Sam Obar 180

Sam Obar 180 sources have confirmed that town officials are working behind the scenes on a new town website that will finally bring Town Hall into the 21st Century, albeit a little late.

The new website is apparently being made by town employees in-house, to keep costs low. Reportedly, the website will be based off of the websites of towns like Needham, Worcester, and Foxborough. These towns don’t exactly have the best-looking websites around, but they are certainly better than the current Walpole site. I hope, however, that the town will bring in some outside web design consultants, perhaps as volunteers, to help and act as advisors in the process, as a true town website requires a lot of moving parts that I don’t think can be done entirely by a small team of people at Town Hall. The website should be a true team effort - and I would like to see the town put out an ad, or even a press release, in The Walpole Times asking for local web designers to volunteer their expertise to assist town employees for however much time they can provide to assist in the creation of this new website. I could probably bet a lot of money that the town won’t do this, and, as a result, the website won’t look as good as it could. Oh, well.

I encourage Town Hall to take a look at some of my own suggestions for features that the Walpole town website should have, including contact information for all town employees, perhaps even a directory with every employee and their salary. The Economic Development page also needs major updating, as I wrote here.

It is great that Town Hall is taking the lead, under a new Board of Selectmen that promised to improve communication with residents, to finally upgrade the town website. But I won’t call it a success until I see the final product - the new town website could very easily be not much of an improvement on the old site if it’s not done well, especially by in-house employees on a tight schedule. Regardless, I can’t wait to see it when it’s done.

Patch.com, owned and operated by AOL, and made up of a collection of local news websites for individual towns throughout the country, is rapidly expanding into Massachusetts, and may come to Walpole soon. Patch has already set up a Westwood local news website, featuring news on a variety of local events, sports, and more, that appear to come from professional journalists and freelance contributors and photographers throughout Westwood. They have police logs and lists of events, and even obituaries.

Patch.com is actively hiring editors throughout the country to help it expand its local news lineup, and with Patch moving swiftly through Massachusetts communities, including most recently in Jamaica Plain and the South End, it is very possible that it will hit Walpole soon. If so, it will be interesting to see how much of a threat it will present to WalpoleNews.com and The Walpole Times‘ so-called “hyper-local website”, and also even to this blog. It looks like Patch, like most news websites, will be making most of their money off of advertising.

To be honest, if I had a degree in journalism, I myself might have applied to become a local editor for Patch and bring it to Walpole. But I would probably prefer to stay at Sam Obar 180 anyway. Perhaps this would be a good opportunity for any Walpole resident out there who has an interest in journalism but has never been given the opportunity to work in the industry. Patch is seeking you! Check it out at patch.com!

Town Moderator Jon Rockwood’s decision not to re-appoint five members of the Finance Committee was no doubt a difficult one, and very unexpected. The Town Moderator will likely suffer politically as a result, and I anticipate there will be some in town who will try to run against him as moderator next year using this incident as a part of his or her platform against Mr. Rockwood. Perhaps we will even see a recall effort in the coming months.

It is always sad when the town loses dedicated individuals who were willing to serve their town selflessly by contributing their knowledge and expertise. Our community now must fill a tremendous void in the absence of these five members.

Mr. Rockwood is an honest and fair individual, and I don’t believe that his decision was in any way intended to eliminate people he didn’t agree with. Rather than continuing to give the same old people a pass to continue their work at Town Hall, it is sometimes necessary to instead find new voices for a new perspective on the issues.

There are a lot of rumors flying around as to whether Mr. Rockwood had ulterior motives in making the decision he made. Many of these rumors seem untrue based on the facts, as all five of the members not re-appointed actually did not have all that much in common in terms of views on the issues and votes on major controversies. None of the five were singled out and re-appointed, rather, as a group, they were all eliminated, which would indicate that Mr. Rockwood didn’t actually even glance at their votes or positions on the issues when deciding whether to re-appoint them. Furthermore, as Mr. Rockwood has pointed out, his decision was not unprecedented.

Some of the best ideas for our community don’t always come from the same old people who have been working at Town Hall for years. I hope that whoever Mr. Rockwood chooses to replace these five departing members will truly bring a fresh perspective on our town finances, as they have big shoes to fill.

The five people who will be leaving will be sorely missed, and I wish them the best of luck in the future. But all good things must eventually come to an end, and, in this case, hopefully in favor of newer and better things. We will never have known what we are missing if we kept re-appointing the same old people to the same old committees. Change is sometimes hard, but needed.

In this town, the Town Moderator is given supreme authority to appoint members of the Finance Committee, and there’s nothing we can change about that. Sometimes leaders make decisions that are not popular. Those who disagree with Mr. Rockwood’s decision are welcome to run against or vote against him next year.

I, for one, fully respect and support his decision, even though I, like most residents, am disappointed about the loss of five great people who contributed tremendously to our community. If I was in his position, I probably would not have done what he did. But I fully intend to vote for him for Town Moderator in next year’s election, which will be the first town election I will be eligible to vote in.

I am also very sorry that Mr. Rockwood’s family, which is made up of very nice people, has to go through this. Both Mr. Rockwood and his wife, a local school teacher, were blasted in a letter to the editor written by former Selectwoman Catherine Winston in this week’s Times. I can’t imagine what it would be like if my dad was the moderator and my mother was a local school teacher, and they were being publicly blasted in a similar fashion by someone as highly regarded in town politics as Catherine Winston. I feel sorry for Mr. Rockwood’s kids, but I hope that they understand that this is small-town politics at its best, whether we like it or not - neighbors turning on neighbors when controversial decisions occur.

With groundbreaking of the new Walpole Public Library coming later this year, here are some features I’d like to see in the new building, if they could be fit into the designs this late in the process:

A Café

The idea of putting a café in a library has proved very successful at other libraries across the country. Just a few of the local libraries that have cafés are Watertown, MA, Boston, and Warwick, RI.

Having a café inside the Walpole Public Library makes a lot of sense. A lot of Walpole residents desire a downtown coffee shop. The new library will be conveniently located near downtown, and the café would likely be a major draw to the area. The café would bring Walpole citizens who normally wouldn’t use the library into the confines of the building. In addition, by leasing space in the library to a café, the town would have the potential to generate a tremendous amount of revenue, thus enabling the library to actually develop a very profitable revenue stream. The ideal library café would have operating hours that are independent of the main library, meaning it would have its own entrance and exit and would be open earlier than the library.

William Pierce of the Salina Public Library in Salina, Kansas wrote in a 1997 article that “library cafés may have a role in making public libraries more inviting and user friendly to visitors.” Pierce calls on librarians to let go of their fear of letting food into the library, and suggests that allowing food and drink would actually have little impact on the cleanliness or condition of the materials.

Robin Henderson writes in this 1998 article that “those libraries that have already implemented this type of food service in their library have had positive feed back and feel that there is a slight increase in the traffic at the library.” Henderson writes further, “we want to lure in patrons and hope once they have discovered the library they will come back.”

Having a café in the Walpole library would benefit the library tremendously, but unfortunately it is probably too late in the design process to plan for a café. It’s unfortunate we didn’t think of this sooner. I see no downside to allowing a café into the building.

Rooftop space

The new library will really hurt the downtown area around July 3, when thousands of people flock to the municipal buildings complex for the Night Before the Fourth Celebration. Hundreds of people usually sit and watch the fireworks on the site of the new library, and the building will block the view of hundreds of others who usually watch from nearby. Event organizers will undoubtedly have to figure out other logistics for the fireworks in the future, including perhaps shutting down East Street so that people can watch from that street. Town officials should be very worried about the impact that the new library will have on the July 3 festivities.

Rather than having the library as an obnoxious obstacle, it might be reasonable to consider instead allowing the mobs of people that will be displaced from their usual fireworks-watching locations to sit on the library roof to watch – yes I’m serious about that. The library should develop the roof with space for people to watch the fireworks. The roof would be a prime location to watch, and the Friends of the Library could even generate revenue by selling tickets at a nominal fee for this prime rooftop seating (seriously.) There is likely quite a market for this, given that hundreds of people will have no place to watch the fireworks anymore and the view would be incredible.

It’s not clear how this would impact the new library’s intent to have a “green roof.”

Archival vault

The town currently does not have a secure location to store its valuable historical documents that date back to the town’s founding. Many of these documents are held by the Town Clerk’s office in a vault that is not temperature-controlled and is not, by any archivist’s standards, an adequate space for historical documents to be stored. Other very rare and important files are stored at the Deacon Willard Lewis House under the care of the Historical Society. However, that house, too, is not temperature-controlled, nor is it immune to fire.

The town needs a central location to keep documents that relate to the town’s rich history. The new library should include a temperature-controlled vault so that the town can feel good about the safety of its archives. The town has no funding to build a vault at Town Hall, so the opportunity to get a new vault is with the new library.

Supposedly, the town is already working on arranging the placement of a vault in the new library, and I urge planners to continue this initiative.

Programming Note: Newly-elected Walpole Selectman Mike Berry, one of the most fiscally-conservative members of the Board, goes live on the record on The Sam Obar Show this Saturday, July 17 at 4:00 PM on WDIS AM 1170 (Discussion Radio) in Norfolk. With the often-poor quality of AM radio, I recommend to those who would like to listen to the interview that they listen live online right here rather than trying to tune into the often-spotty AM band. I have learned that AM radio is often very difficult to listen to, regrettably.

1. Eliminate the Kahana eyesore

The town should launch a nationwide/worldwide manhunt to pursue the owner of the Kahana and make them come back to Walpole and do something about the property. The Economic Development Officer, if the position is not eliminated, should provide regular updates to the Walpole Board of Selectmen as to the progress of the manhunt. The Kahana owner’s name and last known contact information should be widely publicized. There has to be someone who knows how to hunt the owner down.

It might also be reasonable to consider seizing the property via eminent domain, using a tax override to fund the purchase and then reselling it at a profit to someone who can revitalize or, preferably, raze the structure. Eminent domain seizures like this, in which a property is taken and then resold to developers for aesthetic purposes or for the purpose of economic development, have already been affirmed as constitutional by the Supreme Court, as in the cases of Berman v. Parker (1954) and in the controversial case Kelo v. City of New London (2005). In Kelo v. City of New London, the Court decided that the overall benefit that a community enjoys from economic growth enables plans to take land and redevelop it to be considered an allowable “public use.” I think the town of Walpole, like New London, Connecticut, should consider taking over the property and using it as part of a greater focus on economic development.

2. Do something about the Foundry

The town should open discussions with the owner of the Foundry to develop a plan for renovating that building to be more appealing and less of an eyesore. Like the Kahana, taking the property over by eminent domain should not be ruled out. That building, when it was first built, was intended to be a “Fanueil Hall-like” shopping complex. That goal has failed miserably, and if the owners really intend to make it like Fanueil Hall, they should do more to beautify the building. One way to force this to happen might be to outright threaten that the town will use eminent domain if the owners don’t revitalize the building on their own.

3. Perhaps some hope for the South Street superfund

According to the EPA webpage about the South Street superfund site, the “EPA is currently in negotiations with the potentially responsible parties for the performance of the cleanup work. The estimated cost for this cleanup is $13 million. EPA will continue to work closely with the Town, interested citizens, and state officials as the project progresses.” No company is willing to accept responsibility for the cleanup of the property, and thus it is likely that the process will continue to be prolonged.

In June, President Barack Obama proposed reinstating the so-called “superfund tax” on the oil and chemical industries to help speed up the EPA’s work to cleanup superfund sites across the country. Roadblock Republicans in Congress, who have decided that it is in their best interest to simply say no to everything the President proposes no matter what the issue, call the tax an “unfair penalty” on oil and chemical companies. President Obama is right on this one. The Superfund program has been short of cash since the 1990s, and needs this new tax to start cleaning up these properties. I urge Congress to approve it.

Asking the taxpayers for an override to have the town purchase the property and clean it up also apparently has not been considered seriously. The cost would be quite large, but if the town came up with a long-term plan for the site and lined up a few potential buyers who wanted to develop the land, it could allow the town to collect a profit in the end. A few years ago, a Walpole Superfund committee came out with a lengthy report about the South Street superfund and suggested a few possible uses for the site, that included the town taking over part of it through foreclosure and then moving forward to come up with a cleanup plan for the site. I think it’s time our town officials crack that report open again, and take a look through some of the possible uses for the site and choose one of them.

As an interesting twist, newly-elected Selectman Eric Kraus is an executive within Covidien, the company that now owns Kendall. Kendall was the company that owned the land for several decades between the 1930s and the 1980s. Although Kendall can’t exactly be blamed for fully contaminating the site, they certainly owned it for a number of years and did nothing to clean it up. Now that the original contaminators of the site are long gone, it might be reasonable for Mr. Kraus to be the middleman in going to Covidien and asking them to pay for the site’s cleanup, at least to some level. Covidien and Kendall certainly should not get all the blame for the site’s contamination, but Kendall seem like the most appropriate company to pay at least part of the ultimate cleanup cost. Furthermore, there is no better time than now to ask them to pay up since one of their executives is now on the Board of Selectmen.

According to this newly-released list of the best 1,000 places to visit in Massachusetts, Blackburn Hill, in Walpole, is among the best places to visit in Walpole. The problem is, and perhaps it is just because I am fairly young and am not a townie, I don’t know what Blackburn Hill is. Am I the only one?

I had thought I had a pretty broad understanding of Walpole history, but can anyone tell me where Blackburn Hill is, and why it is so special that it made it on to this list?

One possible hypothesis is that it is a typo, and it was intended to say “Blackburn Hall”, but if that’s the case, I don’t see why this building would have made it onto the list when other far more important Walpole landmarks did not.

Comment on this post if you know what Blackburn Hill is. It would be much appreciated. This is bizarre.

This is a screenshot of the Walpole High School Class of 1979 Facebook group. Note the Confederate flag as the profile picture. Clearly whoever runs this group is behind the times:

Of all the possible issues for the town to become polarized and divided about, the intricacies of hiring a new deputy police chief has, bizarrely, been the most divisive issue of all during the past several weeks. The attention around this seemingly unimportant issue is unfortunate and concerning. I am disappointed that the issue has divided the community and that the Board of Selectmen is commanding such a central role in the hiring process.

Two weeks ago, Selectman Mike Berry asked Police Chief Richard Stillman whether it would be possible to forego hiring a new deputy police chief, and instead hire a new police officer to work on the streets. Chief Stillman vehemently opposed the idea, defending the Deputy Chief position forcefully and calling himself a “team player” when it comes to working within the budget provided by the town and not requesting new officers when the funding doesn’t allow for it. Town Administrator Michael Boynton, who himself has an overpaid and probably unnecessary “Assistant”, quickly sprung to back the Chief up, pointing out that the “Assistants,” “Deputies” and “Vices” working for the town are often the first to be targeted by an angry citizenry whenever budget cuts come around.

Selectman Berry made a good point – can Walpole survive without a Deputy Chief but with an added police officer on the street? I’d say so, and apparently so would Mr. Berry. Regardless, the biggest problem here is the fact that Selectman Berry is even inserting himself in the discussion in the first place. If Chief Stillman feels that his Department would be better served with an administrator rather than a cop on the street, by all means, I think he should be allowed to go forward and have an administrator rather than a street cop. I do not believe that the Board of Selectmen should be approving or denying the Chief’s desire to hire a new deputy chief. They should leave it up to the Chief to decide. Chief Stillman actually told Selectmen at their meeting that he was looking for “guidance” from the Board as to how he should proceed with the hiring process. This should concern every single Walpole citizen. Five members of an all-volunteer Board with no police experience are being asked to provide guidance to a public safety professional. The Deputy should be chosen by the Police Chief, and the decision regarding whether or not to hire one should be made by the Police Chief and the Police Chief alone. The Board of Selectmen should not be stepping anywhere NEAR this issue.

The reason this issue has become so political is because the Board of Selectmen is getting so involved with it. Nancy Mackenzie’s conflict of interest with a husband on the police force apparently has not deterred her from involving herself in the decision-making. She is getting flak for it, and for good reason. Her decision to participate has generated news coverage and is distracting us from the real issue: Walpole is right now without a Deputy Police Chief. She is making the process very political and very stressful for all involved by obnoxiously ignoring the will of the people, including many of her supporters, and taking part in the hiring process. The Chief should not have to contend with extraneous issues like this when he is trying to fill a vacancy in his department. He should have hired a Deputy weeks ago, but because the Board kept dragging their feet over the politics of it, he only got their approval recently. Meanwhile, the Walpole Police Department continues to be short of staff.

“This Deputy Chief position decision has deeply polarized the Department,” one source told Sam Obar 180, requesting anonymity because he himself is deeply involved in the process. I have one question: WHY? Why is this decision polarizing the police department? We are hiring a deputy police chief here, folks. Not a president. Police Chief Richard Stillman told Selectmen that the salary difference between a police lieutenant and a deputy chief is “fairly insignificant.” So why is this such a divisive issue?

The people that are making this so political and so polarizing should stop. The Board of Selectmen is sticking its nose into a decision it should not be involved with. Please let the Police Chief do his job and hire a new Deputy. If he wants to post it only to internal candidates, then in my opinion it’s not the business of the Board of Selectmen to interfere and demand he post it to external candidates. The people that are running the website dedicated to Lt. Fred Leland’s promotion to Deputy should shut it down. They are not helping the process, and are only continuing to make this more difficult and more stressful than it already is.

This is a followup to the previous blog post about the survey results.

Here are some interesting statistics:

88% of those who said they are not happy with the direction the town is going in also rated the performance of the Board of Selectmen as poor. Yet, only 39% of those who said they are not happy with the direction the town is going in also rated the performance of the Town Administrator as poor.

93% of those who said they did not support the proposed Robbins Road police station also said the town does NOT have a good sense of vision and planning for the future.

77% of those who said they have lived in town for more than 20 years also said the town does not live up to its nickname of “The Friendly Town.”

A few months ago, I posted a survey on my blog, and asked my blog’s readers to take the survey and offer their opinions about the community and ways it could be improved.

Sam Obar 180 received a total of 53 responses to the survey, which represents less than 1% of the total Walpole population. Nevertheless, it presents what I believe is a very interesting view on which way Walpole residents lean when it comes to some of the most important issues our town is dealing with.

The results are below. They are not scientific, and some survey respondents did not answer all questions, thus you may note differences in the total number of responses for each question. The survey system made reasonable attempts to delete survey responses that came twice from the same computer, to prevent people from doing it more than once and skewing the results.

The answers to the questions that required written responses (i.e. What other ideas do you have for the town that you would like to share?) will be posted in a future blog post. I have already posted some of the responses to these questions in previous posts, but a fuller compilation of all of them will come in the future. A lot of these written responses were actually quite interesting, amusing, and educational. Some of the written responses were highly inflammatory towards local officials, citing specific incidents between the survey respondent and town officials, or detailing specific opinions the respondents have about particular town officials, so those ones will not be posted for obvious reasons (although they were interesting to read about.)

Above all, I appreciate everyone who participated and I continue to strive every day to make this blog worthy of your readership.

The results speak for themselves, so I won’t analyze them and offer my commentary. I would have used bar graphs to display the results, but it takes up far too much space:

In general, are you happy with the direction the town is going in?
Yes: 10
No: 41

Are you a registered voter in Walpole?
Yes: 53
No: 0

Do you pay property taxes in Walpole?
Yes: 50
No: 3

Do you support the proposed Robbins Road police station?
Yes: 11
No: 41

Do you support a combined facility for fire and police downtown?
Yes: 43
No: 10

Did you support the new library last year?
Yes: 37
No: 16

Do you plan to vote in this year’s town election?
PLEASE NOTE THIS SURVEY WAS TAKEN BEFORE THE JUNE 5 ELECTION
Yes: 52
No: 1

If yes, who do you plan on voting for for the Board of Selectmen? (check two)
PLEASE NOTE THIS SURVEY WAS TAKEN BEFORE THE JUNE 5 ELECTION
David Sullivan: 13
Eric Kraus: 9
Patrick Shield: 34
James Taylor: 1
Bill Hamilton: 2
Mike Berry: 16
Undecided: 5

What is your position on the Rebel mascot?
Keep the name and the Confederacy connections: 9
Keep the name but eliminate the Confederacy connections: 20
Change the name altogether: 11
I don’t care/haven’t decided: 7

How would you rate the performance of the Walpole Town Administrator?
Great: 1
Good: 12
Okay: 22
Poor: 16
Don’t Know: 0

How would you rate the performance of the School Superintendent and School Committee?
PLEASE NOTE THIS SURVEY WAS TAKEN BEFORE THE JUNE 5 ELECTION, AND THUS BEFORE A NEW SCHOOL COMMITTEE WAS ELECTED
Great: 2
Good: 17
Okay: 14
Poor: 16
Don’t Know: 1

How would you rate the performance of the Board of Selectmen?
PLEASE NOTE THIS SURVEY WAS TAKEN BEFORE THE JUNE 5 ELECTION, AND THUS BEFORE A NEW BOARD OF SELECTMEN WAS ELECTED
Great: 0
Good: 2
Okay: 10
Poor: 40
Don’t Know: 0

Do you believe the town has a good sense of vision and planning for the future?
Yes: 5
No: 46

Do you believe property taxes are too high in Walpole?
Yes: 21
No: 30

Should the Town Administrator live in Walpole?
Yes: 41
No: 12

Would you support selling all or part of Adams Farm to raise revenue?
Yes: 28
No: 24

How would you rate the quality of The Walpole Times?
Great: 1
Good: 10
Okay: 13
Poor: 29
Don’t Know: 0

Where do you generally get your local news? (check all that apply)
Walpole Times: 30
WalpoleNews.com: 26
Other Citizens: 21
Other: 16

How often do you use Walpole conservation land or other open space?
Often: 9
Somewhat often: 14
Rarely: 20
Never: 9

Do you feel town officials are generally very open and transparent in their work?
Yes: 4
No: 49

Do you feel town officials are receptive to the concerns of residents?
Yes: 6
No: 45

How would you rate the quality of the Walpole Public Schools?
Great: 5
Good: 25
Okay: 19
Poor: 1
Don’t Know: 1

Do you support Longview Farm’s proposed expansion?
Yes: 25
No: 25

Do you support Siemens upgrading to Level 3 biohazards?
Yes: 19
No: 34

What is the best way to balance the town budget?
Spending Cuts/Layoffs: 4
Higher Taxes: 2
Union Concessions and Health Care/Wage Concessions: 11
A Mixture of Some or All of the Above: 29

How would you rate Walpole as a town to live in?
Great: 2
Good: 28
Okay: 19
Poor: 2
Don’t Know: 0

How would you rate Walpole as a town to do business in?
Great: 0
Good: 11
Okay: 15
Poor: 15
Don’t Know: 4

Do you think the town is doing enough to attract new residents to Walpole?
Yes: 31
No: 19

Do you think the town is doing enough to attract new businesses to Walpole?
Yes: 11
No: 39

How often do you patronize downtown businesses?
Often: 11
Somewhat often: 25
Rarely: 15
Never: 0

Do you think Walpole lives up to its nickname of “The Friendly Town”?
Yes: 17
No: 36

How long have you lived in Walpole?
Less than 5 Years: 3
5-10 Years: 4
10-20 Years: 14
More than 20 Years: 31

Do you support trash fees?
Yes: 10
No: 42

Do you support a trash cap?
Yes: 24
No: 26

Do you support having Allied Recycling in town?
Yes: 17
No: 30

Do you like living in Walpole?
Yes: 42
No: 7

Do you plan to attend the new Farmer’s Market downtown this summer?
Yes: 42
No: 10