Tuesday's This and That

In case you missed the piece in the S-T the other day, Suffolk Downs in Boston has filed the application to get a casino.  The only real news about this is the "when it was down".  

Keeping in line with the theme, this has been the odds favorite for the Boston area casino since before there was actually a law allowing casinos.  In fact the very existence of Suffolk Downs is probably one of the reasons you haven't seen casinos being authorized until now.

Boston folks, it case you haven't heard is the Hub of the Universe.

A little closer to home, and in the news today in the S-T, is a rally to call upon the Governor to close Brayton Point.  You know the power plant with the cooling towers you seeing heading down I-195 to Fall River and beyond.  The article notes the plant is New England's largest fossil fuel generating facility.  

We are not likely to see that plant close down voluntarily in our life times, or see it forced to close.  As long as we keep using electricity the way we do, until someone comes up with an acceptable solution to replace the equivalent power to the stated 1.5 million homes, the plant will continue to burn fuel.  

Want to save a whole lot of power in this country?  One little step that the government could stick its nose into.  Ban those little red lights that go on from all the devices we run we we shut them off.  Believe it or not, I have read that the average home could save about $35 per year in electricity costs if people went around unplugging those things.

That isn't going to happen.  I am sure a few people do it, but most of us, myself included don't.  I know an off the wall thought.

And at home, our Selectmen had a very short meeting last night, in open session anyway.  It started a few minutes after 6:30 p.m. and end at 7:18 p.m.  

Interesting ending.  Someone stood up at the end of the meeting, and from what I got out of the comment, it seems we had an incident at Town Hall involving a Town employee making comments that have resulted in complaints being filed at the state level.   Don't know enough about it at this point, but the incident seems to be of a nature that will lead to additional action.

The Board also again addressed remote participation.  Again the issue was touched upon for perhaps allowing special exceptions.  

As was pointed out, there are no special exceptions.  Once it is adopted, it applies to all bodies in town from that point forward.  The only involvement of the Selectmen would be their own meetings and whether to rescind approval, or standards to apply to all boards.  

Not a hard concept if you read the material.

Same thing with minutes for executive sessions.  Again addressed.  Again discussed.  Again no one is building a spaceship here.

Selectman Espindola does deserve a nod for raising the issue though.  We do seem to use a lot of executive sessions, and the explanations seem to be bare bones at best.Not lambasting the concept.  There are some matters that are strictly forbidden by law from being addressed publicly.  There are others authorized to be addressed in executive session when deemed by the Board to be needed.

Glad to see the discussion and adoption of a more formal policy to review those particular minutes.

Seems the bike path gift account will be handled by the board with authority over the bike path.  Makes sense. 

Little blip in the paper today about the wind turbines noise testing.  Quite frankly the only thing that made that one "newsworthy" is the quote from a Windwise member: "It's obviously in his best interest to make sure these turbines pass the test," he said. "How do we know he isn't controlling the pitch from his phone?"

The "in his best interest" referring to the developer.  

Sound bites folks (or quips for print).  That's what passes for news these days.