Send in the clowns

So the Chamber of Commerce's return to the public on the investment of $36k in tax money is supposed to be a public clown show. I can't wait.

He's shocked. Shocked!

to find that public business must be conducted publicly.

A few weeks ago the Town received a request from a citizen and member of this distribution list for a copy of all of the email addresses used in a particular email.  Upon receiving the request the Council sought a legal opinion as to whether the release of email addresses was required under the FOAA or whether the addresses were protected as personal information.  The legal opinion stated that the FOAA did not protect the address distribution list and that if requested the Town was obligated to release any address information used to convey information related to Town business.  The Council subsequently sought a second opinion which confirmed the original finding.

<snip>

I can not help being disappointed with the legal requirements related to this matter.  Many of you have asked to be included on the distribution list with an understanding that your personal information will remain private and I wish that I could have honored that request.  I have found these email distributions to be an excellent forum for getting information out to the public and for receiving public feedback and sincerely hope that each of you will choose to remain on the distribution list.  That being said I can not prevent this type of request from happening in the future so if any of you feel that remaining on the list is not in your best interest please let me know and I will remove you from the distribution list. 

-Jim Cassida, Freeport Town Council Chairman

FOAA is Maine's Freedom of Access Act that requires public business be conducted publicly. I would like to like Jim personally, but I also think he does misunderstand the obligations he took on when he ran for and accepted his post as a Councilor. He mistakes the role he has assumed as one he controls and entirely inhabits, not one constrained by law, both written and common. Rather than acknowledging that in transacting public business people should be aware that they should be held accountable for their words, he suggests to his readership that they may secure themselves from direct contact by using the good offices of Facebook. This may be fine for a political campaign, but in governing, it stills open discussion and leads to bitter divisiveness.

In my opinion, people should be encouraged to be involved in their government openly, without fear or shame, except such that they might bring upon themselves.

It really makes me sad that apparently Jim would rather bemoan the minimum legal requirements of openness in governance than enthusiastically comply with them, and provide some leadership by example.

Read 'em and weep.

Chairman Cassida writes:

If you honestly believe that your opinion is representative of 70% of Freeporters I wish you could walk in my shoes for a couple of days.  There are a lot of opinions out there and finding the path that is best for the community is not easy when you actually give consideration to all the perspectives.  If I simply listened to my own thoughts or the thoughts of one individual or group I could do this job in my sleep.  Unfortunately that is not the case!

What I wrote:

It's too bad, and telling, that you think making a decision between protecting the residential investments of 70% of the town and the private wishes of one profit making enterprise's potential for gain is a difficult one. Seacoast can find properly zoned land for its building. They should be encouraged to do so. 

What I did not write:

I honestly believe that my opinion is representative of 70% of Freeporters. 

For the record, I honestly believe that my opinion is representative of me. I hope any doubt on the matter is now settled.

Putting the sale before the zoning

So the town staff, the town council, and apparently Seacoast United failed to discern any need for changing the zoning for the parcel where Seacoast's proposed 86 62,000 square foot building is supposed to go.

The Laws of the Game of soccer cover 130 pages. The Freeport Zoning Ordinance covers 216. In neither do you have to look too far for a definition of offside.  I hope they teach the kids the rules before they start to play the game. I wonder why they didn't check the Laws of Zoning before they decided to sign a purchase and sale agreement? You know something? I have a hunch they did, really.

What the hell. Can't anybody just say this is heinous?

Freeport, Maine, home to outlet stores for many nationally known enterprises. Freeport, Maine, a pretty town of 7600, with woods and trails and good people, and home to one embittered person, whose poorly constructed and repulsive compendium of slander and disturbing images clipped from some of the darkest episodes of the American experience, is distributed weekly in the foyer of the Town Hall.

Strange fruit is being hung on Freeport’s Christmas tree in 2011 by some anonymous individual. He or she has been distributing the home-made publication “A Crow’s Nest” at various retail locations throughout town, as well as in the Town Hall foyer. Locations where the children and grandchildren of the people he or she slanders with false tales of unspeakable vileness may see their relatives unfairly and horribly pilloried. No one has acknowledged their authorship of what they call a “parody look at the news”. 

I've had it. I've refrained from posting the shit until now, but In their last effort, they actually had the brass to include a page that makes it look as if the owners of local businesses are supporting his “journalism” through advertising. A sample of their idea of humor is at the right.  Does anyone fucking care??

The Maine Attorney General’s office and the Freeport Police Department have been informed about this publication, and have advised that no actionable criminal offenses have been committed by the author in its production. Still, I doubt any decent citizen could view the images and language it contains speaks well of anyone associated with it. 

“A Crow’s Nest”,  is a heinous blot on the landscape of this town. Please do not let the good name of your business be tarnished by a false and improper association with the ravings of a seriously disturbed individual. Please speak out in any way you can. Silence is complicity.

You don't know what you've got til it's gone.

Earlier today while casting about for information on the town property where Seacoast United seeks to build its supermarket sized indoor soccer palace in an area not zoned for it, I came across this little tidbit (Word 2010 doc, PDF here) relating to the administration of the land abutting its proposed fiefdom: Hedgehog Mountain. The document is entitled "Hedgehog Hill Mountain Area Trails Maintenence and Management Plan". It was presented to the Conservation Commission at its November 15th meeting. It bears no date, and its authorship is unacknowledged, so its recommendations' source is impossible to determine. Commission members say it was presented by the Town planner, who has a vision apparently not entirely at all in accord with the Conservation Commission, whose remit by ordinance it is to act as custodian of this property on behalf of the town. Here is their plan, as adopted in 2004 (Word 2003 doc, PDF here). The former document would presumably replace the current one in force as the guiding plan for Hedgehog in the future. Some excerpts:

"The acquisition of the Hunter Rd property and the development of the athletic fields in 2011 creates a new opportunity to expand the existing trails to include this new property.  A small group of residents and trail enthusiast[s] that are very familiar with the property have developed a plan to maintain and upgrade some trails and to build new trails. 

So a "small group's" privately developed plan trumps that of the body charged by ordinance with developing such a plan with public input. For property acquired by the town through public bond issues for the expressed purpose of quiet enjoyment of open spaces by its users. Right. The small group's not through yet.

"The trails are currently managed and maintain by the volunteers of the Conservation Commission.The Conservation Commission is also responsible for managing and maintaining all of the other trails and woods owned by the Town.  Given the size and number of trails on this property, it is recommended that the responsibility of the land and trails on these properties not be that of the Conservation Commission.  This would require an amendment to the Conservation Commission Ordinance.

Instead a new committee such as the “Friends of Hedgehog Mountain Area” (FOHMA) be formed.[sic]  This group should be part of or at least very closely associated with any group that is formed to oversee the management and maintenance of the athletic fields on Hunter Road. The responsibilities and budget for that group are recommended to be the following:" [snip]

Read the whole thing to see what a new committee (presumably made up of the aforementioned "small group") has in mind.

This unsigned presentation on behalf of unidentified and non-public actors staging a power grab against a duly appointed Town commission established by ordinance is disturbing, to say the least. It seems some in town disagree with the Conservation Commission's understanding of the trust it is charged with. Fine. Let them present their views to the Commission for its consideration. It's rather unseemly to suggest that the right way forward if the Commission disagrees with one special group's outlook is to remove from the Commission's charge the care of the lands it was created to preserve for all of the Town's residents, regardless of that group's self-declared familiarity with the property. What's next? "Friends of Florida Lake"? "Pals of Wolfe Neck"? "Supporters of Sandy Beach"?  We need a Town Government that balances interests and builds consensus. Not one that throws out processes and ordinances because they don't accomodate the shiniest new toy on display.

Rumor has it this may be on the Council's December 6th agenda. If you can find a moment to speak out in favor of quiet enjoyment of our public spaces, come on down and tell the Council to let the Conservation Commission conserve our public lands.

Sweet little lies

Stenographer Amy Anderson of the Falmouth Forecaster dutifully copies:

Edgar Leighton, a member of the first Town Council, said the new council members will not create a major shift in the direction the town takes, but the composition of four women will change the dynamic. He also said the council may now have more productive conversations. "It's my understanding that there were a lot of 5-2 votes and while that gets the job done, it's my sense that one of things that will change is that the meetings will move a little smoother," Leighton said. "There is always room for disagreement and there is nothing wrong with that, but when it is constant, that is not good."

On the 2010-2011 Council, there were exactly two 5-2 votes where Joe Migliaccio and Eric Pandora voted the same way in the minority. The first was on November 9, 2010, when both voted against Jim Cassida as Council Chair, the second on January 25, 2011, when both voted against an unenforceable and constitutionally suspect e-mail policy for the Town Council. If two out of 78 is "constant", I am Marie of Roumania. If the Forcaster and Mr. Leighton care to gain a deeper understanding of truth as opposed to hearsay, I've compiled the votes for them here. But sweet little lies are the comforting stories we like to tell ourselves, right?

In one uendo and out the other

The verbal tricks of politics and the media run from shameless character assasination to titillation and back, sometimes a combination of the two. "Does candidate x blow goats? It would be irresponsible not to speculate" is a famous (in the lefty blogosphere, anyway) parody of the style Richard Hofstader famously labeled paranoid.

So we have an honored Solon of Freeport politics, one Ed Bonney, writing this:

"In every election a candidate can expect to lose some signs due to weather or vandalism, but this year the apparent [sic] organized effort to remove and destroy candidate signs is the worst I have ever seen."

Note the "apparent[ly] organized" bit. Dark forces. Not the candidates, mind, and surely not his candidates, but an apparently organized cadre of evil minions slashing and burning. Subverting the political process. Who are they? Do they blow goats? It would be irresponsible not to speculate.

This blog started with a report of the disappearance of signs belonging to a candidate Mr. Bonney does not support. Others he's not inclined to bless with his imprimatur have also lost signs. Is there a town-wide cadre of anti political sign zealots lurking in the mud of Freeport waiting to deprive its citizens of vital signage during a political campaign? Magic eight ball sez unlikely.

It's a damned shame when the election campaign in a town of 8500 winds up with paranoid McCarthyite tactics deployed by partisans, especially experienced activists like Ed. I guess paranoia makes for strange bedfellows.

Unbroadcast News

Gee, who deep sixed the Chamber of Commerce candidate's forum on Freeport Public Cable? Unbroadcast at the scheduled times Thursday and Friday per the schedule provided by Rick Simard.You can find a list of cable board people and their contact info in this pdf. They are, according to the document:

Michael Reis, Chair
Edward Bonney
William Greene
Michael Ashby
STAFF PERSON: Rick Simard
rs@freeportmaine.com

Maybe they'll add a couple of replays to make up for the ones we missed.

Updated -
See the missing 11/5 airing? Cable 3 must be fully booked with notices about the dangers of lead paint and pancake breakfasts.

Last Kid Picked?

I guess that's how this candidate's supporter felt while placing his or her favorite's sign.

Really? Rich DeGrandpre has such awesomely cool superpowers that merely placing his sign in the right of way makes the two candidates' signs that were there before fly off into a ditch?

Again, I can't believe the candidates themselves are inspiring this expression of town juvenalia. Whoever is out there vandalizing signs, just stop.

Blocking up the scenery breaking my mind...

Look, I know people put a whole lot of energy into putting up campaign signs, and are naturally peeved when they mysteriously disappear. Anyone who'd spend their time ripping up signs because they don't like the candidate probably enjoyed ripping the wings off of flies in second grade. But to float rumors of lawsuits and bruit about accusations that the candidates themselves are engaging in such a pastime is really, really dumb. I know none of the folks I'm supporting are doing that.

Again, if anybody actually knows anything real about actual humans vandalizing signs, please let the authorities know.

It's been windy. The ground is damp. The weather doesn't favor anybody in particular. Leave it to the cops, and fuggedaboudit.