BY DAN VALENTI

PLANET VALENTI NEWS AND COMMENTARY

(FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE, WEDNESDAY JAN. 10, 2018) — With the recent thaw in below zero temps, THE PLANET deems we can justify thoughts of spring.

“Spring” — a word that harbors hope, the breath inside the seed that waits for a slight warming of earth before the green spear tip pokes through the cold ground.

Spring. Soon, the Old Professor will begin again a new semester, the “Spring” Semester, the dear word employed officially, with state sanction no less, on our Comp II syllabus.

Spring. It’s also the name of a street in Pittsfield. Do you know here it is?

Recent news reports in the mainstream media told you of a man taken into custody by police and accused of gunfire on Spring Street, on or about New Year’s Day. What they left out, however, was the important fact of Spring Street’s location. Why? THE PLANET cannot say, and we would be loathe to speculate on behalf of our less free, more moribund media colleagues. Did the editors overseeing the stories deem the location of Spring Street irrelevant? Was it a lapse in journalist judgment, or perhaps a desire to populate the corner-office fiction of a “Pittsfield Renaissance?”

We wonder: How many out of 10 city resident could tell you the location of Spring Street? Three? Two? One. None? Test yourself.  Do you know?

THE. PLANET is going through this mental GPS exercise on you because the location of Spring Street is a crucial part of the story. Spring Street, you see, is located off of Tyler Street, the upper (west) section, near where the Silk Mill apartments are located. This is the area where mayor Linda Tyer has proclaim a “Renaissance.” THE PLANET kids you not. This word, a beautiful word anywhere else, has been debased in Pittsfield by a series of mayors who has resolutely ignored the city’s systemic sickness for a series of grant-fueled cosmetic projects ($6,000 seasonal trash cans, colored umbrellas) that serve as sugar pills for the cancer patient.

Tyler Street, and Spring Street in particular, have degenerated into crime-riddled neighborhoods where a minority of drug addicts, gang members, and an assorted gang of scammers keep a majority of good, decent citizens hostage. Spend some time there, talking to residents. That’s what you’ll hear.

Tyer made large about Tyler Street during the campaign. She boasted about the Miracle Mile in her State of the City address. Let’s look at the record. In two+ years, she has:

* Ignored blight (Exhibit A, Hess Forest, empty storefronts)

* Whiffed badly on the Walmart proposal for the PEDA site, a development that proved her not only to be a lightweight with power but ineffectual in influence.

* Failed to honor her pledge to reduce crime.

* Wrote off Morningside, giving it wholesale to the drug trade, through her failure to change the way policing is done there.

* Made a joke of both her office and her official judgment with the Trashcan debacle.

* Listened to a meddling small group of ignorant do-gooders with dubious ties to the area, especially a couple of parasitic meddlers who for reasons that baffle have her ear.

* Driven the marginal middle classes to the point of insolvency with a relentless series of tax hikes and hidden levies.

* Refused to address the issue of a grammar school sitting within a pebble’s flight of the toxic mountain of Hill 78.

* Did nothing to explore if reopening of the GE Consent Agreement might be in order as a means to rectify the still-polluted Woodlawn acres.

We could go on, but we let this indictment stand as is.

As we predicted, Tyer addressed none of this in her la-Dee-da State of the City address. She painted a tale of fairy land, a land that doesn’t exist. It may play well with the croissant-and-Brie crowd, but for Mary Jane and Joe Kapanski, it was more of the same bad news.

The SOTC speech shared two huge revelations from the mayor: Senior citizens L-O-V-E pickle ball and millennials love “hip” housing. Keep that in mind while choking on your taxes.

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“Ne cede malis” — Sir Tiberius Fruitjuice.

“OPEN THE WINDOW, AUNT MILLIE.”

Love to All.

The Usual Disclaimer.