What they said:
We’ll have an open and transparent public process. We want to have a great public process. We need to hear from the public. I’m not hearing enough from the public. We’ll give the public a chance to weigh in. Come and speak freely at meetings. This will be an open and transparent public process. Your comments are really important. We’ll have a project web site to collect comments.
Then they said:
The website comments are self-selecting and biased. You’ve already spoken for three minutes! You need to wrap it up. So emotional. Those news articles don’t apply to us. No looking back. Look to the future, now! We know the majority of the public says they want Rescue but we’re voting against it. We have information the public doesn’t have.
Then they say:
There are lots of opportunities for you, the public, to weigh in now that we have chosen the municipal EMS model. You can come and speak at meetings. We’ll have a project website. The great thing is you have control over EMS now . It’s up to you! We’ll have public forums and opportunities for you to weigh in. It will be open and transparent.
….
Now for some sarcasm: Hopefully Brattleboro will do as good a job with EMS as is done with town roads, downtown safety, affordable housing, the parking garage, and so on. : )
Swiftian question…(Not Taylor)
Is the proposed future EMS plan analogous to arming teachers as a solution to gun violence in classrooms?
A Modest EMS Proposal
Lilliputian fires must be put out somehow.
The Parking Garage. . .
is a good example of a “we-know-best” selectboard making false claims touting promised benefits, in order to steamroll over public opinion for a questionable project. The “we-know-best” selectmen publicly claimed that the garage would be self-supporting, even though privately they knew that maintaining the “transportation center” would absorb revenue from the Town’s, on-street parking meters.
.
When the garage turned out to be a financial white elephant which failed to provide the promised benefits, these “town fathers,” in the manner of stray dogs leaving their droppings, slipped away, gone, unaccountable. Apparently, Brattleboro’s current leadership in not informed by institutional memory.
Oh. . . and about affordable housing:
Rereading Grotke’s sarcastic “praise” for all the great things that Brattleboro’s “we-know-best” leaders have done I noticing that he mentioned homelessness, reminded me that a single-room-occupancy building which had housed a good number of very low income people. The Hiner Building had been one of the few places where it was possible for a person with few means to get a roof over their head.
When those people lost their home, where did the “we-know-what-is-best” town fathers think they would go?
Correction
Grotke did not specifically mention homelessness, he mentioned affordable housing, the destruction of which increased homelessness in Brattleboro.
Hiner Building
Was this torn down to make the parking garage?
Let's hope so
because It will be very embarrassing if it turns out that I was mistaken about the Hiner Building being torn down to make way for the Transportation Center.
I have been unable so far to find verification through ordinary online searches, so I sent an email to the Brattleboro Historical Society, hoping for a definitive answer. Stand by. . . I expect to have more information soon.
It was the Bushnell Building.
I inquired of Patrick Moreland, Assistant Town Manager, as I expected he might remember. He wrote back to me the following:
“I do remember the place with the little store (painted light blue) and the SROs above and below, but I think it may have been called the Bushnell Block.”
That rang true. I mistakenly called it “The Hiner Building” because the store was called, “Hiner’s Market.
Replacing units
Just the other day someone was saying they recalled town promises of building low cost housing to replace lost units if people would vote for the parking garage.
Is that your memory, too?
Sounds right, but I am not certain
That does sound familiar. I am not sure if it is worth the trouble of scouring Reformers from a couple of decades ago, because I think the if anyone were to bring this up to Town officials now, they would probably prevaricate that converting the Lamplighter Motel fulfills that promise (very belatedly).
The reason I think the false promises and behind-the-scenes process for taking on a large bond indebting the taxpayer for building the “Transportation Center;” is because that mostly-forgotten institutional memory matters now that a similar “we-know-what-is best” initiative is being pushed down our gullets, along much the same pattern of dysfunctional decision-making.