Seneca on Cape Cod

Threat to close the fire station is another example

Decades ago, when our tax rate and burden were half of today's, Harwich built a fire station at the intersection of Routes 137 and 39 in East Harwich, the fastest growing part of the towns.

For decades it was funded by tax dollars when the town's budget was far less than it is today.

Now, showing the same genius that the Al Queda terrorists used this week in London, our town leaders think they can scare us into voting for the "new" override by telling us they will let our homes burn down if we don't give them what we've already told them they can't have.

Throw the rascals out

I for one was going to vote the new override, but these Harwich terrorists have changed my mind. We can no more surrender to their demands than we can to Al Queda's, and our reaction to this latest insult to democracy should be the same as London's reaction this week - throw the rascals out!

It's time for a clean sweep of these ungrateful, disobient fools. Let's start a petition drive to call a Special Town Meeting to remove not only the "old", unrepentent Selectmen, but the heads of both the police and fire departments as well.

The people, YES. The pols, NO. See The Cape Codder story here.

Short story on Harwich override drew fire

When I penned a brief news report on May 24 to scoop the rest of the media on the effort in Harwich to "override the no vote on the override", little did I expect the response.

To date thirty-five comments have been added to the story, click here and scroll to the comment area at the bottom, or scroll down this page to the next item and click where is says "38 comments".

Override supporters present 491 signatures

Harwich's town employees and supporters presented a petition at last night's Board of Selectmans meetung which will force the town to hold a special Town Meeting to re-vote the override which voters turned down last week by a 6% margin: 2,362 in favor of the tax hike and 2,505 opposed, a difference of 143 votes.

The petitioners led by Harwich businessman Dave Reese presented more than double the 200 signatures needed to force officials to call a Special Town Meeting within 45 days. The cost of the meeting and election to follow will run from $10,000 to $25,000 for the town which is already over budget.

This "petition process" of only requiring only 200 signatures in a town of over 13,000 population is a holdover of a earlier era when Lower Cape towns had populations a third or less of today's. Even in Maine, which is more rural than Massachusetts and where they also use the town meeting form of government, towns of over 2,000 population are required by statute to move to a more centralized type of government like town councils and representative town meetings.

If the same town employees pack the Special Town Meeting, as they did the annual meeting last month, the town will be forced to spend money it doesn't have to hold another election on the same issue which the town rejected by 143 votes, or 6%.

At the town disposal area during the past weekend, override supporters sought signatures from residents dropping off their trash. They wore signs asking people to stop and sign the petition and to approve the next override. Thirty-two town employees were laid off last week after the override was defeated at the polls.

By Wednesday Mr. Wiegman of the Harwich Taxpayers Association was quoted in The Chronicle as saying;

“We are shocked and appalled that a small group of individual supporters of the override now want a do over,” Wiegman said in a prepared statement on Tuesday. “We are even more surprised that, upon receiving the petitions for a special town meeting last night, that no member of the board of selectmen said a word about how inappropriate re-vote would be. The selectmen should have indicated their opposition to another vote even if they were required to hold one. We can only assume from their silence that they, individually and collectively, support another vote.”

Override proponent Dave Reese of Dave's Ribs had another view, “I’ve had some angry phone calls here today... I’ve been very surprised.”

You can leave your own feelings about this effort as a comment below.

Sitting on stools staring into the past at Otis

Look at their faces, this queer quartet of enemies, Disney dwarfs if we ever saw them. In this photo from Saturday's Boston Globe, they resemble, from the left, Dopey, Sleepy, Doc and Grumpy.

Has any one of this public servants offered an single original thought about Otis? Is Donald Rumsfeld an innovative genius by comparison? These four in their dark blue Brooks Brothers suits are the same political palookas who decry generating renewable energy off our shores to save money at home and not spend money abroad for Arab oil.

A billion here, a billion there...

And yet they want to hold on to an out-of-date, environmental disaster called Otis when consolidating it with other Air Force units would save billions in tax dollars, dollars needed to protect America from other terrorist attacks. Has it even occurred to these four that Al Quaeda has never repeated itself in the form its terrorist attacks take? There is a zero chance of Ben Laden sneaking Saudi students into the U.S. to train as pilots again, and the F-15's from Otis got to New York City after the second tower was hit onm 9-11 anyway. They'll get there a lot quicker if they were based in New Jersey.

Why the diminished thought processes?

What brought on this eerie unity of purpose of this quartet of non-thinkers? Why votes for re-election of course - these ninnies actually believe the voters on Cape Cod give a hoot if Otis disappears and a new state park appears in its stead. Why is it that the only pols and papers suggesting "moving on" to a brighter use of Otis are from off-cape?

I bet my dear readers already know the answer to that question.

He simply doesn't get it
Harwich is to be punished by its own employees for demanding good government

The arrogance of our "town servant" Police Chief Mason is breathtaking. To quote from this week's edition of The Cape Codder,

Public safety took a front seat throughout the months-long debate, with Police Chief William Mason warning that the loss of six officers inevitably would lead to higher crime rates in town. Fire Chief William Remillard told the selectmen - and more than 1,000 people from the podium at Town Meeting on May 2 - that the proposed reduction in his staff would lead to longer emergency response times and leave the East Harwich station short-staffed.

This man is dangerous and should be terminated immediately. What the man SHOULD have said was, "I am a servant of the people, and I will find a way to protect and defend Harwich properly with whatever staffing I am given."

The first task the new Selectman should attend to is a search for a new Police Chief who will serve the community rather than threaten it. If any of our other present department heads can't do their jobs as "professionals", let's get new managers who can.

It shouldn't be difficult. Start with the nine officers being laid off due to incompetent management and planning of Chief Mason and our ex-Selectmen.

As a comment here on my previous column put it, "The town's mistake was underestimating the voter... It is not the responsibility of citizens on a fixed income to supporta pro rata increase in pay for town workers. I noticed the next day the sun came out the birds were singing so it was not the end of the world."

The Harwich Police & Fire threaten a slowdown?

In today's CCTimes article on the Harwich voters' failure to endorse the bad management of their town by defeating a nearly $3 million override, the local cops & firemen are quoted thus:

"Police officials say it will mean less time spent on crime prevention. Fire officials have predicted it will likely mean slower response time."

What an astonishingly stupid statement, PR at its worse. These coddled & protected public servants have been cocooned in the security of the public trough so long they haven't a clue about the "real world" where the Harwich voters live and work and pay for their own health insurance with no retirement or other bennies.

Blame the town's managers, not your neighbors

Six policemen and six firemen are about to learn a lesson in the American system of free enterprise. That's where "the customer is right" or the customer changes vendors - in this case the Harwich voters changed Selectmen, defeating the two incumbents.

I live in Harwich too, and I am unhappy that our town is forced to lay off any workers. I feel that way about ANY layoffs.

But in order to solve a problem, you first have to own it - ask any 12 Step Program member. In Harwich's case, Step One should be, "I admitted I was powerless over fiscal responsibility - my town budget was unmanageable" and go on from there.

Cape Cod can fight & lose, or jump at this grand opportunity

As the Boston Globe Editorial on Saturday put it -

While the direct loss would be just 505 jobs, defenders of Otis say that the air base is such an integral part of the Massachusetts Military Reservation, which also houses Coast Guard, Army National Guard, and Air Force facilities, that maintaining the Military Reservation without Otis might not be practical.

So what we face today is what to do with this priceless opportunity. After decades of helter-skelter development, Cape Cod has the unexpected chance to "do it right this time." By Sunday the local daily was whining about Otis being "a fabric of Cape life."

Sure, the rich folks in New Seabury just love being awakened or having their golf swing disturbed by the roar of an F-15. I bet the plain folks in the 'hood won't miss the clamor either.

Pay me now, or pay me later, remember Fort Devens?

If Otis didn't go in this round of base closings, it would have gone in the next... or the next. During previous base closings most of the communities affected have wasted millions of tax dollars fighting these rational changes in our defense stategy, and they've mostly failed.

When Massachusetts lost Fort Devens in a round of five base closings in 1968 in out state, Route 128 became "America's Technology Highway" staffed by the people who stayed here to work, read Spyro's April 21 blog here. Or, as the Worcester Telegram said in their lead story "As the closing of Fort Devens has demonstrated, shutting down redundant or obsolete military operations can open the door to major economic opportunities for surrounding communities.."

In the case of this huge hunk of Cape Cod, we should rejoice at the opportunity The Pentagon has given us.

Let's take whatever monies and political clout we would have wasted in a futile attempt to fight the inevitable closing of Otis AND the inevitable closing of the Massachusetts Military Reservation as well, and open public discussions about what to do with these thousands of acres.

For starters, back to the future

How about creating an Otis State Park with two 36 hole golf courses encircled by walking and bike trails, our own version of "Boston's Emerald Necklace" or New York's Central Park? As the comment below suggests, the whole schmeer reverts to state park status when or if the base lease ends, so all we need to do is plan what to include in the "new" park.

Let's search for a Cape Cod Frederick Law Olmsted to design it for us.