Here’s an interesting item from the TAB’s “Town Meeting Notebook” (note: your publisher makes it a point to look away from car crashes and Brookline Town Meeting as a means of trauma avoidance). Says the TAB:
In its sixth attempt at approval, a move to eliminate the residential refuse fee failed with a 177-10 vote.
Petitioner [...]
Looks like the wealthy white people had quite a time at their gala in support of Brookline High School’s 21st Century Fund this past weekend [see TAB story].
Gee, for a school department that says it’s focused on creating equity in education (read: closing the academic gap between white and minority students), they may want to [...]
This is news to me. Even though Town Meeting Member Arthur Conquest has asked for a hearing on his appeal of the internal investigation into police conduct during the May 24th Brawl at Town Hall, the Brookline Selectmen can choose not to hold a public session.
All the more reason we need an independent panel [...]
Today’s TAB features a letter to the editor from Brookline real estate booster and former Selectman Michael Merrill thanking (soon to be former) Brookline Building Commissioner James Nickerson for his service. Apparently, Merrill believes he speaks “on behalf of the [entire] Brookline community” as he closes out the missive penned with his wife.
Merrill surely [...]
What’s wrong with the Brookline Board of Selectmen giving $6 million in public funds to the Catholic Church to build a housing project at the former St. Aidan’s parish? Nothing, if you think that the statement from the Conference of Catholic Bishops on how parishioners ought to vote in the 2008 election doesn’t cross [...]
How deluded are people in Brookline town government?
I’ll tell you how. Perhaps as early as this evening, the utterly useless institution known as Brookline Town Meeting is going to pass a resolution urging state governments to pass a “clean car” bill. The resolution comes out of a proposal back in May to impose [...]
Here’s the real reason I can’t watch Brookline town government in action - I read pieces like this from Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz in the December Vanity Fair and then want to bury my head from the stark reality he presents.
Stiglitz paints a dark economic scene, a landscape hued by the Bush Administration’s failed economic [...]
Sorry folks, but if you’re expecting coverage of Brookline Town Meeting at this site, you’re going to be disappointed. This week’s assembly, like any other to which I’ve borne witness, is the political equivalent of a pro wrestling match - the outcome is pre-determined; but the chumps in the crowd think it’s genuine (political) [...]
And you get no answer. Or at least that’s the case after I asked Brookline Housing Manager Fran “The Snitch” Price whether the developer at St. Aidan’s had filed the appropriate documentation on asbestos removal prior to demolishing the rectory at St. Aidan’s. The EPA has a regulation saying that you have to advise [...]
In follow-up to the post below on Brookline’s institutional corruption, the Washington Post offers a stunning look into the roots of more traditional political corruption, this time in Alaska.
Here’s the money quote:
“You get this frontier image of individualism, stereotypical bluster, self-reliance, and it plays right into corrupt politics,” said historian Steve Haycox, author of several [...]
From Frank Rich’s column in today’s New York Times:
In the six years of compromising our principles since 9/11, our democracy has so steadily been defined down that it now can resemble the supposedly aspiring democracies we’ve propped up in places like Islamabad. Time has taken its toll. We’ve become inured to democracy-lite. That’s why [...]
I wonder if we can get the internal investigation report - concerning allegations of police mistreatment during May 24th’s Brawl at Town Hall - into the time capsule placed in the monstrosity above the wine store at Coolidge Corner. It is the narrative for Brookline at the dawn of the millennium.
And the passage that [...]
If we didn’t need to worry about the politicization of the Brookline Police Department, we do now.
The Brookline Police Executive Board has an op-ed in today’s TAB responding to last week’s column by Arthur Conquest concerning the Brawl at Town Hall. With this, there’s now ample reason for an independent investigation into the [...]
Maybe Brookline is the exceptional place the propaganda machine out of town hall says it is. I mean, where else do they get non-profit institutions to freely give over payments-in-lieu-of taxes at levels beyond what is required of them?
First, there was Children’s Hospital volunteering to pay $1.2 million (according to the Town’s highly suspect calculations) [...]
Recently, I wrote that the Brookline Selectmen are looking for a new development director (I guess they want to bring another Sleepy’s to town). And in doing so, I came across a listing for an operations manager in the sanitation and highway department [see listing].
Now this is weird, because this position reports to the [...]
We’re just about six months away from a local election to fill two seats on the Brookline Board of Selectmen - those held by Nancy Daly and Gil Hoy. I don’t see why Gil Hoy would stand for re-election after the brutal smear campaign waged by his colleagues, along with Town Administrator Richard Kelliher and [...]
Thank God we live in “high-minded Brookline” where the very hint of politicization of the police would be met with a loud chorus of protests by our civil libertarians (they might even put on their ACLU buttons). It’s our good fortune that the police don’t try and charge people with crimes in retribution for [...]
Looking for that once in a lifetime opportunity? Want to know the pleasure that comes from serving the real estate development community at the expense of taxpayers? Want to see the joy on a local merchant’s face when you hand them $3 thousand in public funds for “snowflakes“?
Is that you, my friend?
Well if [...]
This is Brookline calling, this is Brookline calling: the last remaining station calls to United Nations. Earlier yesterday government forces launched a general attack on all that is decent in Brookline. We are requesting you to send us immediate aid in the form of parachute troops over the northern provinces. For the sake of [...]
Here’s the internal police investigation into the May 24th Brawl at Town Hall [read it here].
Word from Arthur Conquest is that he will appeal the findings of this report to the Brookline Selectmen. I guarantee readers this, the appeal hearing will be another mob rule affair akin to the January 2006 hearing when Selectman [...]
