By DAN VALENTI

PLANET VALENTI NEWS AND COMMENTARY

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WORLD PREMIERE! TONIGHT!

PC-TV CH. 16

Tune in tonight, 7 p.m., for the world premiere of 

A Film By Dan Valenti:

In-CITY-ous: Pittsfield’s Crisis of Confidence

It will air on Channel 16, for the hour.

It presents a funny, biting, hard-hitting, and honest look

— a documentary, a mockumentary —

at how a once great city has lost its way.

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(FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE, THURSDAY, JULY 9, 2015) — It’s been five days now, and still neither the Pittsfield Police Department nor the mayor’s office has released any further details on the five shootings. Any arrests? Are the shooters still at large? Why haven’t the names of all the victims been released? What do officials know that they’re not saying? Is there a justified reason for the odd handling of this case or is it a case of official incompetence?

The community can have all the rallies it wants. It won’t do a thing if a murderer is still at large.

Nightmare on Elm Street

After six weeks, the Elm Street paving is nearing completion. Like everything else that happens through the city, roadwork is politics.

After the roads were ravaged twice this past winter and early spring — once by Mother Nature and once again by the incompetent mayor and his Highway Department — still a full half of them are barely fit for human passage. It thus comes as no surprise that the mayor would want to fix Elm Street, since it is one of the Pittsfield’s busiest thoroughfares. You can hear the rusty wheels turning in the mayor’s political pea brain: “Lots of people use Elm Street. Lots of people will see that I am taking care of the roads. Therefore, let me stretch this work out as long as possible. It will be as good as lawn signs.”

Apparently, the mayor never gave the fiscal health of any of the Elm Street businesses a second thought — Palmer’s, Elm Street Hardware, the food joints. If you owned a business on Elm Street for the past six weeks, you were almost put out of business. Must be part of the mayor’s plans for the economic revival of the city.

Yesterday, THE PLANET heard from two of our Z-Agents from The Secret Squadron. Our spies spoke with two constituent members of the Elm Street Experience — a cross-section of merchants and workers from the company doing the road construction.

The Merchants Are Stinging Mad

PLANET Agent Z-12 spoke to several of the business owners, and all of them reported significant loss of business. It may be OK to run the city that way — you know, losing money — but in The Dreaded Private Sector, this isn’t what you want.

Calls made to the Highway Department and the mayor’s office over the interminable length of the torn up, hazardous streets went unanswered, the pleas ignored. Not one of shop keepers had a good word to say about Mr. Mayor. None of the businesses, particularly the food companies (diners, delis, bakeries, subway shops, and the like) wanted to be identified for fear of retaliation. Said one, “If I go on record, [the mayor] will have the health inspectors all over me.”

This isn’t government. This is tyranny.

Agent Z-14 spoke to employees of the construction company. Our man got a sensational story and in the process dug up a nearly insolvable mystery. Workers told our man that the Elm Street paving, from start to finish, “could have been completed in five days.” That’s a fact. The repaving of Route 7 between Lenox and Stockbridge began after Elm Street was dug up and nearly finished, with the new asphalt laid, weeks ago.

So why wasn’t Elm Street done within a week? The workers said “the city ordered us not to finish [the work until now].” If true, and we would stake our Captain Midnight iron-ons on the proposition, we likely have direct evidence of the mayor not only not doing his job properly but going out of his way to undermine the quality of life in Pittsfield.

Here’s the Big Mystery: Why would the mayor do that? Did he actually believe ordering the job to take five to six times longer than “normal” would help merchants and drivers? Did he do it out of an aberrant psychological need, a deep-seated insecurity, to prove his self-importance, how big he is? Or did he want the work to remain to serve as a political advertisement: “See, I’m taking care of infrastructure?”

Memo to The Tyer Campaign: There’s lots of votes to be won right now on Elm Street.

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The Half-a-Mill Just Got More Expensive

THE PLANET, and THE PLANET alone, reported on the flooding of the city hall basement due to the recent heavy rains. The mayor tried to keep the story under wraps. We, however, pulled back the covers. Update: Yesterday, workers from Carlow and Zepka had the fiberoptic cable trench dug up and opened leading out from the northwest corner of city hall.

Carlow and Zepka. That’s what was written on the side of the white utility truck the workers had parked next to the trench. Never heard of them. Have you? Try a Google search. See what you exume.  Wonder to whom if anyone in city management they are related?

Whoever and whatever be the immortal Carlow and Zepka, their bill will be added to the half-a-million dollars the mayor absconded from taxpayers money without their approval and without the approval of the city council for the foolish move to 100 North St.

Carlow and Zepka? Uncle? Brother-in-Law? Nephew? Chum? Can you help us with that one, Bumstead?

We shudder to think.

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Emerson: Swept Out to See

Residents in Ward 4 were astonished early last evening to see a city street sweeper soft at work on Emerson Avenue. It wasn’t so much the appearance of the sweeper that had them seeing up as down but rather the method of sweeping. Our spies in the neighborhood reported the sweeper repeatedly going up and down the avenue, forward and reverse. They stopped counting at six passes, and the sweep jockey was still at it? Six, seven passes on the same street?

Why would a sweeper make that many passes? That’s more passes than THE PLANET would make at the coeds at The Rathskeller in an evening “at the tables” back in our undergraduate days. Where’s Chris Connell when you need him?

In pondering this other Big Mystery, we put together four observations: (a) The sweeper driver is a city employees. (b) He’s on the taxpayer’s dim. (c) He’s paid by the hour. (d) He’s getting overtime. Using the inductive process, we arrive at our conclusion: Neighborhood residents were witnessing their tax dollars not hard at work but being pissed into the dust.

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PLANET and PLANET Alone Called Brien Deal Exactly As It Happened

Finally, can you trust THE PLANET? Can you believe our reportage? Are we the No. 1 news/commentary website in the area?

Remember our story posted on here on June 29? The headline read:

‘SECRET’ BRIEN SOURCES: ‘THERE WILL BE NO STRIKE’ 

In the 6/29 story, we flat out predicted that the local mainstream media was incorrect in reporting on the “impending” strike by Brien Center workers on July 6. We wrote, in part:

THE PLANET has infiltrated deep into both sides of the negotiation, talking to those in the room for what one source calls the “talks within the talks, [involving] fewer people, less chatter, and more dialog.”  Our informants have spoken on strict assurance of anonymity, given the sensitivity of the issue, especially the secret talks. There, sources say, substantial progress has been made. A deal may even be imminent.

A management source expressed confidence that the remaining “minor” issues will be addressed prior to the July 6 deadline. “There will be no strike,” the source told us. Management has offered a 1.5% pay hike. Workers want 5%. The Solomon-like compromise, sources say, will result in a hike in the 1.5%-2% range.

A member of the union with knowledge of the secret negotiations concedes the strike threat is “a bluff.” She told THE PLANET she didn’t agree with striking “because it would mean shutting the place down. I do not want to be a part of that, and I know most [union members] feel this way.” When asked about management’s prediction of “no strike,” she concurred with it.

It played out exactly as we predicted.

We are not clairvoyant. We do simple journalism. If we can’t be in the room ourselves, we find sources that will be or were in the room, then talk to them. Remember, all you official wrongdoers and secret dealers: THE PLANET has our spies in 95% of the rooms, 95% of the time. Even “in” the corner office. Isn’t that true, Mr. Mayor?!

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“While pensive Poets painful vigils keep, / Sleepless themselves, to give their readers sleep.” — Alexander Pope, The Dunciad, lines 93-4, (1728).

“OPEN THE WINDOW, AUNT MILLIE.”

LOVE TO ALL.