BY DAN VALENTI

PLANET VALENTI NEWS AND COMMENTARY

(FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE, WEEKEND EDITION, SEPT. 25-27, 2015) — This week having put to rest the preliminary phase of the 2015 campaign season, THE PLANET provides this information for perusal. It’s the school department budget, in all its glorious multimillions, which doesn’t include the pay raises just agreed to for every employee. And JIV‘s contract extension for which taxpayers will owe $1.2 million over the next six years.

Nice work if you can get it.

Look, everyone agrees. Public schools need funding. That is not the issue. Open for debate is the amount — about $102 million of a $145 million budget, not counting $23 million owed for the last round of school renovation and the $121+ million in new borrowing for THS — Pittsfield taxpayers are required to feed into a system replete with an bloated administration, an appalling lack of accountability, bypassed check-and-balances, and no elected officials advocating for those who have to pay the bills.

Here’s the information. THE PLANET urges you to check it out carefully and offer your suggestions on what can be eliminated, improved, and changed regarding this under-performing, over-rewarded city department.

Name 1. FY16 Budget Adopted April 29 2. FY16 Budget Book 5. Budget Glossary

This information is provided (and is read) at great risk, since The Suits do not under any circumstances want you to be involved in the government you own. Remember, Big Brother is watching.

Keep in mind as you traipse through these calamitous financials that the amounts do not include the cost of providing (1) a bus company for the public schools; (2) the health insurance, pensions, and other benefits for all department employees; or (3) school maintenance.

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 Now, to purify the air, clean the system, and get back to The Garden (or some reasonable facsimile thereof), THE PLANET offers you a poem and then opens The Comment Line. Taxpayers, citizens, Mary Jane and Joe Kapanski, all of The Little Guys out there.

Throw off your chains! Unite! Put the fear of Bog into the candidates who shall bow, scrape, crawl, and Say Nothing to secure your stinking vote.

Put the screws to them. DEMAND that they listen. Get involved. Let them know what you’re thinking. Give them what for?

One final thought: What would you all say for mounting a Take Back Your Government Rally on the steps of Halitosis Hall, also known as 70 Allen Street? Would you attend? Would you invite your friends? Would you fill Allen Street, Fenn Street, and Dunham Mall with angry citizens? Would you storm the Bastille?

Let us know.

Now, the sweet rush of dear poetry:

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HARLEM

By Langston Hughes

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up

like a raison in the sun?

Or fester like a sore —

And then run?

Does it stink like rotten meat?

Or crust and sugar over

like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags

like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

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The Comment Line is open. Be intelligent. Be smart. Be You.

Have a great weekend, everybody.

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When you’re moving in right up close to me, that’s when I get the chills all over me. Quivers down my backbone. I got the shakes in my thigh bone. I got the shivers in my knee bone. Shakin’ all over.” — The Guess Who, “Shakin’ All Over,” (1965).

“OPEN THW WINDOW, AUNT MILLIE.”

LOVE TO ALL.

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