Westerly, Don’t Let DiLibero Fool You

Hopkinton’s current Town Manager is looking for work elsewhere.  More specifically, he is one of two candidates for the position of Town Manager in Westerly.  He seems to have bounced around a lot and this should be their first warning sign.  It should have been ours but look at who was on the Town Council that hired him…  But I digress.

The Westerly Sun has him quoted as saying,

A North Kingstown resident, DiLibero said while he has young children in school and his wife works in Boston, he could find a local rental for the off-season. In the long-term, however, he would “look forward to the opportunity to reside … in Westerly.”

If I recall correctly, he said the same thing 3 years ago when he was hired in Hopkinton.  Maybe 3 years is not long-term enough? Or maybe Hopkinton was only a short-term gig anyways?  So Westerly, take what he says with a grain of salt. He is staying in North Kingstown, he ain’t ever going to move to Hopkinton or Westerly.  And especially not in this housing market.

There was this little gem from the other candidate, Hartford,

“Clearly we need to look at downsizing town government in the face of declining state aid … “ he said. “We have to respect and value the work our town employees do, certainly, but the town government does not exist to provide job security to its employees.”  He added, “There is no reason why we cannot deliver services more efficiently and with a smaller staff.”

I don’t mean to sound sarcastic, I really like that idea.  It is certainly something I have repeatedly proposed we try in Hopkinton on this blog (reduction of the town staff, that is).  But Westerly, if you do a little research, you will find that DiLibero has actually increased the number of Town employees in that past 3 years.  He has managed to keep the budget about flat despite this, but in 2009, it’s going to explode or get voted down and he will be forced to lay people off.  It is not something he wants to do and not something he has approached publicly in the past 3 years.

Frankly, it boggles my mind how he even made it to the short list.  The only thing I can figure is that he was made a final candidate to give the search some credibility and ensure that Hartford would be hired.  It is an age-old trick in hiring, you pick someone who is just credibile enough to make the whole process look good but who is not actually good enough to get hired. The fact that they only went with 2 final candidates is also fishy.  You always pick the best 3. Out of 40 applicants, DiLibero got picked?  I cannot beleive that in a job market this tight, he is the best they could find.  But the citizens of Westerly have noted this also and are not pleased…

Felkner is now officially costing us money

Well, not quite.  But quite probably in the near future.  From Friday’s Westerly Sun,

He also asked the court to impose a $5,000 fine against the School Committee as permitted by the state’s Open Meetings Act for “a public body or any of its members found to have committed a willful or knowing vio lation.”

So assuming Felkner wins, the School Board will owe the State a $5,000 fine.  But the School Board will not be fined as individuals, but elected officials doing their jobs.  And your taxes will cover that $5,000.  Wa-ho!  And we’ll get to pay court costs too!  Even more Wa-ho!

The Westerly Sun also points out that Felkner missed 30% of the School Board meetings, the highest of any of the members of the past two years,

Asked last week why he has missed a number of meetings, Felkner cited his job as president of the Ocean State Policy Research Institute, a free-mar ket think tank.
“I started this company a year and a half ago,” he said. “Things come up.”

He said he often travels for the non profit group, which, in addition to him, has one other full-time employee, six volunteers and three interns.
Asked again about his attendance record and its effect on his School Committee performance, he said, “There’s no doubt that if I was able to attend every single meeting that I would be able to do more work.”
He noted: “It’s not uncommon to find CEOs that do a lot of different things. That’s just the nature of the person … they tend to be involved in a lot of things.”

Well, guess what?  If you can’t make the meetings, how effective can you represent us?  And CEO?  Give me a break.  You started a bogus “think tank” to pay your salary because you can’t find anything better to do, which you admitted in the Projo article last week.  You’re running a political propaganda machine.  You are no “CEO”.

That is how Felkner said he considers himself, as he is also working to start a Rhode Island chapter of the National Association of Scholars.

Scholar?  Excuse me?  WTF?  And I’m a goddamn priest cause I went to church last month.  And I’m a plumber too, because I flushed the toilet an hour ago.  And I am lumberjack because I cut down my Christmas tree.  

How pompous can one man be?  If there was ever any doubt that Felkner has the biggest (most undeserved) ego in Hopkinton, it should be dispelled by now.

The other — and the reason why he said he wants to serve on both the School Committee and council — is to implement school choice, a voucher sys tem in which parents choose where to send their children to school, regardless of location.

Well, I told you that last week, if you have ever read his blog it is pretty apparent that it is his primary reason for being on the School Board.  Although I also wonder if he wants Chariho dissolved.  I’m just not sure.   But vouchers cost money, they do not save money.  As a municipality, we need to educate the Town’s children.  If the Town offers you a voucher, they still need to pay the teachers in the school district.  This applies even if fewer kids are going to the Town school.  And so we pay for the Town school and the kids to go somewhere else.  And most people won’t even use the voucher unless they can get the full $12,000, which the Town won’t pony up (the most you will ever see is $4,000).  The people who will use it are the people already putting their kids in private school.  So in the end, it’s wasted effort and we end up paying a little more for kids to go somewhere else and nothing changes.

And Bill Felkner doesn’t show up to School Board or Town Council meetings.  I have not been wrong yet, and I won’t be this time. 

I’m still waiting for the School Board to schedule all their meetings at the same time as Hopkinton Town Council meetings.  It would certainly solve their Felkner problem.  Maybe they are waiting until they lose in court.

Felkner, the Biggest Whiner of All

I do believe that Bill Felkner is the biggest whiner in Rhode Island.  While the Chariho Times is convinced he is trying to become the  emperor of Chariho, I disagree. I think he is just trying to force school vouchers through the system or disband Chariho.  I’m not sure which.  And he probably just wants school vouchers because he has his kids in private school (or wants them there) and can’t see why the district won’t cover his costs.  His motives are entirely selfish.  He’s just trying to save himself some cash at the expense of the rest of us, he’s a good little capitalist.

But that does not make him a whiner.  He is a whiner because he is suing RIC because they told him “no” and just like a 5-year-old, he’s crying over it.  Here is the story:  Felkner went to RIC to get a masters degree in social work.  In order to get the degree, he needed to do an internship in social work and then write a paper.  But Felkner thinks he is clever and instead of getting his hands dirty and working in Providence with the poor and disenfranchised, he decided to go do an internship working with Carcieri on welfare.  The faculty even let him do it, but he still had to do some actual social work.  Obviously, working for Carcieri is also getting dirty, but the filth is of a different and more insidious quality.  So he ignored his professors, did what he wanted to do and when he submitted his paper, he was denied the degree because he never did any social work.  He was given an old-fashioned smackdown for being a wiseass punk and now he is suing that his professors are liberals.  The liberal thing is a red herring to get the conservative nut-jobs on his side and pay for the lawsuit.  It has nothing to do with the fact that he’s not smart enough to follow the rules the rest of us follow.

This is what I got from college:  The professors are hired as the experts.  We may not like them and we may not agree with what they say.  But our job as students is to at least pacify them.  If they teach us better by being jerks, then we have learned something more than they expected.  But the rules go like this:  They tell us what to do, we do it.  Its just like being in the real world:  Boss tells us what to do, we do it.  We all live by these rules.  And if we don’t, there are consequences.  But not Bill “the cat food salesman” Felkner.  He makes his own rules and if you don’t like it, he’ll sue you.  And this is because he is really just a big whiner.   I thought Cordone was an embarrassment.  Now I wish we had him back, Felkner is way worse than Cordone.  At least Cordone took the punches without whining that no one would let him have his way.

I predict that he will lose his lawsuit against RIC.  It is a foolish waste of time and makes a fool out of everyone it touches, himself included.  Once again, it is no surprise his is “self-employed”.  I have a feeling he’s probably rubbed every boss he ever had the wrong way.

The article is here (Projo article) and the follow quote sums it all up:

RIC argues that Felkner equates his right to free speech with “a claim to be able to create his own curriculum, something which is not constitutionally guaranteed.”

Which means that in Felkner’s world, he’s right, you’re wrong and he’s going to make you pay for disagreeing with him.  On second thought, maybe he does want to be the emperor of Chariho.  it’s kind of ironic that when the School Board makes up it’s own rules to boot him out, it is not OK.  When he makes up his own rules to get a degree, it is OK.  Perhaps hypocrisy is another trait would could add to his resume of talents?

PS:  This is also funny:

In spring 2005, Felkner posted a transcript of a conversation he had recorded between himself and Prof. Roberta Pearlmutter — without her knowledge.

Wait, isn’t that illegal wiretapping?  Maybe someone should call the Hopkinton PD and check it out!?!  I’d say Prof. Pealmutter has a rock solid case against The Great Whiner.  He even admitted doing it.

Rhode Island is for Whiners

Remember those old commercials, “Virginia is for Lovers”?  Well the new motto for Rhode Island should be, “Rhode Island is for Whiners”.  

I’m not sure what’s in the drinking water lately but it seems like all Rhode Islanders do is complain about how they are not being treated like they deserve.  The biggest whiner of all is Felkner, but I’ll get to that next week.

Case in point:  The Westerly DMV.  I say let it die.  People are bitching and moaning because the least used DMV branch in the State is being shut down.  Boo hoo hoo.  Don’t we have a continuing financial emergency?  Aren’t we trying to balance a budget?  Shut it down.  Hell, let’s shut down all but 3 of them.  I read people complaining that they don’t even know where the Wakefield branch is.  Get a map, dumbass.  Rhode Island is the smallest state in the union.  Deal with it by acting like it.  The other complaint I hear is, “South County is being ignored”.  Damn straight.  We should be ignored, only a small percentage of the population lives down here.  That’s what  democracy is all about, ignoring the minority!  And the reason I live here is because no one else does.

Some more whining for you:  

http://www.projo.com/news/content/retirees_return_12-18-08_5LCM01V_v25.40bec13.html

The State Colleges have had their budgets slashed and hundreds of people forced to retire.  But the system was under strain 5 years ago, just like most of our other state services.  So they rehired a bunch of people back at hourly and part-time rates.  They get no benefits but they are essentially doing the job they have always done (but getting paid peanuts to do it).  Even if the State had the money to replace these people, it would cost a fortune.  So the service is provided and it costs the State very little.  But if you go to the “survey” section of this article, all you see are people whining about how retirees are “fleecing” the state.  Clearly, the people making these types of comments are mentally incompetent or plain retarded, but once again, Rhode Island is for Whiners.

The other option is to close it all down.  Shut down CCRI, RIC, URI, the DOT, the State  Police, the Governor’s office, etc.  It’s fine by me.  But no one ever suggests this because Rhode Island is full of whiners whose lives are dependent upon the care of the State.  People won’t even publicly admit the Hopkinton Police Department is a completely useless duplication of services, and that one is a no-brainer.  

My advice, shut the hell up.  I’m tired of people crying because they can’t get the services they want and then screaming when anyone suggests raising taxes, because that is all that is left to support their precious services.  It’s just plain stupid and makes those who espouse this attitude look foolish.

What Constitutes a Monopoly

I want cheap electricity.  So I have decided to shop around.  And I think the prices offered by United Illuminating are excellent.  United Illuminating is a small independent electric company located in central CT.  So I am going to sign myself up.

 

Hypothetical conversation between you and me follows:

You:  Ishmael, you cannot do that.

Me:  Why not? 

You:  Ishmael, you are locked into using National Grid.

Me:  You mean there is a monopoly in Rhode Island and every other state in the country that requires me to get my electricity from a local provider? 

You:  Yes indeedy!

Me:  Oh, so it must be a governmental service right? 

You:  No.

Me:  No?

You:  No.

Me:  WTF! ARE YOU KIDDING ME? 

You:  No.

Me:  So you are telling me that a private company has a monopoly on electricity and I have to buy it from them?  And  if I don’t like it I can go screw off?

You:  Yes.  Welcome to America.  There is a sham group called the Public Utilities Commission that is supposed to regulate rates but they do what they are told by their corporate bosses so we end up getting shafted every time.

Me:    How can this be?  In modern day America, public services are provided to the public for the cost of their taxes.  How can a private company run a public necessity and then MAKE A PROFIT?

You:  Because the free market sucks.  Just look at the Depression of 2008-2012.  The whole thing was caused by lack of governmental regulation.  And we’re too stupid to learn from our mistakes, so there you go.    Suck it, you whittling IHOP monkeys.

 

The fact is, if I want to educate my children, I can use the governmental service or I can put them in private schools.  Although William Felkner is under the delusion that public education is a monopoly, he is simply wrong.  The public provides for public education.  If you do not like that education, there are dozens of private institutions you can send your kids to and even some public schools that will take your tuition dollars.

Grow up Felkner, if you want to rage at windmills, feel free.  But if you want to take on REAL monopolies, fight the electric company.  You will be wasting your time either way, but at least you’ll have some credibility if you take on National Grid.  The School Board is not a monopoly.  It may be as misguided as you, but it is a public service, not a monopoly.  Just because the School Board is currently a majority in opposition to you, that is not a monopoly.  Is there anyone out there that believes your ludicrous propaganda?

No Good Will Come of This

Mr. Felker is done being a useful member of the Chariho School Board regardless of whether he wrests his seat back or not.  Obviously, if the courts decide that the School Board can remove him, he will be removed.  But even if he gets to keep his seat, he will do Hopkinton no good.  And the reason for this is pretty straightforward:  In the past two years all he has done is fight with his colleagues on the Board (whether right or wrong) and caused a lot of animosity.  The problem with this tactic is that it’s pretty hard to get much done when everyone votes against you just because they hate you.  By my count, if Felkner is reinstated permanently, the School Board is generally going to vote in blocks of 5 vs. 6, with Felkner and Hopkinton being in the minority.  And I’m not even sure that everyone in the group of 5 shares much philosophically, making it a tenuous alliance.  I can guarantee that the majority will probably vote against anything Felkner comes up with as a matter of course, however. That is human nature at its finest.

In case Mr. Felkner has not been paying attention, political processes require concessions, compromises and a little bit of quid pro quo.  I am no fan of the School Board or the superintendent but these are the people we have to deal with.  Why don’t we start dealing with them instead of fighting with them? 

If Mr. Felkner does manage to hold onto his seat, it will be that much worse.  The egos of the rest of the Board will be bruised beyond repair.  And his sniping at their personal conflicts of interest does him no good.  It just makes him look angry and petty.  After siding with Felkner, I doubt very much that Carney will have much chance at being School Board President.  But she’s definitely smarter than Felkner, she waited until she was off the Town Council to run for School Council. 

In a time when we should be thinking about bringing back our 5 and 6 graders and getting rid of the horrible math curriculum, Mr. Felkner is engaging in full blown war with the School Board.  In the end, it will be Hopkinton and our kids that will suffer because of his bloated ego.   But fortunately, Hopkinton “politicians” tend to go away eventually.  In another 3-4 years, Felkner will have moved on and probably done little to redeem himself.

How Stupid are the Hopkinton Police?

Apparently, the answer is “very”.  And the attorney general’s office says so.  The illegal wiretaping case against Marilyn Sheldon has been dropped.  It was reported a week ago in the Westerly Sun and today in the Prodivence Journal.  I’m not going to recap the whole article or post it, you can see it for free here:

http://www.projo.com/news/content/SHELDON_TAPING_CASE_12-06-08_5ICH8T8_v135.3ac3746.html

But the gist is this:  Cop, landlord and building inspector go to Sheldon’s rented house to check repairs.  Landlord tells cop and inspector they are being taped.  Then landlord destroys camera.  Sheldon brings tape to Hopkinton Police to complain about destruction of property and they arrest her for illegal wiretaping.  On the tape, the landlord makes a comment about being taped, we all read about it in the newspaper when this happened.  Yet they still arrested her.  Finally, this thing is ready for trial and the attorney general looks at the tape and points out the following fact:  They knew they were being taped so she was not illegally wiretaping. But we all knew this already and the State dismissed the charges.  So what does the Hopkinton Police Chief have to say for arresting Sheldon?

Hopkinton Police Chief John S. Scuncio said yesterday that he was unaware of the elements Healey cited in the videotape and stressed that the police charged Sheldon only after they brought the tape and other evidence to the attorney general.

“If the attorney general intended not to do it, then they should have told us from the beginning. It would have saved us a lot of time and effort,” he said.

That’s funny because all I do is read the newspaper and I was aware of the elements of the case.  Maybe they should make me Police Chief, I clearly know more about what is going on in this Town than Scuncio, and I don’t  even hang out at the bakery (and I’m not prone to harassing people to get my jollies).  The Hopkinton Police blame the AG? Did the Police even bother to watch the tape?  Are they that stupid?

The attorney general responded:

Healey, however, said Hopkinton “was very persistent about our charging this case.”

So it looks like harassment or complete incompetence.  Either one is bad for Hopkinton.  Has the Town Manager or Town Council reprimanded the Chief yet?  I suspect not, that would require a set of balls.  I am glad to see, however, that Sheldon is now out of Scuncio’s reach, geographically speaking.  I hear that the Naragansett Police are a much better quality department, less intent on harassing citizens who are being maltreated by their slumlords.

How is is that all the dregs of public service end up here?

Indignant for the wrong reasons

So the Hopkinton Town Council has decided not to talk about Felkner and his case against the School Board.  They are keeping their lips shut, sealing their minutes and pondering whether or not to sue the School Board with Felkner.  The irony here is that Felker runs the “Transparency Train” and spent alot of his time on the School Board opposing anything done in secret.  That’s great. I approve.  But the fact that the HTC went into secret session to talk about Felkner is hysterical.  I wonder what he would say if he were on his transparency train right now?

But I am still waiting for the answer to Hirst’s question: Does the Town Council believe there is a vacancy on the School Board and what are they planning to do about?  Do they have an answer?  And where is the Town Solicitor in all this?  We pay her for her opinion, please opine….

But what really makes me laugh is when people get upset that the School Board removed “our elected official”, as though the election and the “will of Hopkinton” confer some magical power onto Mr. Felkner, protecting him from poor choices, ill-fated deeds and his own inflated ego.  This is being indignant for the wrong reason.  Yes, we vote and we vote for the person we think will do the best job.  But that does not entitle them to break the law, or the law as the School Board currently sees it.  If you want to be indignant, be indignant over the fact that there is no law to address this situation or the law is too fuzzy for anyone to agree on what the law actually is.  Be indignant that even now, the Town Council is doing nothing to learn from this and prevent it from happening in the future, either by formally allowing or disallowing it in the Charter.

What happened to the Charter Commission?  Isn’t it their job to solve this?  Be indignant that they Town Council can’t fix broken laws…