Archive for July, 2012
07.28.12
Posted in Tanna Kasperowicz at 4:43 PM by Tanna K
By Tanna Kasperowicz
This Monday Cohasset’s Governance Committee will be e-mailing questions to appointed and elected town committee heads asking them a number of questions about their operations. Responses are due August 15. After the information is compiled, the committee will discuss possible “tweaks,” and plan to deal with areas of confusion. One new question was added: where do the committees meet? According to committee members, some committees are meeting in private homes. This blogger has had reports from customers at Mr. Dooley’s and the Gunny in Hull that a quorum of some Cohasset committees are meeting in those establishments after their public meetings.
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07.27.12
Posted in Cat Dam, Karen Quigley at 12:59 PM by Tanna K
The saga of Cat Dam continues as DEP in a letter dated July 12, 2012 asks Cohasset to “…advise the Department, in writing, as to your intentions to file the required ENF with the MEPA Office…”.
At the July 19 Conservation Commission meeting, Acting Town Manager, Michael Milanoski, presented an “update” which in reality was a request for ConCom to support his recommendation to the Board of Selectmen. That recommendation being that due to the potential cost of threatened litigation from members of the E-20 group and abutters sympathetic to their position, and the monies already expended by the Town on this issue, that the Town take no further action in the matter of Cat Dam.
During the discussion, newly elected Conservation Chair, Jack Creighton, asked the members of the appellate group if they would “compromise by withdrawing their appeal to DEP for a Superceding Order of Conditions.”
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Posted in Mike Coughlin at 10:06 AM by Tanna K
by Mike Coughlin
former Cohasset Town Manager
Over a year ago, interviewing before the Town Manager Search Committee headed by now Interim Town Manager Mike Milanowski, I reasoned that Cohasset may gain some guidance by lessons I learned when I was Town Manager in Southbridge. While the reason for bringing up Southbridge was because the audit conducted by Melanson and Heath mentioned my “adopted” home town as a model for the future management of Cohasset’s Water and Sewer operations, the citizens of Cohasset would do well to consider Southbridge’s approach to the town’s present controversy concerning between the union and Chief Mark Deluca.
This past week the Southbridge Police Association Local 153 of Mass COP issued a letter to the Town Manager questioning the ability of their chief to lead their department. The letter signed by twenty four officers with four voting against and one who abstained, listed 5 allegations including claims of retaliation, undue pressure and interference in communications between the union and the town manager. Further, akin to the statement issued by Cohasset Union President Patrick Reardon- echoed by his State Director of the New England Police Benevolent Association (NEPBA), the Union President in Southbridge. Detective Scott Bailey also claimed that the allegations against the Southbridge Chief had nothing to do with union business.
Despite the stark similarities between Southbridge and Cohasset, Southbridge Chief Dan Charette – whom I appointed some ten years ago – was not placed on administrative leave like Chief DeLuca nor did his town manager instruct the town attorney to conduct a so called ‘independent” investigation into the union allegations.
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07.25.12
Posted in Cat Dam, Cohasset Selectmen, Tom Wolf at 10:34 AM by Tom Wolf
Once upon a time in our picture perfect little town there were two adjacent salt water ponds, connected at one small point but sharing the tidal nourishment and replenishment of Cape Cod Bay.
A long, long time ago, perhaps a hundred years, some undoubtedly good intentioned residents took it upon themselves to improve on what nature had created by altering the natural tidal cycle of the innermost of the two ponds.
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07.18.12
Posted in Police Chief Mark DeLuca, Tanna Kasperowicz at 2:19 AM by Tanna K
Tinytown Unleashed has learned that the 11 so-called charges against suspended Cohasset Police Chief Mark DeLuca were allegedly cooked up by Acting Town Manager Mike Milanoski and Deputy Chief William Quigley during an early morning phone call – mere hours before the chief was suspended.
If Selectman Chair Paul Carlson thinks he’s going to win re-election to the board with the Boy Town Manager doing stuff like this – he’s very sadly mistaken.
There will be a hearing. The charges against DeLuca will embarrass town officials to high heaven. Carlson and his stubborn, almighty board (four of them, anyway) will vote to fire the chief, nonetheless. And then there will be a civil lawsuit that Chief DeLuca will win. And we will all pay, again. And again. And again. Maybe it’s not the legal budget we can’t afford, maybe it’s the selectmen.
There’s another lawsuit on the way, the one about to be filed by former town manager Mike Coughlin. This one will generate additional legal bills for a town that is very tired of legal bills and the selectmen who manufacture them like so many cookies.
I should be happy of course, because all of this chaos is perfectly timed for spring 2013 annual town elections and serves my personal efforts to elect two more grownups to the board that will result in a majority and maybe we can start moving this town into a better place.
If Milanosoki were smart he would nip this police chief thing in the bud, now, because when this goes to a hearing, Town Counsel, Milanoski and the Selectmen are going to be discovered to be involved in their favorite pastime: character assassination. And more and more people are going to agree with me that this acting town manager and his selectmen majority leave much to be desired and truly should be relieved of their duties.
Here are a few of the “charges” Milanoski is bringing forward (according to my numerous sources)
- DeLuca asked an off-duty policeman if he would drive some cancer drugs to Logan Airport for an individual who was an honorary special police officer. The off-duty police officer could have said no. The canine vehicle was used. Using the vehicle may not have been kosher, but it’s hardly a material charge, and not a suspendable offense, particularly when the town manager (you remember Mike Coughlin, fired in early spring) had given DeLuca permission to do the same.
- Another Coughlin-related incident. This time - Sarah Coughlin. Mike Coughlin’s daughter. Bright girl, studying to become a lawyer like her dad. She was briefly involved in an unpaid internship with the Cohasset Police Department to study juvenile justice. Milanoski thinks that was against the law. Huh? Unpaid internships are given out freely in all police departments in all towns to attorneys in training. DeLuca should be fired for this?
- The former charge of “forgery” has now been downgraded. DeLuca’s attorney is unable to get a copy of the forged letter. We’ll just have to wait and see.
- Stealing toys from children. Does anyone really think Mark DeLuca, who volunteered his time at NY’s 9/11 digging out police and firemen, would steal Christmas toys? Even I know this should not be one of the charges. When she writes about it, Johanna Seltz at the Globe will lead her article with the Christmas toy charge.
- The other 7 “charges” are just as nuts.
DeLuca and his attorney are scheduled to meet with the Town Investigator Thursday.
If Selectmen don’t nip this in the bud, they should be nipped in the bud. Alas, another year we don’t have recall.
Selectman Martha Gjesteby didn’t win former selectman Ted Carr’s seat because it was a hot summer day and the young fathers and mothers were frolicking on the beach with their children. Hardly. Those young couples couldn’t bring themselves to go to the polls for Ted Carr who in over 6 years had led the Town into an abyss.
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07.15.12
Posted in Cat Dam, Tom Wolf at 2:47 PM by Tom Wolf
Cohasset selectmen, excepting new member Gjesteby, face a dilemma of their own making. The former jewel of our town common, the Meeting House Pond, is rapidly turning into an eyesore and potential health hazard of major proportions as its stagnant waters close over with green pond scum and other unattractive growth. While our resident gurus ponder a cure, they have shut off the fountain, the last remaining chance for circulation, allegedly due to the high cost of water needed to continually refill the restored, repaired but still leaking attraction.
Their quandary? The pond is a small but much more visible reflection of their past actions regarding that much larger body of similarly stagnant water , Inner Little Harbor . Surrounded by the homes of some of our rich and famous and almost out of public view, most Cohasset residents have heard of the environmental challenges facing Inner Little Harbor but this whole issue has kept a low profile recently… out of sight, etc. However, there’s no hiding the pond and there’s no escaping the parallel between the two; stagnant water yields undesirable results.
But what can the selectmen do? Four of them are totally invested in the notion espoused by the E 20 that minimal water circulation can produce acceptable results; and now here’s Mother Nature demonstrating conclusively where such thinking leads us. They can’t very well turn their backs on their friends and neighbors and possibly only remaining voting block – picture the raised platform behind the selectmen during the televised inquisition of Town Manager Mike Coughlin – but they also can’t ignore the eyesore which confronts us all as we move around our tiny town. Will they fix the pond and continue to argue that stagnant water is OK, if its the right people’s stagnant water? Will they have to ignore our new man made mini-swamp, blaming and throwing under the bus their buddies at the water department, in order to protect themselves from a long string of increasingly embarrassing decisions?
A new crossroads has emerged, and, no its not the potential loss of another major motion picture and the revenue and eclat attendant. Now the DEP has asked the town to declare its intentions regarding Cat Dam and, by extension, Inner Little Harbor and given it two weeks to do so. The E 20, and the selectmen by extension, had thought they had maneuvered the situation into a perpetual stalemate; and they just might have … if the Selectmen didn’t have to deal with this new, pressing parallel issue which could have a major impact on their increasingly unlikely reelection efforts next spring and if the E 20 et al hoped to retain a majority voice on the board through other surrogates. Clearly the townspeople have put up with just about enough from this group; embarrassing them to their summer visitors, friends, family, all those who have told them how smart they were to buy, at a steep premium, in this picture perfect little town, should be the last straw as the Selectmen’s high stakes game is drawing to a close.
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Posted in Tanna Kasperowicz at 10:56 AM by Tanna K
by Tanna Kasperowicz
We are much like Honeybees in that we are both a society and a superorganism. living here as we do in our Hull, Cohasset, Hingham, Scituate and Weymouth hives.
Individually, we act as family units and then in our town governments we are divided into precincts, and parties. And along with all of that comes the issues that must be decided by the society via votes at town meeting and town, state and federal elections.
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