On Brookline

There’s a reckoning coming, a swift and painful collapse at the foundation of our public institutions. A reckoning that will put to the lie the town hall propaganda of Brookline as “Massachusetts’ best run community.” A reckoning that will show the folly of placing our trust in a Board of Selectmen featuring four intellectually and ethically corrupted individuals (i.e., Allen, Daly, DeWitt and Mermell).

On Brookline received word today that an attorney (a good one at that) has been assigned to review our appeal of “Yes for Brookline’s” refusal to provide its survey results  under the Massachusetts Public Records Law.  The documents are expected to show that the ballot the selectmen crafted for the May 6th vote was [...]

How effective are Brookline’s TMMs as its legislature meeting only one or twice each year as compared to the frequency with which Newton’s legislature (i.e. the Aldermen) meet? Newton’s aldermen are in a position to challenge its mayor more readily and more frequently than can Brookline’s TMMs challenge its Selectmen. In addition, in Brookline the town moderator exerts significant controls over TMs, both annual and special, which can stifle debate. (The town moderator, elected for a 3-year terms, not only presides over TMs, but also appoints members of the Advisory Committee and various other committees.)

The TAB and the Globe are reporting that the Town of Brookline will allow Red Sox owner John Henry to tear down his Brookline manse.
Hello?  On Brookline reported that story back on April 16th.
Time for a certain paper to get out of Gil Hoy’s bushes and on the beat.

I was hoping to put the Gil Hoy/TAB hit job to rest on this site, but events have intervened. Oy, that Greg Reibman. Here’s what he says on the TAB’s blog, as his final FU to those questioning his editorial judgments:
This stuff happens in politics.
The TAB did was newspapers do: We reported what [...]

Here’s an idea. The Brookline TAB (a Gatehouse Media publication) is spending a lot of effort to convince their readers that Gil Hoy has not been forthcoming around his early morning traffic stop in Boston of last year. They just know he’s hiding something.
We have the TAB’s managing editor saying that Hoy suggested—in [...]

The debate over the Gil Hoy pre-election hit piece still rages on at the Brookline TAB’s (a Gatehouse Media publication) blog.   And it doesn’t look good for the TAB’s managing editor Greg Reibman.  Amazingly, some of the town hall apologists think that it was not the story itself but the innuendo raised that (rightfully, to [...]

I’ll tell you what’s selfish - it’s school administrators and teachers whipping parents into a state of fear so as to vote them a pay raise. It’s the selectmen and the school committee unwilling to manage their $200 and $70 million budgets, respectively, in a way that avoids a tax increase on the elderly, who now get to choose between winter heat and paying their property tax bill.

Over at the TAB blog, managing editor Greg Reibman seems to think if he keeps shoveling, he’s going to find the pony that accounts for the pile of manure created by his paper’s hit job on Gil Hoy.
He even posits (speaking for himself, of course) that Gil hoy’s refusal to say why he resigned as [...]

But now that Brookline town government has their override, we’ll be hearing all kinds of interesting news out of town hall.  Like the Selectmen’s meeting agenda item on Tuesday concerning “re-allocations in the town hall renovation budget.”

Sometimes, the best defense is no defense at all. And the Brookline TAB’s Greg Reibman might have heeded that advice before he went to their blog to explain their actions on the Gil Hoy hit job of two weeks ago. Read his comments here.
Shorter Reibman: “When two political hacks tell us they are [...]

Wait a minute. Don’t voters have the right to know of Hoy’s traffic transgression before the election? Sure. But Hoy is also due that the charges be aired by more reliable sources than his opponent and her two campaign chairs (Selectmen Bobby Allen and Jesse Mermell). Voters also have the right to know that these three “colleagues” were likely lying when they said that they had first heard of the badge flash from Hoy himself.

Thanks to the winds of the past two days, we are able to get a good look at the work being performed at the St. Aidan’s housing project. Seems the “safety fencing” around the site is no match for a 30 mph gust.
And despite assurances from the town’s so-called conservationist [see previous column], [...]

When those with the reins of government abandon their constitutional authority in favor of their political imperatives, they commit an act of violence on our body politic. Our town government not only allowed the abuses within our public institutions, they encouraged them. And we’ll carry those bruises with us for a long time.

Readers will recall that this site reported on the bizarre plan by Brookline town government to take an elderly couple’s property at the urging of an abutter who wants to protect his bucolic view make it a sanctuary. Brookline town meeting set up a selectmen’s study committee to figure out how it can be [...]