In This Corner - Robert Slager

Five years in the life

   
    Time is a funny thing. Sometimes it seems to drag on slowly. Sometimes it goes by in the blink of an eye. Sometimes it seemingly does both at the exact same time.

    Five years ago Hurricane Katrina was barreling toward Louisiana with an eye for destruction. Five years ago my daughters were just four years old. Five years ago Wareham was ruled by the voting block of selectmen Mary Jane Pillsbury, Renee Fernandes-Abbott and Cindy Parola. There was a town administrator who rubber-stamped everything, a police chief embroiled in lawsuits from members of his own department, and a town-budget that was balanced on the backs of sewer users, who were paying an exorbitant sewer administration fee on top of their property taxes so department heads could get everything they wanted.

    And five years ago Wareham had just one local newspaper – The Wareham Courier, which questioned nothing that went on behind closed doors at Town Hall.

    It was a whole different world in Wareham back then. When I first walked into the Wareham Bulletin office on Sandwich Road five years ago I had no idea what I was getting myself into. I thought I did. But in retrospect I really didn’t have a clue.

    Wareham was still something of a mystery to me. As regional editor for the Memorial Press Group, the community was one of eight under my watch. While that gave me the opportunity to learn about some of the issues of the day (i.e. the proposed West Wareham plaza), there is no way to truly understand a community until you fully immerse yourself in it. 

    I spent much of the month of August in 2005 reading as many back copies of the Courier as I could. I spoke with many people. At times it felt like there was a revolving door in the Wareham Bulletin office. The phone rang incessantly. There was one common question people asked over and over again.

    Would the Bulletin tell the truth?

    I have to admit that question caught me a little off guard. I wasn’t fully aware that the Courier hadn’t been telling the truth. It wasn’t so much that the Courier was providing outright misinformation. It was more lies of omission. It was an unwillingness to tell the people of Wareham what was really going on in the community, behind the closed doors. I was asked if the Bulletin would be just another public-relation arm of town government. I assured these callers that would not be the case.

    It didn’t take me long to discover what these people meant. I quickly learned that the cranberry industry had undue influence on town politics. I learned that Mary Jane Pillsbury ran town government from her office at the Wareham Free Library. I learned that anyone who spoke against those in power was quickly slapped back into line.

    There really wasn’t anything controversial in the Bulletin for the first few months. I wasn’t seeking controversy for controversy sake. It wasn’t until I was tipped off to an un-posted zoning rewrite committee meeting in a back room of the Multi-Service Center that my eyes were suddenly pried open. A.D. Makepeace was sitting side-by-side with members of the zoning committee, crafting zoning laws to Makepeace’s liking. I was stunned.

    A few months later I learned that Pillsbury had paid the legal fees for abutters so they could fight a zoning board decision that would have allowed a proposed mini-storage business to compete with a similar business Pillsbury owned with her husband. Then I learned Pillsbury had been sued for $1 million by the rival company for allegedly using her political influence to change the ZBA decision. When I went to the library to find minutes to ZBA meetings when the issue was discussed I discovered all those minutes were missing.

    That’s when I wrote a column calling for Pillsbury to step down until the issue was resolved. It was a fair column, based on facts and my own personal viewpoint on the matter.

    Pillsbury responded by saying she wasn’t going anywhere. Her lawyer wrote me a letter suggesting that I retract my viewpoint. Then two headless dolls appeared on the doorstep of the Bulletin office, which I took as a clear threat to my twin daughters.

    That’s when I learned why people were so afraid to tell the truth in Wareham. That’s when I decided I would never stop telling the truth.

    I wasn't trying to be a hero or a martyr. I simply believed that this wonderful community deserved better than to be ruled by unethical people who used intimidation and harassment as tools to maintain their own power. Even when the Bulletin and the Courier “merged” after Gatehouse Media bought both the Memorial Press Group (which owned the Courier) and the Community Newspaper Company (which owned the Bulletin), I refused to abandon that belief. I wasn’t going anywhere either.

    That’s why Elizabeth Pezzoli and I launched the Wareham Observer. One of the ways power perpetuates itself is by controlling the flow of information. During the year I was with the Bulletin I finally understood how the Courier shamelessly distorted the truth. They printed a story on-line about a selectmen meeting during which the issue of sewer rates was debated. I remember that meeting. Pillsbury voted to increase sewer rates rather than see the immoral sewer administration fee cut. That not only potentially protected her salary but the salary of her son, a Wareham police officer.

    The only quote in the entire story came from Nora Bicki, a spokesperson from the Friends of the Wareham Free Library who spoke of the importance of keeping the library budget intact.

    The story was written by Nick Pizzolato, the son of assistant library director Susan Pizzolato. Susan Pizzolato could have been financially impacted by any potential cut to the library budget.  

    That’s the kind of thing that cannot be allowed to happen. People in Wareham deserve better than that. The Courier has improved in recent years, but now there is a new danger to the community – Wareham Week, which commits the same type of distortions and lies of omission. No one has to look any further than their coverage of the school bus safety scandal, the Wareham Fire District issue, and the Department of Revenue’s financial management report to know that paper is more interested in protecting certain people than it is in looking out for the entire community.

    So much progress has been made in this community. People aren’t so afraid anymore. That's why former Wareham High School Athletic Director Buddy Carlson was nailed for stealing more than $30,000 from teams under his watch. That's why a lot of former town employees are former town employees. That's why sewer users are no longer being robbed blind.

    Yes, there are still a hard-core group of very bad people who hide behind anonymous screen names and harass those who hold opposing viewpoints. But most of Wareham sees them for what they are now – hate-filled people who have watched their world change around them and have nothing left to do but throw an endless tantrum. Wareham is finally tuning them out now. There is only so much homophobia, racism, profanity and lies that people can take before it all blends into a juvenile rant.

    There is something I have come to realize. These people claim to hate me because I lie. No, these people hate me because I tell the truth. The truth is their enemy. The truth is what has finally begun to set Wareham free from their selfish clutches.

    I never planned to stay in Wareham for five years. But I don’t regret a moment of it. Yes, there have been some very difficult times. I’ve made a few mistakes along the way. But I have seen first-hand just how many decent people there are in this community. I’ve seen how hard they’ve worked to make Wareham a better place for everyone. They are a constant source of inspiration to me. They make putting up with all the nonsense worth it.

    Wareham deserves more than the hatred of a bitter family. Wareham deserves more than powerful people who try to manipulate everyone around them just to satisfy their own egos. Wareham deserves to watch the seeds of prosperity grow.

    Sometimes I can’t remember what my life was like before Wareham. It has become such a part of me now that it’s difficult to imagine letting it go. But that day will come. And when it does I will be proud to know I was part of a great choir, a choir that raised its voice in unison, high enough to forever shatter a ceiling of belief that once kept the truth hidden from the light of day.

In This Corner - Robert Slager

The power elite's immoral sewer proposal

    Sometimes the lies that come from the Take Back Wareham crew truly make your head spin.
    None other than Bob Brady plans to try to take sewer commissioner authority away from the Board of Selectmen and put it in the hands of special interest groups. That, of course, would undoubtably create a tremendous spike in sewer fees for the people in Wareham who can least afford it.
    Let’s put Brady’s endless flow of misinformation to rest once and for all. Here are the cold, hard facts about the town’s sewer problem: There is so much nitrogen in the town’s water shed that the Department of Environmental Protection ordered the town to build a sewer system to address the problem. The two primary sources of this water pollution are cranberry bogs and septic systems along the rivers. That has been confirmed in a recent study by an independent group called Wareham Nitrogen Consensus. This group concluded that the only way to ease this pollution is for the town to extend the sewer system even further, which would require the town to build another sewer pollution control facility at an estimated cost of $50 million because the current plant is nearing capacity. 
    The federal government paid 90 percent of the cost of the existing plant. It’s highly unlikely, given the state of the economy, that such funding would be available again. That means Wareham residents will foot much of the bill.
    Brady claims that selectmen, acting as sewer commissioners, have failed in their responsibility because there is a structural deficit in the sewer operational budget. He cites their decision to cut the sewer administration fee as the primary cause for that. Brady's claim displays a fundamental misunderstanding of how the system works.
    In the mid-1990s the town created an enterprise fund to keep the finances of the pollution control facility separate from the rest of town government. Sewer uses pay a sewer fee each year to address direct and indirect costs of operating the sewer system. The direct costs are things such as salaries, electricity and the cost of chemicals necessary for the plant to operate. Indirect costs are things such as employee benefits.
    For years sewer users were also charged for two alleged costs. One was known as PILOT, or payment in lieu of taxes. This charge to sewer users was to compensate Wareham for the tax revenue that it allegedly lost each year because the pollution control facility was on town-owned land and did not generate tax revenue for the town. The other cost was to compensate the town for work allegedly spent by town employees who assisted in the administration of the facility. Combined, these charged cost sewer users approximately $600,000 per year.
    Over the past several years selectmen, serving in their dual roles as sewer commissioners, eliminated these charges. The PILOT concept has been abandoned by many communities because of legal concerns and the fact that the PILOT is based on a theoretical number that cannot be accurately quantified. After it was discovered that town employees did very little to assist in the administration of the sewer pollution control facility (and no records were kept to chart that work) that aspect of the administration fee was also eliminated.
    That $600,000 from sewer users used to be transferred directly into the town’s operational budget. After that revenue stream ended the town was forced to cut back on expenses. There are only two town departments with discretionary budgets - the Wareham Free Library and the Counsel on Aging. All other departments have state-mandated minimums. That’s why the library budget was cut considerably. It was the only department that could take the hit and remain in operation. The alternative would have been to close the Counsel on Aging, and even that would not have made up the entire difference.
    Much of the political tension in Wareham between the former board of selectmen and hard-core supporters of the library stemmed from the decision to eliminate $600,000 from the sewer administration fee. Library supporters claimed it was done because of a personal vendetta selectmen had against the library. Selectmen believed it was immoral to charge sewer users for services never rendered and to charge them to compensate the town for theoretical lost tax revenue. They believed the $600,000 was nothing more than a slush fund, used over the years in part to increase the salaries of loyal department heads. 
    Brady claims that the elimination of this fee is what caused the operating budget of the Pollution Control Facility to run into a deficit. That is factually incorrect. The cut in the sewer administration fee had nothing to do with the sewer budget. That money never went into the sewer budget. It always went entirely into the town budget. 
     Brady also claims that the selectmen’s decision to reduce EDU (equivalent dwelling units) rate forced the town to dip into betterment fees paid in order to operate the Pollution Control Facility. That is also factually incorrect. The EDU rates were dropped when most of the sewer administration fee was eliminated (the administration fee was calculated into the EDU rates). The reduction in EDU rates had no affect whatsoever on the sewer budget for reasons explained above.
    The reason the sewer budget is in deficit is because of continued cost overruns at the plant. Town officials repeatedly told former Pollution Control Facility superintendent David Simmons to cut his budget, noting that items such as chemicals were never put out to bid. Simmons refused. In fact he often came in over-budget. Selectmen, acting as sewer commissioners, refused to raise the EDU rate to compensate for what they believed to be Simmons’ mismanagement of the plant. It essentially became a power struggle.
    In order to finance his budget, Simmons began using betterment fees from sewer users, fees that were assessed to sewer users to pay for sewer extension. Those fees were not intended to be used in the annual sewer budget but rather to pay off a $20 million bond the town was issued to extend sewer. The Department of Revenue said this wasn’t a prudent practice. Essentially the sewer budget was being balanced on credit, credit provided through betterment fees that eventually needed to be used to pay off the bond.
    Town Administrator Mark Andrews is continuing to explore how to cut the plant’s operating costs so sewer users won’t have to see their EDU rates soar. One possible solution is to ask Bourne, which uses Wareham's plant, to kick in more money for that privilege.
    Brady’s solution to the deficit issue is to insert a petition article into the Town Meeting Warrant that would create a new board of sewer commissioners. He wants that board to be appointed by Chairman of the Board of Selectmen Jane Donahue, Town Moderator Claire Smith and Municipal Maintenance Director Mark Gifford. That would mean Gifford would be appointing people to a board that he would, in turn, report to as municipal maintenance director. And Smith's husband is in the septic business. Hmmmm.
    Such a warrant article would also represent a change to the Town Charter. The Charter Review Committee is currently reviewing the charter and will make recommendations at Fall Town Meeting. It  Brady is attempting to circumvent the CRC in order to push through yet another special interest article.
    Make no mistake about it: This is all about special interest. It always has been. The water pollution problem in Wareham did not occur in a vacuum. Cranberry growers are largely responsible for the problem, a problem that has been passed down to the wallets of Wareham residents for years. But people like Brady will not admit that. He would never ask the cranberry industry and land developers to pitch in to fix the problem. That would not be politically prudent.
    There have been a number of perfectly reasonable warrant articles over the past several years asking developers and cranberry growers to adhere to stricter nitrogen-loading standards. But that would eat into their profits, so they rallied the troops and had those articles defeated at Town Meeting with the usual rhetoric and distortions. Brady’s alternative is to create a new board of sewer commissioners made up of special interest group representatives and increase sewer rates for people barely making ends meet right now.
    Someday Wareham will wake up to all this. This community cannot continue to put profits before people. The rampant water pollution will eventually destroy the very beauty that makes Wareham a tourist attraction and a desirable place to live. If the only thing people like Brady understand is money at least they should be able to understand that.
    The role of sewer commissioners is far too important to give it to an appointed group of special interest representatives. There are real people who are struggling with real financial problems in Wareham. Asking them to pay to fix Wareham’s water pollution problem, a problem they didn't cause, is offensive.

Dr. Mick Jones - The Public Good

This land was made for you and me

    Any company considering where to locate will expend considerable resources to make sure their decision has the highest possibility of success. In no particular order the factors they will analyze include demographics of the population, utilities, infrastructure, quality of life, taxation, regulation, transportation, customer market concentrations, raw materials, and of course the availability of suitable land or existing facilities. The topic of this article is the availability of a location for the business that meets both the needs of the company and the community.
    First let’s consider what it must be like to be an analyst at a major corporation who is responsible for selecting new sites for the company to meet its expansion goals. Owners of small businesses will likely be their own analyst. Companies like Dunkin Donuts, Wendy’s, or Shell Oil (refueling stations) are constantly expanding and contracting, moving in and moving out, and constructing buildings and selling buildings. As an analyst with the responsibility of selecting locations for one of these companies you would collect information about a variety of sites and score them. Some sites wouldn’t make it to the top of the list. It’s just another day in the life of a business analyst but it also means the loss of jobs and amenities for a community that didn’t make the cut.
    Next let’s think about the impact on a community when they are one of the locations chosen. For those locations that get selected the work to build a facility, hire employees, and stock the shelves is watched eagerly. A community with construction projects going on looks and feels like a vibrant, improving place.
    However, it doesn’t always work out for the best. We’ve all seen it before. Sometimes the business doesn’t do well in the location they selected and they decide to close that branch and sell the property (assuming they owned and not leased the property). So now we have a building that looks like a Dunkin Donuts but is empty. The immediate concern for the new or existing owner of the building is to get another business into the location. It is usually the community’s reaction, too.
     This is a critical time and the decision is usually good for the owner but bad for the community. The owner leases the facility to some business at a reduced rate. That business weighs the “reduced rate” too heavily in their business analysis and quickly discovers they can’t do business at that site any better than Dunkin Donuts did. In the mean time the owner has sold the property to another investor as soon as they lease it to the second occupant. Then the second occupant eventually closes the business at that location and the cycle repeats itself. Each time the value of the property declines compared to similar properties in good locations. The end result is a rundown facility with a parade of businesses where each successive business is a higher risk business for the community. This continues until the property is sitting empty or occupied by a business that brings down the quality of life of the community like a porn store or some other shop that sells goods or services that is demanded only by people the community would rather not have nearby.
    Unfortunately there isn’t much a community can do about the first couple of cycles of this downward spiral. The regulations a community could and should implement would target buildings sitting empty for several years, not kept up to code, or in severe disrepair. Once the facility becomes a public nuisance (according to well written regulations) a process should be initiated that will result in demolishing the building and restoring the property back to an empty lot that will be noticed by owners of potential businesses. Those regulations should make it possible for citizens in the surrounding area to initiate the process as well as government officials.
    The costs of restoring the land will be paid by the government initially. Then the government would place a lien on the property to cover all costs plus interest. If the cost to restore is greater than the market value of the restored land then the government could have the option to take possession of the land and sell it immediately. These regulations have the added incentive whereby owners would keep their property in the best condition possible because they don’t want to lose their land.
    Once the building is gone and the land has been restored the process can start over. The land can once again get onto the list of a business analyst. With some luck this time the business that selects the land will be able to do well at that location. But we shouldn’t leave it to luck.
    The town needs to have a comprehensive plan for the entire town. It should show the organization of the community in an ideal configuration complete with transportation, utilities, industrial sectors, residential areas, shopping centers, and all the other elements of a desirable place to live. This means a professional product done with input by all the citizens but balanced against the needs of future generations. This plan should be kept up-to-date and used to make decisions about zoning and guidance for local economic development officials. These officials should identify facilities that are located outside of their ideal zone and work with land owners to make land swaps to achieve the goals of the comprehensive plan.
    This doesn’t mean the officials become developers. They act as guidance councilors for the community. When a business is getting ready for a major improvement to the property but its current location is not optimal according to the comprehensive plan then the economic development officials should work with the business owners to find another location. These business owners should not be forced to go along with the recommendation. If the official can find someone in the targeted sector that would benefit from the swap (maybe it gets them closer to their consumer market) then the swap could benefit both businesses and not cost them any more than what they would have spent anyway. It is possible this will improve their profits and therefore be a net gain for both businesses in the long run. Also in the long run the community continues to progress toward the goals of the comprehensive plan and a higher quality of life.
    The recycling of land combined with community planning would be a huge benefit to the entire community. What we do now is recycle buildings. Again, this eventually leads to a downward spiral for the property and the surrounding neighborhood. The downward spiral happens to residential as well as to commercial properties. It isn’t good enough to wait for someone to come along and buy the property and demolish the building so they can build what they think is best. By the time that investor comes along many other properties in the neighborhood have declined too. If it had been empty land that decline might not have happened, but because the building was in decline it brought down the neighboring buildings. So the investor isn’t going to get a nice new building in an up and coming neighborhood. They would be taking the risk of having their investment fail because the neighborhood was too far gone. Still, people generally don’t like to tear down old buildings.
    Demolishing an older building is especially difficult when there is even a hint of historical or architectural value. Buildings that should be saved for historical or architectural reasons are rare. One test for historical value that is often overlooked is this: Has a group organized to raise the money to save it? That money should not come from government, especially local government. If there isn’t a natural advocacy group for the building with enough seriousness to raise adequate funds outside of the community then the building doesn’t have historical significance.
    Architectural value is extremely rare. To have value architecturally the building needs to rise to the level of art. It needs to be unique in some way and very well preserved. Just because a building is made of a known architectural style doesn’t make it valuable. There are many building of each architectural style and they are all better than a building that has gone unnoticed for decades. Furthermore, old buildings made of brick or stone last a long time and often have nice architectural features, but it doesn’t make the building valuable as architecture.
    Many communities make this mistake, and in the northeast United States it is especially prevalent. With the transition away from old industrial businesses there are many buildings made of brick and stone. They are often very large, old and have some interesting architectural details like arched windows and fancy columns inside and outside of the building. Often a movement within the community organizes to make sure the new owners of the property don’t just tear down the buildings. So the old buildings sit empty. You see them in every town. Some have been turned into condominiums and others into office buildings.
    So now you have a residential building right in the middle of a declining industrial sector of town. One nearby example is the cordage factory in Plymouth. It is a huge facility with ocean frontage you can’t find any more. There are several large factory buildings made of brick and timber on the site. One of the buildings has been turned into a professional building housing medical offices and related businesses. The site has been partially improved too. But look out the window of your office toward the ocean and instead of water you see the empty shell of a factory building. Apparently the developers are concerned about having too much office space so they are waiting to develop the rest. Years have passed and it still sits there empty and obstructing the view.
    The developers should have torn down the buildings and recovered as much building material as possible. Then, using these materials and a comprehensive design for the site, they could have built a professional complex that takes full advantage of its location. A good architect could have used the materials in the design for the new buildings. A few years after the new buildings are completed most people visiting the site would see the old brick and industrial age styling and become convinced that the original building was still standing there in front of them. They just have a new use now. This is recycling buildings in a very productive way. The material could have been recovered and the site restored to open land. The materials don’t have to be used on the same site. Recycling land can include recycling building materials.
    In summary, empty lots are an essential part of attracting economic development. By recycling land you can still have development without the worry of running out of land some day. Lots of development could occur (bringing needed employment and amenities) in a community without ever using land that is currently open. Development does not have to mean loss of open land. Some well written laws could make it possible to get rid of neighborhood blight and encourage people to build new facilities on the recovered land. Businesses and homeowners could have new buildings with all the amenities they can afford rather than learning to live with the amenities they can retrofit into an old building. Those new buildings would be built to modern standards and save energy. Those new buildings would improve the quality of life in the community while preserving open land.