On Brookline

I suppose that the big news out of last night’s selectman’s debate is that it is possible for a person to aspire for the post and have more than a few neurons working at the same time.

In fact, it felt to me like candidate Dick Benka was so far out front in this three person race (for two seats), that it’s a fight for third place between incumbents Gil Hoy and Nancy Daly. Benka strikes me as a person who has thought about the issues facing Brookline and has extended his curiosity beyond town hall.

Look, I don’t agree with him on lots of things, but I can respect how he came to his positions. And I can’t say that about the other two.

Hoy and Daly are fully indoctrinated into the Brookline cult. They’re all for library technology at $450 thousand, because it’s neat. Benka has spoken to people that worry that the technology may be obsolete upon delivery. The two incumbents think cutting back on municipal spending would be a tragedy. Benka says it can be done, and ought to be done. But done responsibly.

[An aside: Benka seems to think there's consensus (even among Brokline's most conservative elements) that an override is needed. Does he mean Roger Blood's group? Heck, they endorsed Daly; and Blood himself threw away $6 million in affordable housing funds on the St. Aidan's project. We'll see about a consensus at the polls. But I'm not feeling it.]

The seminal moment for me, though, was on the question of police details — as in, should we cut back on them? Benka answers first by saying that they could stand to be reined in. Nancy Daly says we have some busy streets in Brookline (though some are “backwater”) so we ought to have them. Hoy says that we don’t pay anything for these details, so what’s the big deal?

I’m stunned. Doesn’t Hoy know that we pay—a lot—out of the DPW budget for police details on town jobs?

So at the end of his turn to a subsequent question, Benka makes that very point. It becomes clear as day — Hoy’s been on the board for 12 years and he thinks the town’s turning a profit on police details. No wonder there’s no fiscal control.

We have a fiscal problem in Brookline because for the past several years town government has been putting off pension payments, outsourcing services at an increased expense (while keeping headcount steady) and violently resisting any attempts to put financial controls in place.

Last night two people at the table showed how we got to where we are — by eagerly doing what’s expected of them by the town administration; while the third person offered a view that was informed, and entirely his own.

I don’t know that it will make any difference to put new blood on that board. But I do know that as long as we elect people who think we need to fund a World Languages program because, “now you can take a plane all the way to China” (Daly) we’ll never put an end to the incompetence of this town government.

Nancy Daly? A plane to China? Hmm…