble speaking as the nights wore on. Deputy Dan would probably love to take over as Council President. I can picture his first executive decree - ordering all town employees to wear martial-style uniforms and carry sidearms.
Bogus Residential Wind Energy Ordinance. The Council will hold a "public hearing" and then vote (almost certainly a 3-2 vote) to approve the Planning Commission's ordinance that will make it just about impossible for any Charlestown property owner to install a wind energy generator of any size or variety on their property. The CCA wants this. Ruth Platner wants this. Deputy Dan Slattery thinks wind generators make your head explode. Lisa DiBello thinks the wind is blowing against wind energy, at least in Charlestown. Tom Gentz doesn't care because he has his solar panels. Gregg Avedisian and Marge Frank will try to talk sense about the importance of wind energy. Some of us will continue to oppose this charade, but the result is a foregone conclusion under this Council.
Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition. Liquor licenses are usually not a very exciting portion of Town Council meetings, but we may be in for a reprise of the spectacle we saw at the September Council meeting when Council President Tom Gentz did his single-handed best to trash, if not destroy, one of Charlestown's few new businesses, the Breachway Grill. They're coming back to get their full license and it will be interesting to see if Gentz continues his vendetta against them.
Affordable Housing. Tom Gentz says the Platner-Gentz Affordable Housing Deconstruction Act will not be on this month's agenda. He took a pretty good beating for it at last month's council meeting, the last two Affordable Housing Commission meetings and flubbed his presentation at the Planning Commission - Ruth Platner took over his presentation, making it pretty clear that this awful piece of proposed legislation is her idea. However, that doesn't mean there won't be affordable housing fireworks. After months of begging for people to volunteer to serve, there are now three proposed members, one of them a prominent CCA steering committee member and affordable housing hater, Faith Labossiere. The other two applicants say little about themselves, but I don't believe in coincidences.
Maybe it's just my biased and jaded point of view, but the Town Council majority just seems to get more brazen about their contempt for the interests of the majority of Charlestown citizens and their intent to serve the interests of Charlestown's elite 1%.
To get yourself in the right frame of mind, once again I offer you....