https://vimeo.com/252449825 1:30:00
This is how low things have gotten here.
I'm all for the blizzard bags. State's 180 day limit is foolish anyway. Lets the kids start their summer.
Reality Bites is definitely rooting for the Eagles next Sunday. Jr. must be a little short on the grey matter in the household so life stinks for everyone. Let there be snow and blizzard bags in February and March!
The Felon's gushing waterfall of BS from Wicked (!) Local:
"The following tribute to Mayor Robert Dolan was prepared by School Committee Vice-Chair Ed O’Connell, and read at the committee’s Jan. 23 meeting.
Mr. Mayor, this is, for the time being anyway, your last School Committee meeting. It’s been 8,778 days since your first SC meeting, on January 11, 1994. 24 years.
You joined the SC at a tumultuous time in the district’s history. Picking up right where your father left off, you joined a Committee headed by one Michael Interbartolo. Tumultuous times, indeed.
Your tenure commenced under tremendous budgetary constraints. Pending teacher contract negotiations were just one piece of the puzzle. The negotiations stumbled from one stalemate to the next. Work to rule became the status quo. Teachers assembled in protest at that year’s Inauguration. And while a contract was finally settled - and then renegotiated and settled again - you also had to deal, as a newly-elected member, with the school budget itself.
Then-Mayor Lyons allocated just $17 million dollars for the schools, requiring significant budget cuts by you and your colleagues. You were forced to put off hiring the district’s first Assistant Superintendent for Curriculum and Instruction. Appointed, as you were, to the School Committee’s Curriculum subcommittee, that surely disappointed.
Teachers were laid off. Positions were eliminated. There were six-figure cuts to special education. Even in your first few months in office, in the face of these inordinate fiscal challenges, you were a voice of calm and reason and fiscal prudence, opting out of school choice for lack of state funding but saving academic programs in the process, all while maintaining focus on creating a new, 21st-century curriculum. “Not a curriculum for the ’70s or ’80s,” you said, but a curriculum for the future. As Chair of the Committee’s Public Information subcommittee, you called for the School Committee to meet more regularly with individual school site councils, and you advocated for a “summit” that year between the School Committee and the Board of Aldermen, in the wake of animosity and backbiting between members of the two groups. Tumultuous times, indeed. And the times, they were a-changin.’
1994 was the year Cerretani’s became Shaw’s. Johnny’s Foodmaster opened that June. And Turner’s Seafood dropped its anchor on Main Street that same summer.
The district launched its first “Technology Committee.” Ed Reform was in its infancy. The high school began exploring the idea of creating a student internship program.
Appointed Chair of the School Committee’s Athletics subcommittee, you saw long-time football coach Bruce MacPherson leave the district for the warmer climes of old Cape Cod that year, making way for the hiring of Tim Morris as Head Coach, an ending and a beginning that led our community on the long road to success in Foxboro just last month. And speaking of success in Foxboro, Bob Kraft bought the New England Patriots the same month you started as a member of the School Committee. Beginnings and endings.
The winter of 1994 brought us Nancy Kerrigan and Tonya Harding. Significant snowfall was also an issue that winter, upending the public works budget and even forcing the rescheduling of a School Committee meeting. Many expressed great concern about having to extend the school year into the dog days of summer because of the number of snow days. And, in what can now be seen as the height of irony, one of your then fellow School Committee members, a Mr. Bob Snow, sent a scorching letter to the Free Press, castigating MMTV for the critical commentary one of its shows had heaped on the then-powers-that-be. Tumultuous times, indeed.
In looking back to the start of your political life, Mr. Mayor, one can’t help but note how very far we’ve come as a city and, really, how very easy you’ve made it for the rest of us, both inside and outside of government. When you sat for your first School Committee meeting on Jan. 11, 1994, the city’s finances were a mess. Free cash? How about hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt. The start of your tenure saw the city grappling with bond rating agencies, begging and praying to be relieved of our junk-bond status. Tumultuous times, indeed.
Through it all, however, from the moment you were sworn in, you leaned into it all, urging and making the smart financial moves while always - always - building. Building our schools. Building our city. Building our capacity. Building our future. And the bond rating? It’s gone from below the bottom of the scale to the top. You’ve set the table, for us and for the future. And it’s always been for the benefit of our students. You never took your eye off that ball, for 8,778 days. You’ve stepped up, every single day.
And, on a personal note, let me say what an honor and a privilege it has been to serve with you on this Committee for the last two years. Twice a month I and my colleagues have had the benefit of attending a live-action seminar on local government and politics, done right, courtesy of your wisdom, your guidance, and your work here. At the start of my career, many moons ago, I had the incredible good fortune to work in local government for someone who was then understood by all to be the very best municipal manager there had ever been. And I can now say, with full confidence, that that mantle has been passed to a new municipal leader. You’ve done us proud. You’ve done your father and your family proud. And you leave us in a very, very good place. We’re grateful for that."
SINCE YOU LIKE REFERRING TO DATES, FELON O'CONNELL,WHAT WAS THE YEAR YOU SWINDLED
MONEY FROM AN ELDERLY COUPLE AND GOT A SWEETHEART JUDGEMENT OF $100.00. A MONTH
REPAYMENT.
AND JUST WHAT IS IN IT FOR YOU WITH THE BS YOU THREW ABOUT DOUGHBOY DOLAN ?