BY DAN VALENTI

PLANET VALENTI NEWS AND COMMENTARY

(FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE, WEDNESDAY SEPT. 13, 2017) — Step into Mr. Peabody’s Time Machine for a journey back to 1982. In Pittsfield, a little company starts up with a couple-three employees. The company wants to build armored security vehicles for police, the military, governments, SWAT, and a host of other like outfits. The company casts its net in the Dreaded Private Sector. Armed with a vision and private risk capital, the company establishes first a foothold and then a reputation for quality, customer service, and all-around excellence.

Over the ensuing 35 years, the company will grow beyond the rosiest ambitions of its founders, a case of grasp exceeding reach such that it enjoys a stellar worldwide reputation, provides 110 good-paying jobs with benefits, and stands as a valued member of its community, having paid countless millions in payroll and taxes. One would figure a city to value such a company, right? But in Pittsfield, Mass., such an enterprise comes in for official harassment.

Come on down, Lenco Industries.

Come on down, Lt. Randy Stein, Pittsfield fire inspector and answer to the burning question, “What’s the use?”

Last year in September, Stein visited Lenco, evidently determined to find something to bitch about. Was he sent there by Mayor Linda Tyer, who herself was acting on orders From Above? Was he answering a call from Spanky of the Little Rascals? None of that is clear, though there’s scuttlebutt, but when the obvious didn’t pan out, Stein began to pick the nits. Even there, he had trouble uncovering an offense, and so he sifted out the nits’ nits. That’s when the Michelin Tire Man flashed his tiny badge at the company’s parking lot.

The company’s permits allow for storage of 35 vehicles. Stein discovered 100 parked in the lots and so wrote up the violation in true tattle-tale fashion, Judy Hensler-style (Judy was the pigtailed snitch in Beaver Cleaver‘s classroom who would always tell on the boys when Miss Landers had to leave the room for a second). His report landed in the hands of the Licensing Board, where that pie-eyed friend to little boys, Carmen Massimiano, launched into the type of sickening, self-righteous lecture for which he is justly famed. THE PLANET loves holier-than-thou, especially when it comes from the mouth of a conissieur who has over the years cultivated many exotic tastes involving many interesting ages, shapes, and textures. We can’t say what anyone swallows, but most decent people have a hard time swallowing Butch’s tired act.

To judge the fairness of Stein’s action, you have to appreciate the context. Lenco had just come off the most profitable years of its existence. It had to expand manufacturing capacity, hire new workers, and manage stratospheric growth — the kind of “problems” that would normally win the appreciation of its host city. With the security world wearing out a path to Lenco and orders pouring in, the company literally could not make enough vehicles fast enough. This created the short-term need for tripled storage capacity.

Fortunately, this well-managed business had planned for such an event, and, as even Stein admitted, had the proper parking space to accommodate more than 100 vehicles. You also have to know it didn’t matter to Stein that the company assured him that shipping and delivery would soon reduce the inventory nearly to permitted size (35). The city refused to cut an exception until it had done its best to humiliate, harass, and harangue. True to its class, Lenco reapplied for an adjusted permit, as if changing the digits on a piece of paper would make a difference in reality. It didn’t, because reality, not technicality, showed that Lenco had proper parking room.

Enforcement of fire regs, codes, and permit conditions can prevent fires, no doubt. Against that, however, must be the cost of over-enforcement, especially done with vindictiveness, for political reasons, or simply with the intention of and official throwing his or her weight around because he or she can. How many Lanterns have been driven out of business or become less profitable because of the unprofessional actions of officials caught in the throes of Fifeism? That cost is incalculable.

Why would the city of Pittsfield risk alienating one of its crown gems? Could it be politics? We don’t know, but one of Lenco’s key executives is Jim Massery, former councilman and as decent a man you will ever want to meet. Massery, who exemplified everything good about public service, no doubt made some enemies in his time, but he’s the kind of man you would want in your foxhole when the going got going. Is it just a coincidence that Fifeism should strike when it did? THE PLANET cannot say.

We just know that in the aftermath of the shoddy treatment, Pittsfield came perilously close to losing the business, or don’t you think any other city in America would want to have Lenco on its business roster? There is a wide and dangerous gulf between “officious” and “efficient.”

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P.S. Still no word from the mayor on the latest gunfire where a man got a warehouse full of lead pumped into him within less than a minute’s walk from city hall. Sweet. Not “vibrant,” but sweet. This is to say nothing, which says everything.  She hasn’t even uttered a conscious public syllable about the killing by cop, although The Boring Broadsheet‘s intrepid photographer just happened to be on hand the exact moment Linda Tyer stopped by to feel the pain of a resident of White Apartments. The White, in prehistory one of Pittsfield’s better addresses, is one of the dumps in town for which burning down is considered an upgrade.

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“I put him in a category just below Martin Luther King and Malcolm X” — Stephen Shames on Bobby Seale.

“OPEN THE WINDOW, AUNT MILLIE.”

LOVE TO ALL.

The Usual Disclaimer.