It’s shaping up to be a beautiful autumn here on the banks of the Mianus, where the train-weary commuter population seems smaller, judging by the availability of parking spaces in the Metro North parking lots – perhaps a sign of the down-sized world of corporate Manhattan. Three recent times I pulled into the Old Greenwich station on the southbound side I found convenient spots even though it was mid-morning.
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Hey, you don’t have to go south of the Mason Dixon line to find moronic behavior by political candidates. We have our fair share right here in good, old Yankee land, where one of the aspirants for selectmen, David Theis, thinks providing affordable housing for the elderly is “social engineering.” Wonder what he thinks of police, fire and emergency services, public schools, public libraries, road maintenance, parks and rec, etc. Wonder why someone with his views would want to be part of government? It is a contradiction that I have failed to grasp at a fundamental level about the Right – candidates who run for office and don’t believe in public service.
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I miss Jim Lash, especially after listening to the recent selectmen “debates.” Rarely does a local municipality get the opportunity to get a first-class manager like Lash to run things. Dick Bergstresser was the Jimmy Carter of Greenwich politics who had no discernible executive skills. He only benefitted from the enmity toward Lolly Prince who was punished for allowing Stamford to successfully penetrate Greenwich Point. Peter Tesei makes me nervous. Why do I get the feeling that disaster is always right around the corner with this guy? I like Lin Lavery, who is a friend of a friend. But she has to do better than just shoot from the hip. Lash ran as a Republican, but he could just as well have been a Democrat. He was not a political ideologue. He understood, for instance, that affordable housing is not an issue to be debated in the 21st century but a challenge that required our best thinking. He had some interesting ideas for how to increase our affordable housing stock. He knew we didn’t need a federal lawsuit to force us to comply with the law – like in Westchester where they are forced to build 700 units in “white” communities. He also had strong opinions about how the Republican-run school board had no leadership and was driving our schools in the wrong direction. By the end of his second term, Lash had cashed in all his political capital. Too bad. I miss him, his wisdom and his leadership.
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Bill Grad actually has a good chance to become the next Greenwich tax collector – the ultimate Greenwich sinecure – now that Rick Nowakowski is running despite losing the Democratic primary. The thinking among the Dems is that Nowakowski – whose politics is somewhere right of Francisco Franco – will garner all the extreme right votes leaving the Republican candidate Tod Laudonia with a Republican base that is not big enough to overcome Grad’s enthusiastic support which came out in force to snuff out the specter of Nowakowski’s frightening agenda.
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Lord knows we need new blood on the school board – more like a major transfusion – but who wudda thunk that the brightest lights are the two Republican candidates, Peter Sherr and Theresa Stanton, both of whom came down squarely in favor of smaller classes for our children in a recent candidates forum. The two incumbents, Steve Anderson and Leslie Moriarty who are really appendages of the BET, voiced their predictable tow-the-line “fiscal responsibility” mantra: We have enough teachers so shut the hell up, you stupid know-nothing parents. The biggest disappointment is Nancy Kail, the candidate who I thought would make a difference but now sounds just like Anderson and Moriarty – more interested in her personal resume than in the interest of our schools. I say this because school board members in Greenwich under the Weissler era have made fiscal control their main goal instead of focusing on how to get our children the best education money can buy. No wonder the Greenwich school district plummeted in state rankings to be in the middle of the pack instead of standing among the elites (see my previous post on rankings). Too many studies have shown the benefits of a small teacher/student ratio. Beyond that, it just makes sense. To argue otherwise shows the true intent of these candidates as they cozy up to the small club of insiders who run the town. It’s depressing. Kail and Moriarty are automatic board members because of this cozy arrangement to keep choices out of the hands of voters. So the only real choice is between Stanton and the other two GOP candidates. Stanton, by the way, is the only candidate with real classroom experience.
