But That's Just My Opinion

"Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts." - Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan 

I have been called a lot of things since I started blogging and commenting on the Patch:  Smug, arrogant, paranoid, condescending and worst of all – “educated” as if reading up on a subject so you can understand it is somehow a bad thing.

Anyway, I guess I have a lot of trouble with opinions that are not based on fact or that are obviously based on ideology.  I also don’t think much of opinions that attribute malicious intent to others without any factual evidence to back those assertions up.

We have commenters who are calling for the expulsion of elected officials. I think that the Selectmen made their decisions based on the best available information they had regarding the condition of the physical infrastructure.  I have met and talked with most of them and I know their motivations are to do what’s best for Westborough, given the financial circumstances the town is in.  You can disagree with their decisions without calling for their heads on a pike. 

It seems to me from the tone of some postings that a few commenters are taking their cue from cable noise channels and therefore they think the Selectmen are politicians who are motivated by the same sorts of things that are associated with state and federal legislators – cushy salaries and perks, which could not be further from the truth.  Being a selectman is a time consuming task with very limited compensation for the effort put in. 

You don’t want to vote for them again – be my guest.  But as I have said before – you can’t vote them out unless someone is going to step up to take their place – and convince the voters that they can do a better job.  I have not seen a whole lot of that during the 11 years I have lived here.  People are not beating down the doors to serve in Westborough town government.

Whatever you think of the town manager’s handling of the fire station proposal - I would not label him as a power hungry technocrat looking to bilk the town out of our hard-earned tax dollars by using funds for the proposed fire station as a slush fund – whatever that means. 

The above being said, I think it was a bad idea by the Town Manager and the Selectmen to insert a Special Town Meeting in the middle of regular town meeting to vote on the Fire Station and Town Hall/Forbes Building renovations. The processed was rushed and there was not a lot of groundwork prior to Town Meeting. The whole thing took everyone by surprise, including me. 

I happened to see the proposed plans sitting in a box in a Forbes Building meeting room a couple of weeks before Town Meeting and had no clue where this was coming from. I had a real concern that the result would be exactly what happened:  The Fire Station override was rejected by the voters and the other project rejected by Town Meeting.  

I think they did not do a good job explaining to the residents prior to the referendum why they thought this approach would be the best way to go about this project.  A lot of people don’t get charts and graphs. That’s not a smear on people who are not whizzes with spreadsheets – it’s just a fact of life for many of us.

Still, I thought Town Meeting’s decision to have the town vote on the fire station was a good decision, based on the information.  The town at large did not agree – so the Town is back to square one.  We have buildings that are woefully out of date and/or dilapidated and they need to be replaced or renovated.

On another subject, I have seen repeated assertions that our financial problems are caused by our unionized employees and their overly generous contracts with the town, without providing one shred of evidence to back up those claims – especially in regard to teachers.  Such an accusation also smears the School Committee, an elected board that handles the contract negotiations and suggests some sort of collusion between the union and our elected officials.  I would not even consider this accusation without a detailed comparison of union contacts in surrounding communities. Without some backup, these kinds of comments can only be considered inflammatory nonsense.

I guess all the evil in the world starts and ends with labor unions.

If the unionized employees in this town did exactly and only what their contracts said they needed to do, we would not see the level of services that we get in Westborough or the quality of education that our children get, regardless of where the town stands in overall state comparisons.  I have met many unionized town employees; they are dedicated to their jobs and do far more than what is in their job descriptions.

A lot of people have noted that Shrewsbury has lower taxes and better rated schools – but let’s not forget that Shrewsbury’s school budget is in the hole by $3 million for next year, even though they get more local aid than Westborough.  Let’s see how that works out.

Last, I think it is irresponsible to call for a tax rollback without having the wherewithal to say up front what you think should be axed.  If the roll-back advocates don’t want to speak up regarding where the ax should fall, then they put the task back in the laps of the Selectmen and the Town Manager.  I would bet that if and when they have to cut services under such a plan, the Town Manager and Selectmen will probably have to endure scathing criticism from the same people who are now vociferously advocating their firing.

Heck, look what happened when Jim Malloy tried to lay off the Library Janitor.

I am not saying cut backs are impossible – but don’t expect the process to be painless. For that reason, I will continue to question the proponents of a tax rollback to specify where the budget should be cut, by how much and what the impacts will be. Simply put, they cannot have it both ways.

But that’s just my opinion.