Posts Tagged ‘Town of Auburn’

That’s right, I’m the idea man

Wednesday, June 23rd, 2010

The town officials were whining in an article in The Auburn Town News, the local weekly, about complying with a rule that states that towns need to post notices of meetings two days in advance, not including weekends [the article makes a point of saying that twice], and saying they weren’t sure if they could possibly install a bulletin board outside of town hall in time to comply with the new rule.

Well lucky them, I live here in town, and I sent this off to the town clerk.  You’re welcome Auburn.

I was reading the article in the Auburn paper about how the town can’t seem to find a place to post notices of upcoming meetings and isn’t sure if it can find the time or money (not really sure which) to put up a bulletin board outside of town hall.

I can’t help but notice that there’s a fairly underutilized sign board right outside of the fire station on the high school side of town.  While I’m sure notices of sales of reflective house numbers are important, I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that the sign’s owned by the town.  Given the sign is at eye level, handicapped accessible by virtue of being on a paved surface, and likely owned by the town, why can’t notices simply be taped up in there while the town sorts out where to order lockable bulletin boards from?

I know you may come back and day that the back of that sign board is meant for large letters to be pushed into, however it’s not that hard to tape the notices to the inside of the glass.

-Tom

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Awww, ya caught us.

Wednesday, April 14th, 2010

I’m out and about, picking up the kids from daycare this afternoon and my cell phone starts playing the dulcet tones of John Carpenter’s “Halloween” theme.   Thinking maybe it was my wife, I pick up and…it’s the school superintendent with one of her broadcast messages.   This was one was legitimate though, letting us know that yesterday someone was arrested at the high school after showing up and having no business there.  The school staff asked why he was there, he couldn’t come up with anything reasonable, left, and the cops picked him up on the way out.   In short, the system worked as it should.   Had she not called, I probably never would have even known about it.

So here’s the weird thing, I get that call.  The gist of the call, linked below, is that ‘we weren’t going to tell you, but since the media found out and decided to send trucks, we thought maybe we should tell you before you see it on the news’.  Even that’s not so terrible until you also factor in that the preschool classes are being moved to the high school next year.  I have to be buzzed into my kid’s current school, evidently there’s no such system in place at the high school.

Like I said, aside from the nutter who was arrested, I don’t think anyone did something wrong, per se.  But if you’re going to use the broadcast system, do it the day of; this was actually a good message for a change, feel free to gloat and assure parents that you have the kid’s backs.

By the way, Massachusetts is a dual consent state for call recording, however the message was left on my voice mail, granting consent by the caller for the recording.  My phone service delivers a copy of the message to my email.

The call: highSchoolArrest_04142010

UPDATE: Funny how she left out the part about him being a sex offender and attempting to sign someone out of the school.  Hmmph.  Missing info here.

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The response from trash talk.

Thursday, April 8th, 2010

True to my word, here’s the response I got to my email.  I’ve included the name of the sender since there’s really no good reason not to, here’s the response I received from my email:

Hi Tom,
I will be glad to answer your questions.
1. There is no transfer station open to the public in Auburn.
2. Any resident has the right to opt out of the Town program and subscribe to the hauler of their choice. If haulers are telling you that, they’re wrong in saying it and you’re correct on your comments regarding trade constraint. I’m sure there’s somebody out there that would agree to pick up as long as they’re permitted in Auburn.
3. As far as Pizza boxes go, they are allowed in your trash due to oils, cheese, etc. You may cut or break them up to fit into your trash cart.
I hope this helps!
Bob Stodolski
Municipal Account Manager

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Trash talk for the Town of Auburn

Thursday, April 8th, 2010

I have some other stuff I need to deal with this evening, so I can’t make it to the public questions forum at the high school.  But I do love a good paper trail, so I’m posting the email I sent along to the town, Central Mass Disposal, and copied the Worcester Telegram and Gazette for good measure.    If they answer, I’ll be happy to post those as well.  -T

Unfortunately I can’t make it to the forum this evening, but I had some questions I wanted to send along.  For your convenience, I’ve also posted these to my blog and will be more than happy to post your answers along with it for others to see.

1. If a resident wants to haul their own trash, where is the transfer station they would use?  And who do we contact for the permit, hours, fees, etc?

2. After I learned of the new trash program from a post on the bulletin board at the post office about a week ago, I inquired to other companies about residential pickup and they told me that they felt because CMD has a municipal contract they weren’t allowed to provide service within the town.  Isn’t that sort of restraint of trade, collusion and racketeering?  I believe that’s why they had to finally deregulate the cable companies in several neighborhoods allowing folks like RCN into the areas.

3. Is there a plan for follow up on the economic impact of this new policy on local restaurants?  I know since the pizza boxes aren’t recyclable, and I can’t afford the space in my toter, I’ll likely buy less pizza from these restaurants.  I know if I were the guy who just opened the pizza place over on 20 I’d be pretty dismayed that the town has disuaded folks from bringing him any business.  While you may come back with “well that’ll encourage them to use more eco friendly packaging”, that doesn’t hold water since we can’t recycle styrofoam or anything that can’t be cleaned of food waste.

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Isn’t this anticompetitive behavior and restriction of trade?

Wednesday, April 7th, 2010

Annoyed about my town’s choice to grab its ankles instead of doing a proper rate increase for trash hauling, I’ve started calling around to other trash haulers in the area to find out what residential service would cost me from them.

One of the companies I wrote to is Casella.  They’re literally less than a mile from my house and it says right on their site that they offer residential service.   I’d like to say again…they’re based here in town.   This was their response.   [Name redacted by me]:

I am sorry to say that we do not service Auburn, MA for residential service. I am not sure with it being a municipality if there is another hauler that can service the town.

Sorry!
Thank you
~[removed]

[removed]
Customer Service Supervisor
Casella Waste Services
49 Sword St
Auburn, MA 01501
Phone: 508-860-2102
Fax: 508-755-3642

Call me crazy, but isn’t that the crux of anticompetitive behavior?  One of the reasons that the cable companies were forced to allow others in the area on the same lines was that they were being hit with antitrust allegations.   I’m wondering, isn’t that what the town of Auburn is doing if they prevent other haulers from servicing the town?   This was my response to the CS rep:

Isn’t that anticompetitive behavior though?  I’d be happy to call the town lawyers and offer to sue them for antitrust activities.
The problem is that they don’t actually *do* anything other than collect the money.   Problem with pickup?  Call CMD.  Street was skipped?  Call CMD.  Bill’s due, send us money.   Ugh.
You don’t happen to know where the nearest transfer station is, do you?  At this point I’m happy to hitch up the trailer and do it myself.
Incidentally, I do run a business out of my home.   Do you provide business pickup?  :)
Tom

Isn’t that anticompetitive behavior though?  I’d be happy to call the town lawyers and offer to sue them for antitrust activities.
The problem is that they don’t actually *do* anything other than collect the money.   Problem with pickup?  Call CMD.  Street was skipped?  Call CMD.  Bill’s due, send us money.   Ugh.
You don’t happen to know where the nearest transfer station is, do you?  At this point I’m happy to hitch up the trailer and do it myself.
Incidentally, I do run a business out of my home.   Do you provide business pickup?  :)
Tom

I’m still waiting to see what Waste Management comes back with, but I’m thinking the ultimate answer may be for everyone to start their own little business and contract for business pickup instead.    Can you call poking town paper pushers with a stick a business?    Now where do I look to find a transfer station?  Hmm…

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Nooooo, it’s not a rate increase, it’s environmentally friendly

Friday, March 26th, 2010

I happened to look at the bulletin board while I was at the post office today and noticed a flyer about a change to the trash pickup here in town.  Our 96 gallon trash can is going to be replaced with a 64 gallon trash can.  Yay!  This will save…..I don’t know.  Nothing really.   In fact it actually will cost a lot of people a lot more money.

See, right now we pay 16.00 a month, or 96.00 twice a year.   This is for the 96 gallon tote service.  Starting in April we will pay….16.00 a month, or 96.00 twice a year for 64 gallon tote service.  Oh, and anything extra will need to be put into one of those 1.00 each “Town of Auburn, Fuck you very much for your patronage” trash bags that they sell at the stores and are always flimsy and rip.

The Town of Auburn site says that “A 64-gallon trash toter holds up to four kitchen-sized trash bags”.  That’s just peachy keen.   We can easily generate 4 bags, plus a bag of diapers, plus we change the cat pans every two weeks and that goes out to the trash too instead of dumping crap all over the lawn.    God forbid we have a party one week.

Oh, but the good news?  Our 96 gallon totes will remain as our new recycling bins.   I’m tempted to hack up my existing one with a sawz all and put it in the bin.

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Why you don’t abuse emergency message delivery services

Wednesday, January 13th, 2010

Quick, think of the trip between here and the closest supermarket. You likely drive it every day, tell me the speed limit in each area you pass through.   You can’t.  You probably know, and you’ll likely notice the signs next time you drive it, but I’m fairly certain you couldn’t tell me with any certainty.   Why?  Because you pass those signs every day and you no longer notice them.   The first few times you drove the route you likely saw each one, but now they’re just background noise.

That’s the problem with things that occur, happen, and exist every day, they blend in.  It’s my gripe about the Commonwealth of Massachusetts using the emergency signs on the highway to congratulate the Patriots, or remind me to buckle up; eventually I no longer bother to look at the sign because I know it’s a pointless message.  Until it’s not.  Some day that sign will warn me of an accident ahead, a tree across the highway, something…that I won’t find out about until it’s too late because I won’t have read the sign, assuming it was just some other feel good message.

This is why I’m of the mind that Town of Auburn Superintendent of Schools Dr. Maryellen Brunelle is putting the children under her watch in danger.   See, she has a powerful tool at her disposal, the One Call Now system the town has purchased.   She has used the system in the past to let parents know about a sexual predator sighted in the vicinity of one of the schools.  She has used the system to let everyone know about school closings in inclement weather.  All perfectly reasonable uses.

However in the past two weeks she’s also used it to let us know about Auburn Rockets hockey game.  Today she used the system to pass along a message about the schools participating in a local charity drive being coordinated by a third party business.  Mind you, just yesterday we received a paper about this in our child’s backpack.

So thank you Dr. Brunelle.   Thanks to you there’s now going to be a filter for your emails in my box.  This way I can check the filtered messages once a month or so to see if there’s anything actually relevant.  However, if you let me know that the school’s exploded via email, I can pretty much guarantee I won’t find out about it until I go to pick up my kid.  Then I’ll have wished there was an emergency contact system you could have used…appropriately.

Edit:  Just as an addendum….I’d be fine if the town had a priority 1 and priority 2 opt in type of setup where the P2 folks get emergency and junk mail stuff and the P1 list only gets emergency, but from what the folks at Education told me, it’s an all or nothing proposition right now.

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So what do I do here?

Friday, January 8th, 2010

I have a little one in my town’s school system and as part of him being in school, we signed up pretty much every method of contact we have with the school’s “One Call Now” system.  This is, in theory, a system that would be used to provide emergency and crucial information to parents.   For example, once they sent out a message about a sex offender seen in the vicinity of one of the schools.  That went to our house phone, both cell phones, and a couple of email adddresses.  Another time I think it was used to wake us up at quarter to 6 or so via phones (plural) to let us know about inclement weather closings.  This is fine, and a perfectly reasonable use of an emergency type system.   I was annoyed to be woken up ahead of the alarm, but it wasn’t an unreasonable call.

But the superintendent of schools seems to also like to use the system for other things, albeit not always using both phone and email.   For example, before Christmas we got a phone call on the house phone and both cells wishing us a happy holiday and letting us know there are seats open on the school buildings committee.  Today I received an email letting me know that the high school team is playing some hockey game at the local stadium.  This, to me, isn’t an appropriate use.

I called the education office and I asked if there was a way to get on an emergency message only list vs. the emergency and oh all this other junk list.  There’s one list, you’re either on or off it, but I get the feeling the poor woman I talked to has fielded these calls before.

So what do I do here?  Do I remove my contact information from the list and miss out on the “there’s a knife wielding crazy in your son’s pre-school classroom” messages, or just leave it be and create a special filter for the superintendent’s drivel?

I’m thinking it might be worth taking up with the town selectmen at some point because it’s pretty obviously a misuse of a valuable system.  Or am I being too sensitive?

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Rude police

Tuesday, October 20th, 2009

Today while out driving over to get my son I ran across a crew cutting trees.  They had a lane blocked and there was an officer theoretically working a traffic management detail.

While visible, she was half way up the curve and watching the cutters rather than standing out of the workmen’s way and keeping an eye on the cars.

I saw her and stopped, but was already part way into the lane, and she motioned for me to stop.  Keep in mind she’s probably a 100 feet or so from my car.  In the other direction another car wound up doing the same thing.   Eventually, after the workmen made their cut and the log fell, she had some heated looking conversation with the other driver and waved him/her through, and they went down a side road.  Then she waved me on specifically,and made a rude, “go ahead, you’re so special” comment on the way by.

Now, I’ve interacted with enough of the town’s police force to know she’s just one horrible, incompetent example, but honestly, she’s giving the rest of the force a bad name.   So, I hope that she sees this, and gets a) some training on how to safely run a traffic detail and b) gets some work on her interpersonal and professional skills.

From what my more level headed wife said, she had a pretty similar experience with the same police officer on the way to drop off our son at preschool.

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A taxing new trend

Thursday, October 1st, 2009

I don’t know how I missed this, but there’s a new bit of taxation going on here in Taxachusetts, local based restaurant and hotel taxes.

Over the summer the state raised the sales tax to 6.25%.  This is kind of an odd amount really.  Let’s face it, if I spend 1.00, I can’t pay 6.25 cents on that, so does it round up and cheat the consumer (where’s the extra go?) or do you round down and have the business owner risk under reporting taxes?  Well, it looks like they may have had a reason.

The state offered towns the opportunity to implement a local .75% hotel and restaurant tax of their own, rounding it out to 7%.

Annoying for sure, but it gets worse.  Not all the towns took the state up on the offer.

This means if I eat in my own town of Auburn, or the next town over, Worcester, I get hit with the extra tax.  However if I go over to Millbury (the other side of Auburn), there’s no extra tax.  This is slightly unfortunate really; often we go to the Applebees here in town because it’s rarely busy.  Honestly I think it’s a front for something worse because this place is dead most of the time.   But, with two kids in tow, you deal with the questionable food on those nights you just can’t cook dinner.  The service is fine, by the way.    However, given the economy, we may be more likely to go to the Applebees in Millbury now because it saves us a few cents.  Distance wise it’s about the same either way, so there’s really no gas savings.

Perhaps some of the Millbury restaurant owners should send the town selectmen in Auburn and the mayor in Worcester a thank you note and a coupon to say thanks for the extra business.

Just as a random musing, I looked it up and it looks like the state actually took into account the odd quarter point figures.  Have a look.

Here’s the list of municipalities that have adopted the higher meals tax, or as I like to think of it, the list of towns to eat in instead.  Interestingly only 32 greedy communities out of 351 listed took the state up on it’s offer.

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