So I guess raising those water and sewer rates by 10 to 15 percent wasn’t such a hot idea after all.
That seems to be the message the Greenfield City Council sent to Mayor Bill Martin and DPW Director Don Ouellette last week, when it took a carving knife to His Honor’s capital budget, to the tune of 66 percent.
Most of the affected items were submitted by Ouellette, who described them as important maintenance pieces that needed to be funded now. That obviously didn’t carry much weight with the council, who took the Ginsu to most of his requests, mostly at the urging of Councilor Brickett Allis and Isaac Mass, who are still grousing about Ouellette’s decision to unilaterally jack up water and sewer rates by double digits, leaving many of their constituents with sticker shock when the bills arrived.
When Allis and Mass submitted their proposed capital budget reductions, I thought there was no way they would have the votes to get it done. They managed to cut last year’s capital budget for the first time in the mayoral era, but mostly because they were in the leadership and had a conservative majority, slight though it was.
The ideological pendulum has since shifted, with progressives now holding that same slim margin going the other way, which one might expect that would lead to a loosening of the purse strings. That theory pretty much went out the window when the council went along with nearly all of the Allis-Mass reduction — to the point that Isaac actually apologized for his now-infamous Election Night social media rant trumpeting the return of the “rubber stamp” council.
I was as amazed as Mass. The only councilor who made an effort to restore some of the funding was Precinct 6’s Sheila Gilmour, who argued in favor putting at least some money forward to start these projects. The rest didn’t blink much at the cuts, which leads me to believe that Martin and Ouellette don’t have a whole lot of credibility banked with some of these new members.
Before the “budget hawks” get too excited, it’s likely these votes aren’t the end of the story. If Ouellette is to be believed, there are still a boat-load of big-ticket improvements that have to be made, a list that will only get longer and more expensive as time goes on.
Council rules also allow members who vote in the affirmative the right to make a motion to reconsider, which means these items could, theoretically, be brought back and debated again, although it’s not clear that will happen.
What does seem clear is that this council has put the executive branch on notice that the tail won’t be wagging the dog anymore, at least when it comes to capital spending for this particular department.
Should a sitting police chief be running for Selectboard in the town where he or she works?
That’s one of the big questions in what’s becoming an intriguing race in Northfield, where 24-year-old graduate student Alex Meisner is pitted against the town’s Police Chief, Robert Leighton for an open seat on the Selectboard.
Leighton told the Recorder this week that he checked with the state Ethics Commission and was told that there is no law preventing him from running for selectman — but that doesn’t make it a good idea.
I’m trying to imagine what it would have been like back in the day if David McCarthy had ever challenged John Merrigan for Merrigan’s seat on Greenfield’s Selectboard. That would have been a real brawl for sure.
Deerfield Chief John Paciorek Jr. could probably get elected today if he ran in that town. Ditto Chief Jim Hicks in Buckland — but that doesn’t mean they should.
Let’s put aside the fact that a police chief is a contracted town employee. If he or she were to wind up on a selectboard, they would have to recuse themselves from any police or public safety-related issues that come before them, which, in my experience covering selectboards, can be a significant part of the work, depending on the town.
And what happens if a disciplinary issue involving a department’s officer comes up (think Greenfield’s Richie Rowell back in the day)? A sitting chief could not be anywhere near those conversations, or be part of any vote at decision time.
Still, I understand why Leighton wants to run. His battles with the outgoing town administrator have been well documented, and he wouldn’t be the first political candidate for whom anger was a motivating factor in running.
He also probably has have many strong leadership qualities from which the town might benefit. But from where I sit, there are just too many potential conflicts to make a Leighton candidacy tenable in the long term.
Fortunately, I don’t have to make the final call. That’s the people’s job, as it always has been, and hopefully forever will be.
Chris Collins is the Franklin County News Bureau Chief for WHAI, WPVQ and WHMP Radio. He is a former staff reporter for The Recorder, and is a Greenfield native.