WHO'S ZOOMING WHO

    Although I couldn't be at the BoS meeting last night I did hear from Mr. W. that the subject of the insurance coverage for the Bucknell case came up. I guess the BoS is in full damage control mode after the latest Berkshire Record Article. For your convenience I have attached a copy of the letter that Mr. Spaulding referred to in his article for the record. This letter is a matter of public record and is available at the town hall although I received a copy attached to an email dated today.  If you read the 5th paragraph you will see that the town will not receive one thin dime of coverage for any issues raised in the complaint. I have also attached a copy of the complaint so you can determine for yourself the issues that will not be covered. I know the BoS claimed to have a letter dated 04/04/2014 that supposedly contradicts this latest letter and I haven't seen the letter but it is pretty clear that the town is not covered. Perhaps the BoS is creating a plausible explanation as to why they misled the people at the town meeting. I would challenge the BoS to publish the April 4th letter so we all may see the truth of the claim; or lack thereof.

The letter and complaint referred to above was attached to the email sent to those on my email list.

To receive an email with copies of the letter and complaint attached send your request to KevinZurrin@aol.com . If you wish to be included in future mailings please ask to be added to the email list.

Sarah Schneider's thoughts

     Since I changed the comment policy comments have to be filtered. Sarah asked me to post this in the comment section of the previous post. After reading her comments I asked her if I may post it as an article. Sarah's thoughts express the viewpoint of many people who for whatever reason have tuned out of town politics. In light of recent events I think many of these people are starting to wake up and get involved. These are some of Sarah's thoughts; which according to her are for the most part facts.

 

     Stanley Farnum is a well known and knowledgeable man! Everything he says in the articles he wrote were right on the money! There are too many things in this town that the voters are just throwing away their rights on and letting things pass that shouldn't even be put out there let alone passed to raise our taxes!

 

     The water department was owned for as long as I can remember and maintained as well by Robert Parrish! When his health was failing he sold it to a man I can't recall his name but he knew before he sold it to the town it was failing and needed a great deal of repair! Well who steps in the "Mighty Select People"? They twisted and turned and got the room packed with the yes of course we need to take it over, not having a clue what was about to happen to their tax dollars!

 

     Egremont's water is suppose to be the best water I guess ever on this earth! Well if that is the case then it should be as clean and pure from the beginning to the end of the line! Well it's not and so many are getting fooled by this! There is less than half of Egremont's population on town water while the rest of us have our own wells! Tell me why I should pay for my water twice when I only get it once?

 

     I know, it's our civic duty to take care of our neighbors! BULL! If something happened to my well do you think the town would vote to drill me a new one? Who are you kidding? Look where the water department is now! There are people in this town getting it free and others not even hooked to a meter! All the blame was put on one person and sorry that is not how it works! Enough on the water it got voted down and hopefully the select-board won't be stupid enough to ever try slipping it in anywhere again! Enough is enough!

 

     The same goes with the schools!! Charlie Flynn also said at our doorstep that he was going to see that the extra schools be closed! Considering if anyone has ever looked into the fact that when the NEW Mt Everett was built all outlying schools were to be closed that was part of the vote! Check it out don't just let the select-board suck you into lie after lie! The only school that did close was Alford! As I recall the North Egremont school had already been sold though South Egremont remained oh yes and Sheffield Center closed! Why would any tax payer want to put so much of their hard earned money into repairing these old decrepit buildings? Onward and upward!

 

     My husband and I were interviewed recently by a very nice young man from the record! He didn't mix any words at all! He told the story the same as if we had written it ourselves! Of course Charlie Flynn isn't going to agree and he and whom ever may think we were set up! Well they are wrong on both accounts!

 

      People may think we were wrong by opening our mouths but sorry the truth is the truth and so help me God we told the truth! We are so sick of the lies being told in this town from select board members to police officers! Yes you heard me right! I could tell you a few incidents but it doesn't matter because my saying is , it always comes back to bite you right in the a_ _!! In fact I was at a meeting awhile back to let the select board know of some lies and instead got more told to me! Again a subject for another time!

 

     Now on to this CPA! If anyone thinks this is the best thing for our town, I suggest you look into it a little closer! You may NEVER see any of your money back in this town and certainly if did it wouldn't even come close to what you will be paying in your taxes! All I can say is I hope come November that everyone who has questioned if it is right or wrong to do sway more to the wrong than the right because us as a whole Town of Egremont will once again take a screwing if you vote yes! Please consider doing research certainly there were a select few at the Town Meeting who did but of course because maybe they can afford to give money away to other towns! Well I can't and I'm not afraid to admit that every penny I have goes to better my husband and I, not to support other towns projects!

 

     After what they want for these schools with a handful of kids in them and most not even from this five town district to the water department that you may not even be on the system to now this CPA and upping our taxes to better other communities and leaving ours to deteriorate! This is only the beginning on the CPA. There will be much more out there before November vote! So research people and educate yourself! It is far from being a clean cut addition to our Town and taxes as we were really led to believe!

 

     Ok well can't end without making a comment on one very BIG lie that appeared in the record this week! We all know at least the ones in attendance, that our fine select board said they wanted to only vote the $5000 in for the Bucknell law suit because the insurance the town has already said they were covering it! Wrong again!! Can't understand why our select-board as smart as they think they are can't seem to do their homework correctly! We may as well have three 4 year olds running the town of Egremont!

 

     I am so totally disgusted with the management of this town as I said before in ALL departments! Everyone needs to suck it up and stop spending money, lying about everything and anything, doing half ass work, and making the tax payers look like the bad guys because they have the nerve to question why things are the way they are!!!!! I hope this town starts stepping up to the plate and start taking our town back!! BIG changes need to take place and I'm sorry to say that unless we get some fresh faces in control it is never going to happen!! Think people!! Do we want to take our town back or do we want to let it go to hell??

 

Sarah T. Schneider

déjà vu all over again

    We all remember the big to do about the town spending over 2 million to put in a waste water treatment plant for the 20 properties along the river. Fortunately the people didn't fall for the pitch; they rose up and defeated it at a well attended town meeting. We also remember the the water company fiasco where we were promised it wouldn't cost the taxpayers one thin dime. Unfortunately we did fall for this pitch and we're still suffering the consequences for this choice. Well folks it looks like it's déjà vu all over again.

     This CPA tax is another one of these harebrained "progressive" schemes that needs to be defeated at the ballot box. Since this is another well intentioned but misguided attempt to tell the people the best way to spend their hard earned money, because obviously the government is the only one who knows how to spend your money, I'll use the wise words of one of the pillars of our community. A man who has been here for nearly a century. A true native who has seen many of these schemes come and go and has witnessed the cost to the town when we fell for a slick sales pitch. When I asked Stan what he thought of the CPA tax he gave me these two letters These are the sagacious words I found in his letter's to the editor from over a decade ago appropriately titled A 'Waste' of time and Egremont's Water Fiasco. These are Stan's words of wisdom, lets learn from them.

CAMPAIGN PROMISES

In light of this new information about Charlie's campaign promise I have to remind people what has happened over the last year. Charlie has been on several vendettas against certain people and it seems he never cared what or who he destroyed in the process, least of all our town. Because these actions went unchecked the other selectmen are just as culpable and unless they distance themselves they’ll likely go down with his ship. The wake of absolute destruction left in the path of Charlie’s wrath can only compare with the likes of hurricane Irene.

Let’s look at the three major rampages Charlie went on. First it was against a finance committee member, namely me, who spoke out against the water company debacle. Ironically Charlie said the reason he went after me was that I opened the town up to multiple lawsuits. The truth is at most I only opened myself up to a law suit. In the end I was right; there were tens perhaps hundreds of thousands of dollars unaccounted for. We all know where the discrepancy was.

Then he went after the chief of police. Granted many people disliked the chief, including Don and Sarah Schneider, who were quoted in the Berkshire Record article, but until Charlie put his crosshairs on Bucknell she had a fairly clean jacket. The paper trail showed few if any complaints. Even the Pomeroy Report showed that there were no actionable offences. This was emphatically stated by Mary Brazie at a BoS meeting when a citizen asked if any charges would be filed against Bucknell. Mary said that the Town Counsel, Attorney General and District Attorney all reviewed the report and found nothing actionable and they said that further investigation would not likely uncover anything actionable.

Finally we have Officer Pilone whose career was bruised pretty badly over this incident.  Personally I feel bad for the guy; he trusted Charlie and got shafted in the process. A couple of weeks before Pilone was fired Charlie had nothing but praise and adulation for him. What a difference a day makes? With this new evidence coming to light I wouldn't be surprised if Officer Pilone reconsidered suing the town. At the very least he will be deposed by Bucknell's attorneys and who knows what he will say when asked about his personal knowledge of this case. Obviously he has no reason to hold back.

One thing all of these cases have in common is that each of them opened our town to yet another lawsuit. The former chief of police is suing for an amount that will be determined at trial, Officer Pilone has a couple years to decide if he wants to sue and I'll probably never file suit over my unjustified removal from the finance committee.

In July of last year I wrote a piece about Officer Pilone called no more Mr. nice guy. When I said it was mostly conjecture I wasn't being totally truthful; most of the statements were based on an actual phone conversation with Jeremy. I agreed that I wouldn't quote him at the time because he was in negotiations with the town to settle the wrongful dismissal issue. With the surfacing of this new evidence this scenario as described by Officer Pilone seems very likely.  The following is taken from that post.

Speaking of Officer Pilone I’m going to muse about what I think happened with this whole police fiasco. I think Officer Pilone wanted to get out of big city police work to settle into a small town and become a small town police chief. He stated as much. Then when he got here he became a little disillusioned because the small town life was a little too quaint for him. He was a little frustrated with the pace and wanted to make some changes so he suggested these changes to his boss, chief Bucknell. She knew these changes didn't quite fit for this town and rejected these ideas. Men being men he didn't like his ideas being rejected; especially by a woman.

After awhile officer Pilone became so disenchanted with the state of affairs that he had to vent. In the chain of command his only option was to speak to the personnel director, Bill Tighe, (whose job it was to be a buffer between the BoS and the employees). Bill, being firmly under the thumb of the BoS, immediately called hurricane Charlie. Bill probably said something like Jeremy; tell Charlie what you just told me. Being put in such an awkward position Pilone had no choice but to lay out the complaint to Charlie. 

After hearing the complaint Charlie might have said; you know Jeremy, I've been looking for some ammunition to use against the chief so we could get rid of her. You keep me informed on what she is doing and if we can build a case against her you could be the next chief of police. Charlie then might have suggested that Jeremy try to turn the rest of the officers against her and he would have his back.

Turning the rank and file against chief Bucknell wouldn't be hard since there was much grumbling in the ranks. Jeremy, thinking he had the backing of Charlie and the BoS, might have said some negative things about the Chief to stir up dissent. The more the officers talked together the more heated things got and it culminated in a vote of no confidence. Once the vote of no confidence was cast the BoS believed they had cause to relieve the chief of her duties and investigate the charges. So they locked the chief out of the station took her gun and badge and went through the files with a fine tooth comb.

Wanting to at least appear impartial the BoS hired an outside firm to investigate this matter. I’m sure Charlie figured that this firm would find something in the fifteen years that Bucknell was chief that he could use to dismiss her. I guess he was wrong. While the report did show that there were things that could have been done better, things that might have even warranted a reprimand; it showed nothing worthy of dismissal. The BoS showed the report to the town counsel, the Attorney General and the District Attorney; they found nothing illegal or worthy of dismissal.

This police debacle, which was supposed to be settled in two weeks, lasted over nine months. We thought it was settled on July 8th when the BoS agreed to reinstate the chief and allow her to retire end of year; but Charlie just couldn't let it go. Rather than swallow his pride, which admittedly is a rather large bite to swallow, he convinced the other selectmen to create a gauntlet so unreasonable that no one could possibly make it to the end. I don’t know what Charlie had over the other selectmen but he seemed to have had total control over the agenda. Whatever Charlie said, however absurd, was going to happen. It was like the Charlie Flynn marionette extravaganza. If the town officials charged with running the towns affairs can’t do the right thing we have to get rid of them and put people who can do the job in their place. We had that chance on May 13^th but unfortunately we are stuck with Hurricane Charlie for another three years. I hope we can afford it.

IN MEMORY

I want to wish everyone and especially the veterans a pensive memorial day. As we reflect on the price that has been paid so that we may live in a free society, please take the time to thank all those who have served and fondly remember those who have made the ultimate sacrifice to secure that freedom.