Depends on Your Definition of Broad (2).
By Jim Conley • Mar 19th, 2008 • Email This Post to a Friend •
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Remember when the pro-override organization “Yes for Brookline” (founding member Selectman Robert L. Allen, Jr.) announced that they have “broad support” for an override in Brookline? Remember that?
Well, I had heard that the organization headed by Selectman Betsy DeWitt and School Committee members Alan Morse and Judy Meyers had been polling the ballot (adios World Languages) prior to the selectmen voting on it last week. So, I asked for the poll results to see just how broad the support reaches.
Says DeWitt:
In response to your inquiry about polling, Yes for Brookline is a municipal ballot question committee, a private organization that supports the findings of the Override Study Committee. The group has no plans to release poll results at this time. If, in the future, the information is released, the committee will be sure that you receive a copy.
A ballot question committee is not subject to public records regulations. Officers and members who hold elected office are acting as private citizens and are not subject to public records requirements as members of the committee.
First of all, I wasn’t making a public records request. I was asking for proof of the claim made in the group’s press release and on their Web site. What’s hard about that? Plus, I have never heard of a campaign withholding poll results that show them in a strong position.
I don’t need a poll to tell me where the broad support lies - among the officeholders and hangers-on within Brookline town government. They’ve made a mess of things and they need a bailout.
And they don’t care who gets hurt along the way.
Jim Conley is publisher of On Brookline.
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SAYING NO TO “YES FOR BROOKLINE”
So “Yes for Brookline” can lie, if it wishes, about its polling and there is no remedy. Let’s keep an eye on public officials who are part of this private organization to make sure that no public funds or their equivalents are used by it. You know how to whistle, don’t you? Take a look at “Blowing the Whistle” under Commentary to the left.
By the way, do contributors to “Yes for Brookline” plan to take charitable deductions? There’s whistle for that as well.
I understand that Selectwoman DeWitt’s husband Dennis is pushing to spend thousands of Town dollars on The Brookline Reservoir’s Pump House (stone building at Reservoir’s base) since he discovered it has one of the nations first tin roofs and steel staircase. Mr. Dewitt has not come up with a public use for the building but wants to spend the money just in case. This while his wife cries that the Town is in financial ruin. I wonder if they talk to each other?
‘TIN ROOF BLUES” and “STAIRWAY TO PARADISE”
might serve as background music for this proposed project. Of course a parking area would be required so that all Brookline-ites sharing Mr. DeWitt’s interest in antiquity can access and enjoy the pitter patter of rain and an occasional cat on a hot tin roof while traipsing as Fred Astaire on the staircase. Here’s a bumper sticker suggestion for Mr. DeWitt:
PUMP UP THE OVERRIDE
Whoops! Looks like support for the override was pretty broad after all, eh?
–BK