BY DAN VALENTI

PLANET VALENTI NEWS AND COMMENTARY

Part Two of a Series

(FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE, WEDNESDAY FEB. 7, 2018) — In considering the Administration’s request to further plunge the city’s indebtedness by a mere $80 million, it’s important to note how mayor Linda Tyer first attempted to scuttle a proper procedural process.

Prior to the negative recommendation of the city council’s finance committee —  our Right Honorable Goods Friends wisely voting 3-2 that the full council reject the plan — Tyer asked that her co-governors waive the required hearing. Council rules require — REQUIRE — a referral to committee on any Administration request to spend $75,000 or more, a measure installed after mayor Gerry Doyle rammed through, and his stacked council approved, a $250,000, 11th-hour request for EV Worldwide. You remember the blaring headlines in The BoringBroadsheet boasting the 1,000 jobs that never materialized, and while we’re at it, just how many electric vehicles did the company produce? THE PLANET lost count.

Tyer wanted the council to skip the referral. In her calculus, what’s borrowing almost $80 million more, a sum that will increase Pittsfield’s indebtedness to a staggering $425 million, not counting a nearly equal amount for post-employment benefits bedraggled taxpayers owe for city retirees. That the mayor sought to violate due process put in place to help ensure a more reasonable deliberation on large expenditures reveals much about the intentions behind this poorly explained plan. She sought to shush deliberation. Not good. Why? Because she knows the plan is flawed.

The mayor didn’t want proper debate, deliberation, or discussion, revealing her defensiveness and ultimate lack of belief in the ill-conceived plan to upgrade the city’s water and sewer treatment plant. Instead, she asked the council to waive the mandatory referral and take immediate action. This strongly suggest an even more odious probability, that the council’s votes for this wasteful expenditure have been worked out in advance. That would be in violation of the law, not that criminal activity has ever stopped action desired by The Suits.

Could that explain the council’s unanimous decision to ignore the mayor’s request to waive the referral — that is, she knows in advance how the ultimate votewill turn out. The mayor’s friendly enablers on the council led by Peter Marchetti, the ones she thinks she has in her skirt pockets, would then get to enjoy the window dressing of democracy, safe in the knowledge that even a negative vote from the subcommittee won’t ultimately make a difference.

This might have been the rumored sneaky “compromise” (echoing in city hall) reached by Tyer and Marchetti, who chairs the finance committee and was worried about “how it would look” if his colleagues didn’t refer the mayor’s measure to committee. Under this scenario, the “friendly” councilors would have “known” that the committee decision would be split and close — 3-2 to recommend rejecting the plan, with Chris Connell, Kevin Morandi, and Melissa Morandi on the “3,” Marchetti and Earl Persip on the “2.” Simply put, both the mayor and her council chums would rest easy, knowing that while they could enjoy the technicality of committee review, they could and most likely will pass the foolish measure. So much for transparency.

Politics can be so reptilian, especially when it compromises the very people who have a constitutional responsibility to act wisely in their fiduciary roles on behalf of ordinary citizens.

So does Tyer have the votes on the full council to ram this bad idea through, one that would vault Pittsfield’s indebtedness to nearly $900 million at a time when the tax base is shrinking and administration after administration keeps increasing spending, most of it going for pay and benefit hikes for the 1,200+ employees in the city’s failing public schools? The answer will go a long way in determining the city’s prospects both in the short and long term.

This series continues tomorrow.

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“MRS. KANE: “But Charles, people will think. … — / KANE — “… what I tell them to think.” — Dialog from Citizen Kane starring Orson Wells.

“OPEN THE WINDOW, AUNT MILLIE.”

LOVE TO ALL.

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