BY DAN VALENTI

Hello blogger Dan Valenti, readers and posters,

I have followed corrupt Pittsfield politics for decades – I am now 46 years old – and it is always predictable. Ward 4, which is mostly middle class and upper middle class, decides each and every state and local citywide election in Pittsfield Massachusetts. That means that the other 6 city Wards don’t really matter to the City Council and School Committee, as well as to State Representative “Trippy Country Buffet” and Paul “Marx”, despite his Labor Union background. Ward 4, which is mostly white, does not have Level 5 public schools like inner city Pittsfield public schools, which is mostly non-white. In municipal elections, voter turnout is almost never more than 20% of registered voters. Pittsfield politicians only represent the city’s vested interests, which are public employees’ public school, police and fire department labor unions. The Mayor of Pittsfield raises municipal spending by 5% each and every fiscal year, along with raising fees, public debts and other liabilities that total in the hundreds of millions of dollars that the city knows damn well it will never pay back in our lifetimes. The Mayor and the wealthy Ward 4 backed City Council give millions of municipal tax dollars and breaks to out-of-town millionaires and other special interests, which means that they have no business raising operating budget spending by 5% each and every fiscal year for decades on end. Mayor Linda Tyer is still literally sitting on tens of millions of dollars in Biden Bucks plus Matt Kerwood’s multimillion dollar Slush Funds for no good reason at all. For over 20 years now, GE has made Pittsfield into its toxic waste dump, including Hill 78’s capped industrial chemical PCBs-filled leaky landfill that abuts Allendale Elementary School. 23 year old PEDA is heavily indebted with millions of dollars in liabilities that are as bad as its mostly vacant and polluted moonscape-like acres of land and polluted Silver Lake. Mayor Linda Tyer and the lousy Berkshire legislative delegation to Boston support making Lee and Lenoxdale into GE’s dump they did to Pittsfield over the objections of thousands of voiceless local residents. GE bribed Pittsfield with an $8 million sweetener to close the deal to sellout Lee and Lenoxdale. The “Almighty Dollar” is all that matters to Mayor Linda Tyer and her wealthy CPA husband Barry Clairmont who live together in a millionaires only gated community in far west Pittsfield near the Hancock border. Dangerous downtown Pittsfield is called “Social Services Alley” and the underclass neighborhoods around North Street are called Pittsfield’s “Ring of Poverty”. Pittsfield is always in the top 10 cities in Massachusetts for violent crime, according to the FBI’s annual data. Pittsfield is one of the most economically unequal areas in the state of Massachusetts, as well as in the nation, because there are little to no living wage job there for the average working class family. When one writes and/or speaks out about Pittsfield politics like I do, they lose their job faster than “a New York minute”, but I had to speak out about state and local politics because my dad was a Pittsfield area politician over 2 decades ago. In closing, Pittsfield politics rules by strong-arm tactics in a distressed economy where the odds of winning the big lottery jackpot are greater than finding a living wage job for the average working class and underclass family – slim to none – and slim has left Pittsfield over 30 years ago with decades of population and job loss in Pittsfield – just ask or read Smitty Pignatelli’s endless, hypocritical, redundant and annoying op-eds in the Dirty Bird (Berkshire Eagle) newspaper.

Jonathan Alan Melle

Well done councillors Connell & Morandi!
I fully support all 3 petitions!
Please people – at the very least, email or call ALL members of the city council and ask them to support these petitions!
Is tomorrow night’s meeting in-person at city hall?

Sure wish those term limits occurred during their ten year run on the council.

Wrong Way Weasel strikes again. I hope someone gets elected to the district attorney job who isn’t afraid to go to trial and hold child rapists accountable rather than weasle to a lesser charge. When you see “plea” read weasel.

Man receives state prison sentence in 2015 sexual assaults on teen in Florida Mountain home

• By Tony Dobrowolski, The Berkshire Eagle 15 hrs ago   1 min to read

A Berkshire Superior Court judge on Monday ordered Ronald L. Vachon to serve between four and six years in state prison after the defendant pleaded guilty to six sexual assault charges.
EAGLE FILE PHOTO
PITTSFIELD — A 38-year-old Holyoke man was sentenced to state prison Monday after pleading guilty to six sexual assault charges.
Berkshire Superior Court Judge John A. Agostini adopted the state’s sentencing recommendation and ordered Ronald L. Vachon to serve between four and six years in state prison. Vachon’s attorney, public defender Katherine K. Grubbs, had asked the court to sentence Vachon to two to four years in state prison in connection with an incident that occurred six years ago.
Agostini said he found the commonwealth’s recommendation reasonable, considering that the mandatory minimum sentence for two of the charges, aggravated rape of a child with a 10-year age difference, is 10 years.
“I think it’s very fair considering the seriousness of the charge,” Agostini said.
According to Assistant District Attorney Andrew P. Giarolo, Vachon sexually assaulted a girl at a residence on Florida Mountain on Sept. 13, 2015. An amateur tattoo artist, Vachon had gone to the residence to give the girl’s mother a tattoo.
As it got late, the girl’s mother told Vachon he could stay overnight in a spare bed in her daughter’s room. Vachon and the girl, who was 12 or 13 at the time, talked for awhile before the sexual assault took place, Giarolo said. Vachon then began sending the girl explicit messages and images, according to the police report.
The last message was sent in 2016. Vachon wasn’t arrested until Sept. 28, 2017, when he was picked up on a warrant in Northampton. A former Greenfield resident, Vachon cooperated with state troopers who interviewed him at the Northampton barracks, Giarolo said.
The victim did not appear in court. Giarolo said she is still traumatized by the incident. Reading from a written statement provided by the victim, Giarolo said she has been suffering from post traumatic stress disorder and bouts of depression, almost didn’t graduate from high school and has yet to attend college.
“I’ve put my life on hold countless times trying to deal with this,” Giarolo said the victim wrote.
Grubbs asked the court for a lighter sentence for Vachon, citing his minimal previous criminal history, and his cooperation with police.
“He understands the seriousness of the situation,” Grubbs said. “He’ll be living with this decision for the rest of his life.”
Vachon’s sister, mother and grandmother were all in court Monday. Following sentencing, one of his relatives said, “I love you,” to Vachon as he was led to a holding cell in the back of the courtroom.
Besides the aggravated rape charges, Vachon was charged with four counts of indecent assault and battery on a child under the age of 14. One count of disseminating obscene material to a minor was dismissed at the commonwealth’s request.