Well, well, well. The good news about the Salisbury Affordable Housing Commission and Women’s Institute just keeps getting better and better! On top of that, we can always be guaranteed the town will be the last to know what is being cooked and served up next.
Here is the latest news flash from Mike Flint’s blog, www.thecuriouscitizen.com for the reading pleasure of everyone in Salisbury, and especially Lakeville. A 32 Unit Affordable Housing plan dubbed the more palatable “workforce housing.” Isn’t it interesting that the Women’s Institute thought the information newsworthy enough for its Newsletter to all its supporters and donors, but not quite newsworthy enough for the Lakeville Journal and/or the Waterbury Republican to notify the citizens of Salisbury? The Curious Citizen blog provides a link to the WI announcement on page 5 of their Press Kit.
One has to wonder if and when our local Affordable Housing heroes Jim Dresser, Bob Riva and Jocelyn Ayer got their copies of the WI Newsletter/Press Kit, or if they were given any heads-up whatsoever. Either way, the next question has to be whether or not Curtis Rand was alerted by any of the above people or the WI, and if so, when did he get the message? Then one needs to ask when any of them intended to tell the town.
Heavens! What am I thinking of? This is none of our business. The sale of real estate in Salisbury to the WI for Affordable Housing, facilitated by the SAHC in the interest of preserving and increasing available affordable housing in our bucolic, pastoral little New England village, is a private transaction and none of our business. Nonetheless, I have no doubt some of our citizens are going to be asking exactly where this dream project is going to be erected.
Could it be the St Mary Church property between Perry Street and Wells Hill Rd, with access at the top end of Perry Street? Might it be the Luke-Fitting property originally purchased exclusively for a new, modern, quiet and well-screened Transfer Station but fast becoming a target of the SAHC the past two years? Heck, since Curtis Rand has abandoned the plan for a modern transfer station and started pushing another minimalist, noisy mud-hole limiting our capability to properly separate and sell our recyclables so that we do a better job taking care of the environment while saving money, the town doesn’t need more than a couple acres of the Luke-Fitting land after all!
Why did we buy those two parcels for 2.2 million taxpayer dollars so many years ago? What was the precise wording of the question voted upon at Town Meeting that authorized the expenditure of all those funds to buy the Luke-Fitting property? If memory serves me correctly, it only authorized the building of the new Transfer Station, and the sale of the Luke and Fitting homes on small parcels to offset the cost to the town if they were not needed for the construction site.
And then there is the Wake Robin Inn property between Rt 41 and Wells Hill Road that is currently for sale. Perhaps it is big enough that the Inn could be converted into apartments and the motel styled out building converted as well, if not totally razed and replaced. The possibilities seem endless. Perhaps someone should start a betting pool as to which location is the most likely for the importation of any where between at least 64 to 128 more people in Lakeville.
By my modest calculations that should mean at least 32 to 64 more children in the school system, which would require two to four more classrooms of students, each staffed with a teacher and probably an aide, all in one fell swoop. Of course, if family size runs more like three or four children then the calculations of the consequences to our schools will be even more daunting. There goes the mill rate in Salisbury.
It will be very interesting to see and hear what Curtis Rand has to say about this plan, especially once we know where it is supposed to be built. He has been adamantly opposed to Bruce Palmer’s sensible and modest plan for between 6-10 units on Palmer’s property along Farnum Road – Rand has said the plan is “too dense” for the neighborhood and road access. We should all be eagerly waiting to see what gyrations Rand goes through over a 32 Unit Affordable Housing project in Lakeville, after all, he keeps saying in regards to SAHC and the WI that we should “just trust them.”
Feb 24, 2013 @ 07:42:30
You and Mike have a keen ability to write. Many of your concerns and complaints are shared by others. Resorting to name calling/labeling takes away from your appeal. It has no place in responsible debate.
Why can’t you express your feeling in an acceptable tone and with words that win the approval of others. The best conservative columnist never resort to the word tactics you think wins respect. Readers of your blogs are usually interested Republicans that have gone to the SRTC website for a number of reasons and think what they find there is the feelings of the SRTC. Your columns have resulted in much disservice to your town committee and the Republican Party as a whole.
Feb 24, 2013 @ 11:39:51
JR, thanks for your comment. Sorry I did not respond sooner but was taking my time composing what follows, then running spelling and grammar check. I went back and read Down the Garden Path…, searching for where I called anyone a bad a name or used a derogatory descriptive term and could not find any. However, I concede that the words “heroes” and “gyrations” might have set off your radar.
Heroes, which I used facetiously, is what the newspapers and so-called Progressives in town like to depict those three individuals as. They are molly-coddled and protected from any responsibility for their slipshod lack of organization, lack of consistent standards, erratic decision-making, secretive machinations and lack of any perceivable Affordable Housing progress to justify our tax dollars being expended. All that matters is the Leftwing mantra used to cover the unending flood of socialist failures here as well as worldwide – they have good intentions and mean well.
Gyrations was used to describe someone who ties themselves into a variety of knots in order to get out of a difficult situation, something Curtis Rand is noted for. The man habitually tells an impressive number of different tall-tales to dozens and dozens of individual people, making up a very creative variety of excuses that he instinctively knows will be palatable to the ear of each listener that he needs to convince of whatever. He also is noted for dreaming up myriad different imagined legal or regulatory reasons why something cannot or must be done. By the time all the convoluted negative rationales and supposed regulations and legalities are sorted out by his victim(s), their finances have been drained, and months or years wasted so they give up and go away.
I hope you and others will appreciate that I have made a concerted effort over the past six months to radically cut down on my use of pejorative terms and names for the reasons you mention. If you all saw my rough drafts and numerous revisions, rather than the end product, your hair would really stand on end. I have turned it into something of a therapeutic exercise, allowing myself to vent my spleen in the written word, later throwing it into the round file. I really do try to minimize such things.
If a few of the milder violations of polite Victorian niceties still remain, folks should understand why I retain the right to zing when someone clearly deserves to be zinged. The Socialist Progressives among us have, for the past fifty years, viciously applied Saul Alinsky’s Rules For Radicals tactics to their opponents (Republicans, Libertarians, Conservatives, Tea Partiers, etc.), ruthlessly demonizing, browbeating and intimidating them with every imaginable vile aspersion possible. Bigot, racist, uneducated idiots, Nazis, KKK, warmongers, war criminals and baby killers, homophobes, more recently Islamophobes, etc. You know the drill. The painfully well-mannered folks being vilified have been cowed for decades, capitulating the field of battle and going into hiding, throwing in the towel on virtually every issue because they cannot bring themselves to fight back effectively. The Left also has control of probably 85% of the lame stream media today as well.
People who cling to their charming and once very valuable, but now ineffective, old-fashioned belief in only debating issues with the best of good manners need to get over it. We have lost the battlefield time and again because our timidity in the face of an onslaught of abuse has resulted in a retreat for cover. I will not run for cover any more. There was a time long ago when I did, just like everyone else. That time is past. The wolves are at the door because we have been playing patty-cakes while being slaughtered by a pack of ill-mannered, irrational, rabid political predators who may be our neighbors but most definitely are not our friends.
This is politics and not a garden party. Our nation, state and town are being systematically destroyed. People who care enough to turn things around need to shake off their fears, gird their loins and start giving as good as they get, just as unrelentingly as the Left has done. And if it is too much for some individuals to actively participate in, they need to stop criticizing their own and begin defending them in the face of phony, hypocritical and pathetic whining from the Progressives at cocktail parties, the shopping aisle in LaBonne’s, or in the newspaper.
I know it is difficult to make the change. It is rather like the trauma of a new police officer during the first year or so of his/her career. Having been raised to be polite about not asking blunt, invasive questions of other people, particularly about their private lives, medical history or business activities, suddenly the new trainee has to go out on a daily basis and do the exact opposite in order to effectively investigate crimes or figure out how best to locate appropriate services for victims, the homeless and/or the mentally ill. It is a very uncomfortable transition to make, but essential in order to succeed in professionally delivering the public services that are the responsibility of the officer.
That is what Republican, Conservative, Libertarian, and Tea Party voters need to learn. We cannot allow the Left to control the message any longer, or let them think they are right about the debate or that they command the battlefield because we are too mealy-mouthed to come out swinging. We cannot hide in the house, afraid to go out for fear of being accused of bad things, silenced because we fear standing up for ourselves aggressively in the debate. And we must expose the opposition as effectively and relentlessly as they have us.
We must use Letters to the Editor, Internet blogging, YouTube videos and every other possible outlet for news and information to offset the Leftwing media like the Lakeville Journal. Janet Manko and her staff have clearly exposed their bias in the past two weeks with their scandalous, weak excuse for bashing Selectman Lauretano and not affording him the opportunity to defend himself. Ruth Epstein tries to hide her partisanship but it still shines through her reportage now and again. We should not expect anything better from someone who hugs and kisses Rep. Roberta Willis practically every time they meet in public.
Manko and company object to the amount of “ink” Selectman Lauretano has gotten over the past two years. What that really means is that they, along with the other Leftists in town, cannot tolerate the fact they do not control the message any longer. They cannot print inaccuracies, misinformation or flat out lies about Mark Lauretano or his issues, and how business is being conducted at Town Hall without there being some response to set the record straight. The public has the right to at least be exposed to the truth.
If our local media refuse to do their job because of their partisanship, then they will be circumvented. If our opposition, the media and Progressive letter writers are going to be deceitful, irrational, abusive and hypercritical in tone, instead of sticking to a rational debate of issues, then we will combine well-reasoned discussion of the issues along with some zingers here and there, accurately characterizing the actors on the Left in return. If they object to the treatment then I have one question for them that I posed once to a criminal defense attorney filing a personal home burglary and larceny complaint “ So how does it feel to be on the receiving end?” He sheepishly replied “Not good.”
Feb 25, 2013 @ 00:21:25
Oh, my goodness. A very perceptive reader has suggested to me via email that there is a third potential site for the WI 32 Unit Affordable Housing plan. The Wake Robin Inn is for sale! Now there is another interesting possibility. We have an absolute plethora of available properties in Lakeville that the Women’s Institute could squeeze 32 families onto. And just think, the access driveway onto Rt 41 is already in place. Maybe someone could start a betting pool for the amusement of neighbors around the three parcels identified so far.