Their all Bozos on that Bus

As we predicted, it's going to be a great year for the blogs with Sharon Cutler at the helm. We didn't think that she would get so much help from Jay Byer.

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The Queen of Condescension
Sharon Cutler was at it again, big time last night. Looking down her snout at her subjects and pontificating on the greatness of her reign. She is truly a legend in her own mind.

Referring to Mendon’s elderly as “the gray hairs” was brilliant.

Sharon we know that you despise the town employees and use every opportunity to stick it to them. Nice move with the payday change. You managed to get half of them to show up last night for your dog and pony show. Good thing for you they left the rotten fruit at home.

The Never Ending Override
When it comes to large seeds, Jay Bayer & Co has them. Undaunted by defeat the school lackeys are planning to throw another override at the voters. What part of "NO" don’t they understand?

Byer's quote" the district is only trying to maintain its current standards." Sure by lowering everyone else’s. Our guess is that poor Jay has been getting a major amount of heat from the spendthrifts in Upton. Remember where you live Jay. If we wanted to pay Upton taxes we would move there. Can a Joint Town Meeting be far behind?

Bring it on Jay but you may want to wear the floral jammies and the hard hat for this one. The natives are truly restless.

"Well We Blew It"

Leave town for one weekend and all hell breaks loose! We could not have been more wrong about the Gift Barn Caper.

Our source was inside the Ober family so apparently they will say anything to get the taxpayers to bail them out.

Maybe we should just change the name of the town to Boondoggle.

If this flies with the voters of Mendon we will be very surprised. The track record of land dealings in this town speaks for itself. Elected and appointed insiders lying, spinning and covering up to get the taxpayers to bail their friends out of bad real estate. There seems to be no end to it.

The 8-acre gift barn property is an albatross. It will not perk, it has no usable frontage and on the open market it will fetch nothing near the 2 million dollar price tag. They are trying to stick to you again, don't believe a word of it!

If the property is worth that amount of money let them market it and give the town a 45 day first right of refusal. That will be plenty of time to schedule a town meeting and there will plenty of exposure and debate in the meantime. We dare them to do it.

The building will not pass code for ANY public use. No library, town hall, police station, fire station or public restroom... NOTHING!

The end result a purchase would be another $400 in taxes for the median home and the Ober's laughing all the way to the bank.

Who Do You Trust?

Here are links to all the Public Safety Advisory Committee meetings since the failed first votes. Notice that the committee is grappling with questions that were posed on this blog a month prior to the vote. They got no support from the selectmen. Lawney Tinio seems particularly adept at the smoke and mirrors game.

Meeting minutes May 9, 2006

Meeting minutes May 23, 2006

Meeting minutes June 5, 2006

If it requires $24,000 to test 3 acres of the Fino property then the simple math question is: How much would it cost to test all 22 acres of the old orchard? Answer: $176,000.

What will the cleanup cost? Answer: Who knows!

Should we spend all this additional money? Answer: We have no choice.

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If we ever intend to use this land for anything we have to do what the board of selectmen should have done before they blithely sold us down the river for $3,500,000. All of the costs incurred from here on out for testing and cleanup of that land should have been borne by the sellers not the buyers.

If you read the minutes of the Public Safety Advisory Committee meeting from June 5th you will see how pervasive the architect has been in all of this. Do not forget that Greg Carell stands to make $750,000 for the design of the building. He attempted to soft peddle the contamination problem at the town meeting that defeated the question the first time. He reminds us of the clothes salesman that pulls your suit from the back while you look in the mirror, telling you what a great fit it is. “Grain of salt” comes to mind when he says anything about the soil issues.

The lesson here is that trust is earned not elected or appointed. The BoS was aware of the problems with the Fino land before the purchase. The Finance Committee also knew about the problem according to one of our sources and recommended the town buy it anyway. Who do you trust?

The Making of a Double Chief

Here are the Executive Session Minutes from the BoS meeting on Feb. 8, 2005. We want to thank one of our regular posters for these. We will not divulge the posters identity, that is up to the poster.















This appears to be the meeting where the selectmen and Chief Horn worked out the details of his assuming the duties of Fire Chief.

It is interesting to note that Sharon Cutler was in charge of this session. She was not the Chair at the time so we get a glimpse of the structure of the board 9 months after her arrival. She was calling the shots, at least as far as the chief thing went.

It's your turn. Read them and let us know what you think.

The Gift Barn Caper

Just when we thought we would take a break for a while the show heats up!

The inside word on the town buying the Mendon Country Gift Barn property is that the owners do not have nor ever had any intention of selling it.

The rumor got started by Sharon Cutler nosing around with more of her grandiose ideas. Furthermore the owners of the Barn are livid that the story circulated. People began a rush to cash gift certificates and the story hurt the Barn's business.

We will be surprised if the owners of the Barn don't sue Cutler and the town for this fiasco. Keep your eye on Cutler she is a loose cannon.

Riff Raff of Mendon

We have a new addition to the Mendon Blogsphere. One of our favorite long time posters has created a blog. Welcome to Riff Raff.

http://mendonriffraff.blogspot.com/

Riff has contributed much to the discussion here over the past 8 months and is quite knowledgeable about current events in our town. We are going to keep to ourselves for a week or so and let Riff have the stage. We're not leaving in fact we have some great stuff to print but right now we are lawyering up for the next expose. Good luck Riff, we will be reading.

Hanging Gardens

School Override Upton-Yes Mendon-No

Mendon

Yes - 463 (44%)
NO - 591 (56%)

Mendon Vote Count 1,054

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Upton

YES - 609 (62%)
NO - 370 (38%)

Upton Vote Count 979

NOTE: We had bad numbers for Upton. The correct count is now posted. Nothing changes. There were a few more no votes that we first reported. HG

Potholes vs “Dream Scenario”

Don't Forget to Vote Today

Due to the recent rains the town roads are mess. Pothole damage to cars is the order of the day. Yes the Highway Department has tried to mark the bad spots with signs and has done a good job of getting the signs up in a timely manner but that hasn’t stopped many front ends from finding their way to the mechanic over the last few days.

When you go to the polls on Monday keep that in mind. The School wants you to fund their "Dream Scenario" while there are many other immediate needs for your tax dollars. It would seem that the educational elite should understand that if you can’t get the children to school over safe roads it might be time to put down the wish list and focus on the needs of the entire town.

Yes, we are still voting no on the override.

Polling Suggestions

As you can see we have added polling to the blog. The first poll has to do with the school override ballot vote.

We would like to add additional polls in the future. If you have an idea for a poll question lets hear it here.

More Land Shenagians???

New Comments 6/08

As reported in the MDN 6/1/06.

"Selectmen also announced preparation to sell the 15 Millville Road lot, pending an approved septic design.
Tinio said the town needed to be sure to set a minimum price before making the property open to any bids. "I don't want to give the property away," said Tinio."

Will someone tell Tinio that the town cannot sell land without a town meeting vote. That's Government 101 Lawney.

Also while we are at it, where the hell is the money coming from for a septic design? Anyone remember voting for that?

Obviously the selectmen have learned nothing from recent history and still feel that they are the "because wesayso board". Message to the Troika: It's our land and our money and most important of all, you work for us. Get it?

Questions for the selectmen: Why the pressing need to sell a building lot? Do we need more development? Where will the money go?

Given the track record of real estate dealings by the selectmen we suspect something is going on here.