Sunday, October 5, 2014

Slogging towards town meeting

Steve Wynn goes on CNBC and hammers away at Obama calling him “immature” and “cannot believe we elected someone so inexperienced.” Two days later the Feds indict three mooks involved in wire fraud revolving around the land Wynn has purchased for a gin mill in Everett. Revenge? Probably.
The situation with the mooks is just so typical of the gaming industry – I guess it is a rather bizarre term for it – “Industry?” Anyway, the pinky ring fingered set gravitate around it and have ever since gambling started.
In Massachusetts gaming is on the ballot and it most certainly will pass. I’ll vote for it.
The Boston Red Sox will be in the playoffs in 2015. They have already started throwing money at some of their problems.
Aaron Hernandez continues to have charges whittled away as more and more evidence gets tossed. Why are the police so freaking dumb arse when it comes to acquiring evidence? Proper punishment would be to band all involved from any paid details for two years.
This is the description of the Granby, MA public safety complex. Granby is about 1/3rd the size of Middleboro but note that the structure is both fire and police. Cost is 6.5M. The police portion of the building is 17,000 SF.
“Engineering services for a new 23,926 sq. ft. 2 story public safety facility. Project included 1 bay vehicle drive through sally-port, booking and holding facilities, evidence processing and storage, found property storage, mens and womens locker rooms, training facilities, detectives area, chiefs and administration area, patrol offices and report writing spaces, E911 dispatch area, break room, communications equipment room, lobby with toilet and interview spaces and public area community/training room. Project also includes a (10) bay vehicle apparatus bay with adjacent hose storage turnout gear and miscellaneous storage areas, (2) room dorm section, kitchen and day room. Building is energy efficient, modern, tested technologies to comply with the Massachusetts Energy Code. Building was designed around the LEED Certification base approaches for energy conservation, controls, system designs, documentation and installations.”
Tying the police station to a historical building was the death knell for the project. That became obvious with the famed Bumpkin poll and post-election analysis.
I have no issue with a purchase of a “Traitor’s house,” but I do have issue with spending 2M to fix it up. That is not exactly “pristine” as one BOS member has stated. I will also feel quite comfortable stating that is going to be just for starters.
My grandfather’s house in Pennsylvania was a sixteen room brick farm house with several hundred acres of farm land. His neighbor was Dwight Eisenhower. The farm was eventually sold for development with the stipulation the farm house be maintained and any addition work be done before a shovel full of soil was turned over.
In Bridgewater their CPC wasted over a million bucks with the same lofty aspirations for a wreck. It failed. The house cannot be sold and no one is interested in renovation. The positive is the land is protected.
Town meeting is upon us and the usual local characterless will come out to make the whole process as boring as possible. I am sure this quaint ritual does have some significance from a historical perspective, but it has long passed its shelf life. Folks could care even less than they do about the general elections.

1 comment:

An Old Codger said...

I've always appreciated that you are a straight shooter who pulls no punches and feels no need to impress.

Seems to me that politics at every level is corrupt and knee high in manure. Since it is obvious this will never change I choose not to personally invest myself in "the process" beyond voting my gut feelings at elections.

My suspician though is that hacks at all levels have angry type A personalities who push for what they want by attacking the credibility of anyone who gets in their way. They are simply incapable of stepping back to gain any real perspective.

Glad to see you have continued your blog, bogo.