By DAN VALENTI

PLANET VALENTI News and Commentary

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THE PLANET will let this column suffice for THE WEEKEND EDITION. The information about Snowgate will be allowed to simmer in advance of the city council meeting, where and when, if our Right Honorable Good Friends do their job, citizens and taxpayers will get the answers they deserve for having been put through such a disaster.

Snowgate is troubling is several respects.

* First, it has no doubt wasted the city’s time, talent, and treasure.

* Second, it strongly suggests a complete lack of accountability beginning with the corner office and including the management of Public Services.

* Third, it demands that an investigation into the situation be thorough, with consequences. We call that troubling because, based solely on recent history, little will be done and there will be no consequences.

* Fourth, it has compromised the morale and misused and abused the great talent the city has in the three divisions of Public Services. These are employees who know the job but who are being prevented from doing the job.

* Fifth, THE PLANET brings your attention to a comment below claiming there were fifteen hundred tons of treated sand — the kind that works when the temperatures fall below 12oF, Mr. Mayor — in the city pile prior to winter. Is this true? We shall attempt to confirm. If it is true, it would suggest (though not in and of itself prove) some funny business going on.

* And finally, sixth, it points out that the mayor’s “reorganization” of Public Services was an utter failure. You will recall that Bianchi pushed through this move in a well-orchestrated plan to avoid council review, thereby taking Mary Jane and Joe Kapanski out of the picture entirely. No one on the council has filed a petition asking for the measure to be rescinded. By the most objective measures we can muster, Bianchi made the move solely to undo the reforms of Jimmy Ruberto, when he brought in Der Wunderbarrett himself, John Barrett, to get Public Services into shape. The Ruberto-Barrett reform worked. They were blown up by the current administration solely for political purposes.

Public Services Director Bruce Collingwood and Highway Division boss Kevin Swail (rhymes with “fail”) have some “‘splainin'” to do, as our good friend Ricky Ricardo would put it. If he is any kind of a mayor and man, Dan Bianchi will not let his charges answer alone. In fact, he will be out in the lead. We shall see.

Moreover, it is incumbent that the council Takes Care of Business. They must not let anyone off the hook. They must cut off at the pass any attempt to stonewall, dodge, or avoid. If the council does not do its job here, they will have, again, let down We The People in a most unacceptable manner. Conversely, if our Right Honorable Good Friends get the job done, they will help restore some semblance of hope as we look ahead, because …

… remember, folks, this is an Election Year.

We now resume our regular coverage. Have a great weekend, everybody!

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(FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE, THURSDAY AND BEYOND, FEB. 19-22, 2015) — THE PLANET has more on Snowgate, the deplorable job in the past month done by The Bianchi Administration in mishandling perhaps the municipality’s biggest public safety task when winter arrives in The Berkshires.

Courtesy of councilors Krol, Amuso, and Clairmont, The Bumstead Administration shall have to send  public services commissioner Bruce Collingwood and Highway Department director Kevin Swail to answer for the botch job. If Mayor Bumstead had backbone, and if he cared about the poor citizens and taxpayers of the city, he would voluntarily lead his two minions into the fray. Ah, but if Bumstead possessed those qualities in the first place, the city streets would be in fine shape and there would be no need for a hearing.

‘Here Lies Bruce Collingwood. Again.’

Collingwood said when he drove down to Great Barrington, the roads in South County were worse than Pittsfield. Either BC needs to get his eyesight checked or he needs to stop telling tall ones. We can see his epitaph when the next mayor sends him packing: “Here lies Bruce Collingwood. Again.” Perhaps BC can apply his expertise in colon cleansing into the job of snow removal. For those of you who don’t know, that’s his side business. Colon cleansing. Obviously, not snow removal.

Some things you just can’t make up, and as Paddy Cheyefsky once observed, reality has far outstripped fiction, making satire unnecessary. Oh, and by the way, Collingwood failed to return THE PLANET‘s request for comment on Snowgate. When the phone didn’t ring and the e-mail bell didn’t chime, we knew if was Capt. Colon not getting back to us.

Meanwhile, as Swail (rhymes with “fail”) crams for his council examination, THE PLANET has been plying sources within the Public Services Department. One revealing thing we learned is that when the mayor said that salt was useless in the cold, he was either misinformed or he, too, was Fibber McGeeing. Department sources say the city has many options when it comes to treating snow and ice. Straight salt is good until about 12 degrees F. There is also salt treated with magnesium, which is good to -35 degrees F. There is also the mix the state prefers, which is salt laced with calcium.

So much for Mayor Misfit’s declaration that salt is ineffective when the weather turns exceptionally cold. Now if the mayor had said, “I am ineffective when the weather turns cold,” we could buy it.

Department sources say the city sand pile has never been allowed to get so low or become so depleted. They says the sand pile “was never filled this season.” Never. Great management, eh?

‘Things in Highway Department are Horrendous’

Look at the streets leading into Pittsfield. The roads are clear.  Drive Lenox and Stockbridge. The roads are down to the dry asphalt. Is it because the snow in Pittsfield is different? Is South County snow more educated? Or could it be that the mismanagement of Public Services has been the cause of Pittsfield’s roads being in such bad shape? It’s a shame, because Public Services has some of the best, most efficient, and highly trained city workers. These assets, however, have been held in check because of the bungling.

“The things that are happening in the Highway Department are horrendous,” says one informed source. “The guys in that department know how to do their jobs. It’s just that they aren’t being allowed to do their jobs.”

The big question, and one of which our Right Honorable Good Friends on the city council must get to the bottom, is why? Why are city employees being so mismanaged? Is it simple ineptitude? Or is it something more nefarious?

We have seen scandals afflict, affect, and infect city departments in the past. Is something of the sort happening in Public Services? We don’t know, but when the department head refuses to return legitimate inquiries from the investigative press, it doesn’t exactly fill one with over-brimming confidence.

Elsewhere, There Is Accountability

Some other cities, which we mention only in a “Best Practices” sense, take action and demand accountability. For instance, a few days ago, the city of Cleveland, Ohio, demoted its commissioner of streets because of the poor job he did with snow removal. Cleveland Public Works Director Michael Cox said, “There’s [an] accountability factor here. And we had a lot of issues that were not resolved during [the most recent] snow storm.”

Cox also said more city plows were not available because they were in the shop for repairs. So what did he do? He read the riot act to the Motor Vehicle maintenance Department, telling the boss there that “he had to step up his game” or else.

Consequences help ensure better performance.

What accountability is there in Pittsfield? This kind: Screw up, and you get promoted with big, phat pay hikes. That’s just what happened to Collingwood and Swail.

And in Yonkers, N.Y., when the city did a poor job clearing snow and ice from county bus stops, one county legislator called on the mayor to step up his efforts, calling the mayor’s response to the snow “completely abysmal and unacceptable.” The legislator said “that this public safety issue [must] be immediately corrected.” It was.

Did one of Our Profiles in Courage from Beacon Hill — that would be Mssrs. Downing, Mark, and Pignatelli plus Misses Farley-Bouvier and Cariddi — say a peep about the snow job pulled by the mayor of Pittsfield? Farley-Bouvier, as Pittsfield’s rep, would be especially obliged.

Nah. That’s not how it works around here. In Pittsfield, The Suits circle the wagons and put the screws to The Little Guy.

Maybe we need to take out that word, “almost.”

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 “Swellfoot is wived! Though parted by the sea, / The very name of wife had conjugal rights; / Her cursed image ate, drank, and slept with me.” — Percy Bysshe Shelley, Oedipus Tyrannus, Scene I, lines 287-289, (1820).

“OPEN THE WINDOW, AUNT MILLIE.”

LOVE TO ALL.