All Karyn All The Time

The Karyn Polito ego tour has finally moved into Lt. Governor campaign mode. We've all known for years (at least since 2006), that she's been eying a higher office. For the next little while, she'll pretend to be "thinking about it" as she "considers her options" but she's not fooling anyone. She's in the race.

For months she's been taking on larger statewide issues and taking every opportunity to attack the Democrats on Beacon Hill. There's nothing the Democrats do that she likes. Polito's going to be the perfect attack dog for Charlie Baker's gubernatorial campaign team.

She's such a party loyalist that in 2006, when then-VP Dick Cheney came to Boston, neither then-Gov. Mitt Romney nor then-LGov Kerry Healey (the Republican nominee for Governor) were brave enough to meet him in public. No, it was left to "a little-known state representative from Shrewsbury" to greet him at the airport.

"I said, 'I'm a Republican state representative, a wife, and a mother, and my family sleeps easy at night knowing you and President Bush are in the corner office,'" Polito said in an interview on the tarmac, just after Cheney left. "He said, 'Thank you for running for office. I'm happy to be here.'"

But now she's changed her partisan tune and has become a false prophet for bipartisanism: "People are tired of partisanship and politics; they want to see action, they want to see solutions and ideas moving forward." Such consistency is the hallmark of our Representative from Wasilla.

Like Romney, Polito knows which way the wind is blowing.

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The big news is that now we can be sure that there will finally be a real race for her seat. Who do you think will run?

The local Democrats haven't put up a race for the seat in almost two decades. They have been frustrated having not had a real chance at the seat in a long time; so they are likely to put up a real fight this time. And with Mike Moore's Senate victory last year, Democrats are feeling revitalized and ready to take this seat too.

"Beatles" Concert Moved

Due to the forecast of severe weather tonight, the "Family Concert on the Common" has been moved to the Senior Center on Maple Ave.

The concert will be at 6pm, and is organized by the Friends of the Shrewsbury Public Library.

New Medical Clinic Coming To Town

Reader David Hack sent me an email asking for more information about a sign he saw on the old Blockbuster Video store at the intersection of Route 9 & Svenson Road.

Here's what I've learned: Construction began in the Spring to build a new medical clinic at that intersection which will replace the Blockbuster Video store that closed early in the season. The intersection was reconfigured last year to make Harrington & Svenson approach Boston Turnpike (Route 9) perpendicularly and to improve traffic passing through.


(This photo was taken before Blockbuster closed.) • View Larger Map

The developers, Fallon Clinic, are referring to the clinic as a “non-emergent urgent care facility.” As the director of real estate with Fallon Clinic stated,

"this is a facility that we view as being used by patients who are coming home from a soccer game on Saturday afternoon, the son has cut his foot, got a scratch, whatever. They don’t want to go wait four hours in UMass to be seen. They’ll come see us and we’ll treat them accordingly and send them on their way. So, we see this as an opportunity to better serve patients who may not have access to their primary care doctor on the weekends or don’t want to deal with the four hour wait at UMass Memorial in terms of trying get in. … Frankly, if you come to the door and you’re a fifty-fiveyear old male and you’re presenting chest pain symptoms, we’re going to stabilize you and then we’re going to call the ambulance and ship you up to the hospital."

Fallon Clinic is a non-profit organization and claims to be the largest multi-specialty group practice in Central Massachusetts.

This Summer Sucks

Ok, it is official, this summer sucks royally. The kids are tired of the pouring rain; we are tired of our kids whining and we not sure what to do with the mushrooms growing in our yards and have no bikini lines to speak of let alone show off and the mosquitoes have made off with the cat.

Help is on the way, at least for the whining kids; those missing bikini lines can be taken care of with a brown magic marker. The last session (July 27 through July 30) of the Shrewsbury Schools Summer Enrichment Program (SEP) still has openings. It is a good deal $72 for a 3 hour morning or afternoon session running for 4 days. The classes are taught mostly by Shrewsbury teachers or aides and can be fun or educational depending upon what class you choose. My daughter has been taking advantage of this great program for 5 years and has taken some great classes: Shrewsbury History, Public Speaking and Debate, Corn Starch Science and American Girl Summer Fun. This year they were trying to expand the program to interest those students in the 5^th and 6^th grades. All classes are held at the Floral Street School.

Listed below are the classes still open for next week, and the grade levels the student must be entering in the Fall. If you are interested, please contact program director, Jean Brunnell ( a SHS teacher) JBrunell@shrewsbury.k12.ma.us for more information or to get your child registered. Don’t delay some of these classes only have one or two openings. Just click on the blue section below and you will get a full description of the courses.

Red Sox 101 ( 1-3)am; Harry Potter, Intro to Magic (2-4)am ; Flight Gliders, Intro to Rocketry(6-8) am ; Cookie Decorating and Tea Party (k-5)am; Sports Alive (1-3)am ; Who Borrowed Mr. Bear (2-3)am ; Calling all cheerleaders (3-4)am; Fuse Bead Bonanza (k-3)am ; Jungle Fever (1-3)pm; Harry Potter Adv. Magic (3-6)pm; It’s Soooooo Me (4-8)pm; Alternative Energy Project (6-7)pm; Everything H.S. Musical (k-4)pm; Fun with the 5 Senses(k-2)all day.

Not On The Right Track With Math

Worcester Business Journal just published an interesting article about the need to teach Math in a practical and appealing manner.

Our schools are not teaching math in a manner that is engaging students. As a result we now have a shortage of students majoring in math related subjects and this is causing a shortage of qualified math and engineering employees.

A little over a year ago a local technology company tried to hire an employee with a PHD in engineering and they were unable to because they could not find a citizen with the desired degree and they could not get a VISA to hire a non-citizen (there were non-citizens who were qualified).

Our schools focus on testing and for the most part our students score well on Math tests, but our students are not learning the appeal and opportunity of math related study.

What is the future of the US if we do not have a generation of technological and mathematical leaders?

Our schools need to focus on education, the love of learning, and the opportunities that education can bring to the individual and to our country. Tests scores should be a by-product of quality education not the main focus. Next time someone shows you a test score and declares that our schools are doing a great job, please dig a bit deeper and ask what they are learning, how they are learning, and what the students are doing with their education. Our future depends on it!

Applicants Are Abundant

Do you support term limits for people elected or appointed to serve the town? No, me neither.

How about limiting people to serve on only one board at a time? Also a bad idea.

Both of these ideas were pushed by Ben Tartaglia and the Seniors for Responsible Taxation at this year's Annual Town Meeting. These, and other like proposals, were soundly overwhelmingly rejected by Town Meeting (including me).

One thing that I remembered from those debates, however, was that the Selectmen said that it was already hard to get enough people to apply for the vacancies. "We barely have enough people, so we can't limit our options" was the cry.

Turns out, however, that plenty of people are willing to go the distance in asking to be appointed.

For example…

The Shrewsbury Development Corporation had a vacancy after member Chris Mehne resigned upon his election as Town Moderator. The Selectmen posted the vacancy, and four people applied: Ross Benavides, Chris Richardson, Judy Vedder, and Matthew Beaton. From them, Beaton was appointed unanimously.

The Historic District Commission never even posted its annual vacancies. Yet seven people applied for four positions. I was one of them, along with Henry Wood, Jr., Donald Gray, Edward Healy, Christopher Kirk, Andy MacIsaac, and Rex Renzoni. Renzoni was appointed as a new member, and all three incumbents requesting reappointment were reappointed.

All the appointments were unanimous. There was barely any discussion by the Board of Selectmen and they seemed to have been in such synchronicity that it's as if they'd discussed it privately outside the room just a few minutes before the meeting began.

And then there are the nine people who applied for the Finance Committee. We'll never know the names of the six who were turned down, because the Town Moderator does not conduct an open process. That's his right, and it's what he said he'd before the election. As he put it: "I do not plan to name the applicants who were not selected out of respect for their privacy (as I stated during my campaign)."

So I hand it to you, dear readers, how open should the process be?

Selectmen, the Moderator and the Manager all appoint people to various boards in town.  What if they had interviews in open meeting for every applicant? That would be crazy.  It's impractical and very difficult for the applicants to attend. On the other hand, an entirely closed process doesn't give the residents of the town enough confidence in the people selected. Is there a happy medium between the two; a sweet spot where the public's interest is served but the system remains functional?

I, for one, think it's great that there are a lot of people getting involved.

Or at least they're trying to

By the way, there is at least one vacancy on the Retirement Board, and I strongly urge you to consider it.

Correction: The name of the appointee to the Shrewsbury Development Corporation had been listed incorrectly due to an error from the source. The correction has been made above.

Grafton Street Repair In Process

Grafton Street resident Bill Yeomans snapped some fantastic photographs of the culvert construction near his house.

Thanks, Bill, for sharing these pics with us, and for providing your captions to them!

And That's The Way It Is

Walter Cronkite died today.

I'll leave this to your comments: memories, opinions, feelings, and ideas.

Turn Here

I can't stress how happy I am that I can finally turn left from Maple Ave. onto Route 9/Boston Tpke.

The intersection there, in front of the Price Chopper, has been reconfigured so that traffic coming southwest on Maple aren't forced to turn right to go eastbound on Route 9 and then having to make a u-turn at the Harrington/Svenson intersection (or an illegal u-turn at Elm). Instead, we can turn left at the end of Maple and simply drive east on Route Nine.


How do we get Google Maps and our GPS's to update their records?

We're Number Fifty-Eight!

Money magazine ranked Shrewsbury the 58th "Best Place To Live" among Small Towns in the United States.

While I do love Shrewsbury and it's number one for me, I'm actually a little confused about what Money says we have:

The town center here offers a lot to residents. First is the aesthetic appeal of many 200-year old buildings. Then there's the array of ethnic restaurants, including three sushi bars, a cappuccino bar, and a strip of high-end boutiques. Those amenities help Shrewsbury receive high marks for leisure activities.

When the charms of town wear thin, residents need only jump on the commuter rail to go straight to Boston.

What "cappuccino bar"? There's a strip of high-end boutiques? I can maybe think of one sushi bar (Willy's), but then what?

Then again, I don't get out to restaurants like I used to.

Update: Now I've read their FAQ on how we were picked. First of all, they only included towns that have a population of 8,500 to 50,000, and then they excluded "places where income is more than 200% or less than 85% of the state median; those more than 95% white; those with poor education and crime scores."

So how many towns were left? 580.

580 municipalities in the whole country met their criteria. Then they ranked them and published the top 100. So 58 out of 580 puts us in the top 10%.

Not bad, I suppose.

Was My Prediction Accurate?

(What with political news being slow in summer and everybody off on vacation anyway, this is a good time to take care of some housecleaning.)

WAY back in 2008, I predicted that the Democrats would gain 8 seats in the November 2007 Senate elections. It tooks months of recounts and court cases in the Minnesota, but the results are finally in.

I wrote:

Those represent 3 seats of retiring Republicans (Colorado, New Mexico and Virginia) and 5 seats whose Republican incumbents will lose: Sununu (New Hampshire), Smith (Oregon), Stevens (Alaska), Dole (North Carolina), and Coleman (Minnesota). Two of those races will be close: North Carolina & Minnesota.

Meanwhile, three other seats will be close but the Republican incumbents will win: Wicker (Mississippi), McConnell (Kentucky), and Chambliss (Georgia).

The actual results are: The Democrats won 8 seats. And while MN was close (215 votes), NC was not: 54%-44%.

Yay, me.

SPL Friends Present Summer Concerts

To the Editor:—

The Friends of the Shrewsbury Public Library present the…

5th Annual Free Family Concerts on the Common

Wednesday, July 29th 6:00 PM
Back by popular demand!
BEATLES FOR SALE
A Beatles Tribute

Thursday, August 13th 6:00 PM
PLAINFOLK
They’re coming back for another great evening of folk music

Bring your blankets, chairs and picnic dinner for lively evenings of free family entertainment.

Moderator's 2009 Appointments

Town Moderator Chris Mehne made his appointments to the Finance Committee and Personnel Board today.

Appointed to the FinCom were: John Cygielnik, Christopher Rutigliano, and Donna O'Connor (reappointed).

William McGovern was reappointed to the Personnel Board.

Three seats were open on the nine-member FinCom. The terms of Francis Russell, Donna O'Connor, and David L'Ecuyer all ended on June 30, 2009. O'Connor requested reappointment, but Russell and L'Ecuyer did not.

John Cygielnik is a retired accountant and long-time town meeting member who worked as a financial officer in the manufacturing industry for many years. Chris Rutigliano is vice president of a technology company and also a town meeting member; he was a candidate for Selectman in the 2008 town election.

One seat was open on the three-member Personnel Board. Incumbent William T. McGovern's term ended on June 30, 2009, and he was reappointed.

Although the appointments were made this week, their terms actually began July 1, 2009 and will run for three years through June 30, 2012.

Don't Forget! Road Closed

Starting today, Grafton Street (Rt. 140) will be closed between Main Street and Route 9 for about three weeks.

Here's what the Town's website recommends:

Residents will be able to travel north and south from side streets that feed onto Grafton Street but in no case will they be able to cross the culvert located north of Old Brook Road. Residents traveling from west to east are encouraged to use Wesleyan Terrace and Wesleyan Street to access UMass Group Practice, Willy's Steakhouse, and Paquette Farm. Residents traveling east to west are encouraged to use Summer Street and Raymond Avenue to get to these businesses. These businesses will not be closed so please continue to support our local merchants during this difficult time.

So leave early and allow extra time.

Don't forget!!