There’s good news today for you masochists who suffered through the last few Greenfield City Council debates — you get to relive three of them Wednesday night.
The Sept. 19 council agenda contains three motions for reconsideration, which likely means another long night for anyone with the temerity and stamina to tune in to Greenfield’s latest version of political “Groundhog Day.
Motions for reconsideration can only be filed by councilors who vote in the affirmative the first time around. They can be filed for any reason, and often members will vote yes on a measure knowing they have a chance to bring it back later if the need arises.
In each of these cases, there are good reasons for a redo. The reconsideration filed by Councilor Tim Dolan will take another look at a measure related to the handling of the town audit, where we may finally learn why certain members of this government believe it is a good idea for the same firm handling the city’s finances to also be responsible for auditing those same books.
Another motion filed by Councilor Otis Wheeler would revisit the recently passed resolution of support for Mayor Martin’s efforts to negotiate a deal for a new public safety complex.
There are obviously a lot of questions about this deal, but the one that seems to have most people baffled is why this potential boondoggle has suddenly become intertwined with the effort to build a new Greenfield Public Library.
The only apparent connection is that the new library is slated to be built on the same land that houses the current fire station, which has needed to taste a wrecking ball for a while now.
It was apparent from the debate last time that a number of councilors felt that a vote against the public safety complex was also a vote against the library, which we now know is not the case. The council is also expected to vote Wednesday on another resolution to move the fire department to a new space, even temporarily, which could allow the library project to move forward more quickly
The third reconsideration, filed by Councilor Isaac Mass, would revisit the “Ordinance To Protect The Town Common,” which passed at a recent special meeting with five affirmative votes, two shy of what is needed to pass such a law ordinance.
This has the potential to be an especially interesting topic, and will mark the first time it will be debated by the full body. The last time, it didn’t garner a second, setting the stage for the very brief. aforementioned special meeting.
Though the tent city that provided the impetus for this ordinance is gone, the issue of homelessness in Greenfield is not, though that shouldn’t really be the focus of this debate. This is not about fixing homelessness, but preventing a repeat of what wound up being an unsafe situation that cast this community in the worst light possible.
This debate provides a golden opportunity for Mass and his more conservative council allies to put the progressive majority on the wrong side of the issue. If it passes, use of tents and sleeping bags will be forbidden in that space. If it doesn’t, the people who vote “nay” will have big targets on their backs the next time a tent goes up in that now-restricted area.
Anyone concerned about Darius Modestow fumbling through his first year as interim Frontier Regional School Superintendent probably shouldn’t be.
Modestow told the Whately School Committee this week that he’s being “mentored” in his first year on the job by former Pioneer Regional Superintendent Kevin Courtney, who is working in an advisory role with the Massachusetts Association of School Superintendents.
I’ll bet Pioneer would love to have Courtney back right about now, but Modestow will benefit from learning from one of the best in the business. And he apparently won’t be alone, as Massachusetts has 44 new first-time supers this year, which composes roughly 20 percent of that fraternity.
It takes three things to win in politics — money, money and more money — and no one knows that better than First District Congressman Richard Neal, who spent quite a bit of it to beat back the recent primary challenge of Tahirah Amatul-Wadud.
Though he’s in a pretty key leadership position in Congress, a small part of me was hoping Amatul-Wadud would knock off Neal, who I believe has begun to take his constituency a little bit for granted in recent years — while paying little to no attention to the more rural areas of that district.
It was pretty apparent that Amatul-Wadud put a little fear into Neal, who spent a lot of money on TV ads, and even agreed to debate twice, which you don’t often see from incumbents who have attained a certain level of seniority inside the Beltway.
As I’m writing this, it’s unclear how much of his war re-election chest Neal used in that primary fight, but I’m sure there are a few bucks left for a junket or two to Ireland, strictly for campaign purposes, of course.