Yes, I’m here, and I’ll be leaving shortly, but I have very little to say, beyond my disappointment at the Montvale decision, and that my irrational crush on Mike Germain continues unabated. (Note that I reserve the term “irrational love” for Albert Southwick alone. If Germain had voted my way on Montvale, we may have upgrade it to “obsession”, but crush it remains.)
I’d promised to put together a voting guide to the City Council, comprising the issues I think are important. I put together a draft that you can find here, as a pdf. Please send me any feedback on votes that you consider important or formatting changes you’d like to see.
Now that Tracy has helped me connect to the Wifi here, I’ll also be liveblogging the Historical Commission meeting on Thursday. I won’t always be able to attend meetings of that commission, but I’m going to try to attend at least one commission or committee meeting a week.
Update, 9.43 pm: I should never shut off my computer just as Rick Rushton gets up to speak. (I swear, this blog will not turn into Rushton-bash-central, so could another councilor say something that ticks me off next week and let Rick off the hook? Thanks!)
Rushton’s reference to “Judge Van Winkle” (8.41 mark) was completely inappropriate. While one might argue (and I certainly would) that the judge took quite a bit of time to decide on the case, it is not his fault that the public has been kept from records in the name of preserving privacy, and it’s not his fault the words “drama” were redacted not once but twice. Shaun Sutner is also not his fault. If there had been a public comment period (and maybe there was and I just missed it!), I would have taken the Council and especially the City Manager to task for totally disregarding the public’s right to know. We had more discussion tonight about researching regionalizing police and fire services to/with surrounding communities than we did about what our own police officers may or may not be accused of. It’s all about the benjamins and not at all about accountability.
Nicole, Worcester 
Nicole,
If you want to comment on an item, you can do one of two things:
1. You can let the Clerk know ahead of time. When they get to that item, he’ll get the mayor to ask for a suspension of rules to let a member of the public speak.
2. You can stand up and go to the mic. There’s enough eyes around where someone will call the mayor’s attention to you, and he’ll ask if you have a comment.
(Also, I was going to warn you not to close the laptop until they got done with suspension. You never know WHAT’s going to happen then!)
I think we need to start a support group for Germain Obsession. Meetings and detox will be held every Wednesday morning at 8AM in the lobby of St. V’s.
will you live-blog the tennis court hearing Tuesday, Jan. 19 at 2:00 in courtroom 20
I will likely not if there’s going to be other media coverage. (I do need to work, unfortunately, and I have meetings I have to attend at 3pm nearly every day!)
first court hearing for tennis court yesterday