In Which Clyde Fears The Future
With staffing for the Fire Department possibly on the line (a reduction from 19 to 18), Town Council was SRO. I literally sat on the floor in the back. The plus side – difficult to fall asleep. The minus side – easy to bang your head unceasingly against the wall while trying to prevent yourself from jumping up and doing the whole Al Pacino “you’re all crazy” speech from …And Justice For All. Seriously.
Rachel Kaprielian (whose name, I’d like to say, I spelled correctly the first time) gave a brief overview of a state bill allowing towns to get in on state health insurance, thereby saving money. Nice. It’s not passed yet, but chances are good it will be. Jonathan Hecht made a motion for the Council to add its support for the bill. Not to switch over to state health insurance, mind you, but just to say it has Watertown’s support.
Not so much.
Several councilors voiced their concern over the fact that the bill was not finished and found it unseemly to support something that wasn’t done. Angie Kounelis pointed out that all the council had received was marketing material. Ok. I can kind of see that. Rachel herself frequently repeated that things could change. As Clyde Younger says – “how can you know what will happen?” Giants bats with a special mind-changing venom could bite lawmakers who completely re-write the bill and enslave us all. So the motion went down to defeat. C’est la vie.
BUT – Hecht, very reluctantly, read a motion to pretty much stop talking about switching Watertown’s pension fund over to the state pension fund. Hecht did not want to read it. He’s four switching the pension fund. According to Hecht, if the money Watertown put into it’s own pension fund had gone into the state’s instead, we’d be up $9mil. Younger wrote the motion to keep the town pension fund from making more money than it currently is. (The logic, as I understand it, says – “we’re meeting the goals that we have to meet”. Yeah. I don’t get it either). As Clyde says, “how can you know what will happen,” meaning, I guess, giant bats with a special mind-changing venom bite the fund controller who embezzles all our money to start a chain of pizza stores in Bosnia.
The punchline? The pension bill isn’t finished, either!
So, just to clarify – Clyde doesn’t like the unfinished health care bill but writes a motion to defeat an unfinished pension bill.
This is my town council which lasted about three and a half hours tonight.
Clyde requested an inventory of parking meters two weeks ago. We got that report tonight. I’m not exactly sure why Clyde wanted it. It didn’t seem to fit into a grand scheme. Perhaps he likes parking meters. Still, it was almost worth sitting through to hear the presenter sum it up with a deadpan – “So…that’s my presentation…about parking meters”.
On and on it went and, thank God, I couldn’t drift off. I can’t say that I took good notes but the worst was yet to come.
Apparently, one of the councilors received a nasty email. I honestly don’t know much more than that. (Not quite true, but I’ll be discreet.) Clyde asked Chief Deveau to look into it and brought up Chief Deveau to report on it. Clyde is not a riveting speaker, nor am I, for that matter, but listening to Clyde is like watch Ben Stein in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off played about quarter speed. He ploddingly recounted the email and asked Chief Deveau the outcome of the investigation. Not much. It turns out that according to local, state and federal law, whatever message the email contained was for all intents and purposes, legal.
Clyde would have none of’t. “Don’ t you think that email constituted a hate crime?”
“It’s not really about what I think,” Chief Deveau responded. “According to the law, it’s not actionable.”
And thus began the struggle. Clyde wanted the case reopened. Clyde wanted to know all about the investigation. Chief Deveau returned each slow volley making it clear that nothing could or would be done about it. Clyde insisted they find out who sent it.
“Hypothetically,” he said, “if I can send that kind of an email, what’s my next move?”
HUH? It’s becoming clear to me that Clyde either comes from the future or is just obsessed with it. He’s the worst kind of over-protective parent. It was the same thing when he wasted tax payer money to get a report on library security because a pedophile was found in a library in another town. Sweet Jesus!! He was hell-bent to prove that our library security would allow a pedophile to kidnap and rape children right in the children’s library. Why? Because it happened somewhere else.
This is why we pay to have metal detectors in schools. This is why we pay cops to patrol the hallways. Not because there’s any real good reason for it but because some other town in America had a problem once and we can’t risk it happening here. And yet…it still happens, because life is messy and unpredictable.
Maybe my brain fled into fantasy, but when Chief Deveau asked what Clyde would want to do if the phantom emailer wound up living in, say, New Hampshire, I heard the word “dragnet” in my head. I saw Clyde directing the Watertown Police to direct all incoming traffic to a single checkpoint to check the ID of every single driver. The offending emailer would be sent away shamed and drowsy after listening to a lecture from Clyde.
This whole exchange took, I think about ten to fifteen minutes. So…tell me again what the job of Council President is?
Oh, that’s right – micromanagement. As in Clyde’s motion that if two sub-committee meetings were scheduled at the same time then the last meeting scheduled would be dropped. Apparently, it happened once or twice and Watertown almost didn’t recover. Giant bats…etc.
On plus side, the council voted themselves the same health benefits as the town workers, which doesn’t mean all that much since most have their own health insurance, but morally it’s a great thing to do.
And, as to Marilyn, she brought no priest and still managed to somewhat behave herself. You know who Marilyn is, right?
Ok. I’ve got to put some more ice on the back of my head. I hope I don’t have a concussion
I’m thinking I might have the same possible concussion you are hoping you don’t. My head began pounding after the wall kept hitting the back of it as Clyde tried in vain to formulate coherent sentences. It began with his duping us into believing that local officials have no business getting involved into state officials business. Huh? Defeat the health care bill so the state can do their job; but pass his resolution on underfunding pensions, so the state can stay the hell out of our business. And while we are at it, let’s waste more time by praying that a subcommittee can come up with a way to invoke a chaplain to open up the meetings so when he finally does throw Marilyn out, at least she’ll have an escort in good faith.