All finished with Town politics.
I submitted my resignation letter and suggested that with a conversation I may revisit my decision. Wasnt worth the time it took to write the email. never heard back except to say they need a copy of the letter. You would have thought a discussion? a brief conversation?..no. Gone. ok. works for me. frees up my evenings and weekends after 15 years in school and a myriad of degrees.
Well....
so many changes..out with the old..in with the new.
Started a new job last week after 36 years at my previous one. Im 62 why am I starting all over?..like some many of my younger co-workers have done..I chased the money and got it. a series of events took place over the past year or so that told me it was time to go. First I got my Masters degree. I had been promised a better position, more pay..and so forth when I got the degree. What did I get?..an email saying great job. I eventually went and talked to my boss and he told me I had wasted my time getting the degree. I would never get much more money and basically be happy I was still employed. Well, my problem was I had seen salary surveys online during my Graduate school career that stated a average salary was xxx,xxx for a person with my qualifications and eduction. I was making xx,xxx . An entire X below the AVERAGE. Sent out one resume on a recommendation and the gentleman gave me an offer right then and there.
I didnt understand before because I believed in loyalty to the company and the company would be loyal to me...well thats bullshit. Businesses are there to make money and employees should adopt the same attitude. If business A wont pay you what your worth..Business B will or Business C will..
I wish I had learned that earlier in my career. It might not have been such a struggle at times if I had.
I am a supporter of the military. Many of my family members have served , some their entire career. I have nothing but respect for them. Even the guy I used to work with who seemingly spent 20 years sweeping out airplane hangers in nowhere Kansas.
That parade had nothing to do with the military. It was to swath the ego of our liar in chief. estimates of 50 to 60 million dollars were wasted on a parade reminisint of North Korea and Russia despite the facts that came out later that their parades were full of phony rockets and broken equipment. The squeeking treads on the tracks of the tanks yesterday pointed it out.
It must have been embarassing for the military to march down the streets of washington DC and find them mostly empty while reports of hundreds of thousands of people showed up all over the country for No Kings rallies. Meme's took no time to appear comparing trumps crowds to local tag sales, the line at the DMV..the line at the staduim to pee in the trough.Even trump news outlets said "thousands" instead of the usual bloated exaggeration. Maybe "thousands" was the bloated exaggeration. Thats a thought.
We had our Bi-annual Town Meeting yesterday( for those who don't have this , we elect representatives for a town meeting (think congress in a much smaller but SMARTER instance) and we meet twice a year to discuss and vote on matters in our town( budgets, bylaws etc...) Yesterday was our spring town meeting. We had a number of the usual questions that appear every year (allocate this, approve that. Basically housekeeping articles.) and a few important ones. a Camping bylaw that would make homelessness a felony if carried far enough-failed. An article regarding allowing LTC(license to carry) gun owners permission to carry in our municipal buildings-FAILED resoundingly.(to my surprise given our gun culture here) and an amendment to trim the other town dept's budgets to fund our school system shortfalls--this also failed.
I did not support the camping question because we are short of resources in our town and it placed a demand on the police to maintain patrols of the known area of campsites the homeless have created. During the discussion it was divulged the town has exceptional programs in place to house the homeless and in fact have currently reduced the homeless to Zero or almost zero. The question would have created civil fines that the homeless cannot pay and taken to the extreme would had led to jail if the fines were allowed to lapse. Homelessness should not be a crime anywhere. A lot of us are a major illness away from joining them given the soaring costs associated with medical procedures.
I did not support the Gun question because of public safety. The employees of the town when polled (even though a slight majority were LTC) - they did not want guns in municipal buildings. Municipal buildings in our town are a 9-iron away from public schools and their facilities in fact the Town hall is surrounded by the middle school on one side, athletic fields behind and the Stadium of the 3rd side. There was talk that the building itself belonged to the school dept since it had originally been a school.
The school question. I supported it even though I knew it would fail. I believe the gentleman had the right idea but the chainsaw approach was wrong much like Musk. Forcing the town depts going forward to maintain a percentage increase equal or less to the schools would certainly be a start. Does it solve the problem? no but it does make unappetizing solutions a little more palatable.
The problem is Prop 2 1/2. in its concept to force town government to stay within a 2.5 % annual increase of growth. This eases the strain somewhat on the homeowners. Well it does not take into account of all things Inflation and Insurance costs whose annual increases far exceed those of inflation. In the past 20 years we have seen this town get lean. Very lean with cost cutting. we don't pay comparable salaries, offer lousy benefits and as a result the turnback's our administration boast of are simply salaried budgeted for unfilled positions. Great system. we have turned off streetlights, we now pay for trash and bags, everything to do in town hall comes with a fee. before much longer the bathrooms will charge a quarter. Nickel and dimed to death?. More like $25 and $50.
That's the town we decided we wanted because God forbid we pay more in property taxes. We pay convenience fees. Use a service-pay a fee. Downside is children in school, the service of Public Education. I have no problem paying my share of public education. I fully support education and those who provide the service. These kids are our future. My 4 kids went through the system and three graduated college and the last works fulltime for a government contractor. They received an excellent education but know that education is in danger because of short sightedness regarding money. Why build today what we can put off till tomorrow?. Well we can and we do. just remember that school that will cost 25 million next year will cost 30 million the year after and more the year after that. How long can we afford to wait to fund education?
Over the last week or so the term #TrumpTaco or #Taco has come across my timelife and on TV. What follows is my explanation of exactly what a Taco is.
Media defines it as Trump Always Chickens Out....TACO. He threatens countries with tariffs but when it comes to enforcement...he delays or cancels. The definition does make logical sense. We know he is perceived as a bully and when confronted. Crumbles.
My explanation goes on a slightly different path. Here it is. On Monday Trump makes headlines threatening Whitemanistan with 75% tariffs on widgets. As we have seen the markets are incredibly sensitive to his comments like this. The news media reports it and the the stock market slumps. On Tuesday Trump and his "buddies(Flunkies and congressmen) buy on the dip...depending on the depth of the dip it could extend to wed or even into Thursday. Untold millions of dollars. On Friday, Trump announces a "deal" with Whitemanistan for a much smaller tariff or cancel the tariff all together. Funny thing is the media in Whitemanistan report of no such deal or even negotiations. (That's the problem he has with Canada. The media is so close we can hear for ourselves about what happened and since we have no basis to disbelieve them and no basis to believe ANYTHING trump says) The market soars and they dump their shares for a large profit. The new tax cuts for the wealthy guarantee they get to keep their profits.
We are being played. Art of the Steal.
Fun times,
Town meeting approaches and we as a town are facing a dilemma. Recently our Select Board (who were well within their rights) hired a new town administrator with a substantial increase in pay over the previous administrator and mayors of several surrounding much larger towns. Se ethe articles in https://dartmouth.theweektoday.com/ for background information. The following are my thoughts and do not express the thoughts of the Finance Committee or its members in any way. In the spirit of full disclosure, I have resigned my position as a result of the situation and another that is brewing)
The Finance committee spent months over the winter and spring meeting with and reviewing the budgets of the different town depts. We asked questions of the the dept heads about capital needs and present budgets conditions and we felt as a group a 3% raise for employees was do-able given out town budget and financial constraints. we spent meetings discussing the effects of people getting 4% while their employees get 3. After the meetings ,discussions and arguing (good naturedly) we agreed on a preliminary budget to submit to the Select Board. we received back a budget with an abnormal increase in one line item. Town Administrator. The budget has been increased to 225,000 over the 200,000 we had agreed on.
Dartmouth is encumbered by a process called Proposition 2 1/2 . Google for more information.
With the town manager getting a 25,000 raise or more (depending on who you talk to) how do you tell the other employees in town who do an excellent job that they might get 25 HUNDRED dollars if they are fortunate.
Another fact that draws into question the contract is the fact the mayors of surrounding towns which have a much larger population have substantially LOWER salaries. New Bedford for example pays its mayor 167,000 (almost 60,000 dollars less.) and Fall River 118,000 and its Town Administrator 145,000. New Bedford's annual budget is roughly 6 times Dartmouth's budget . Shouldn't those figures be turned around?
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