Say It Ain't So

by Shoeless Joe

Less than two weeks into her role as editor of the Local, Lea Stanley has been overheard by more than one source to be threatening to leave because of the spartan conditions of our little weekly paper. Not only does the staff need a lot of direction, but the paper is having a hard time paying her what its so-called custodians on the CHCA had agreed.

For the CHCA this is par for the course… a search committee of un-experts is assembled to hire the leader of a vital community institution and they go about it without even a surface study of what that institution needs. Ask the employees of the Local if they’ve ever seen members of the search committee on fact-finding missions to 8434. Fat chance. And agreeing to pay people more than the paper can afford is a tradition that started with the Notebook’s own John Lombardi. Gross incompetence at the CHCA? Say it ain’t so…

Shoeless Joe is surprised by Lea’s reaction, though… I can understand not getting paid, but Lea, did you ever read the Local? Did you miss the near weekly stories about financial uncertainty written by unsteady and untrained writers? It wouldn’t take a whole lot of journalism skill to uncover that one.

Bar None
And quickly: How about the Local’s failure to print the details of Sanjiv Jain’s scheme to get variances that would allow him to turn the former Yankee Candle shop into a late-night club. Doesn’t he know no one stays up on the Hill past 11:00 p.m.?

Jain doesn’t know that. And apparently he doesn’t know it’s pretty appalling to get store clerks to sign a letter in lieu of the owners of the businesses for which they work. And he also didn’t realize it’s not right to get a letter of approval from the business association without telling the members of the business association… or Anne McNally, the president. Imagine the surprise of the biz leaders when they learned that one.

But in all seriousness, Jain was picked by the current power brokers on the board to be the head of the community’s Physical Division, the division responsible for review of all projects big and small in Chestnut Hill (from garden fences to new retail construction, anything that needs a variance from the city must go through the Physical Division). What the hell were they thinking? The community association is supposed to represent the community’s interest; not aid and abet a would-be real estate tycoon in his quest to increase the value of his portfolio. The board members who support his continued leadership of the Physical Division are either morons or content with corruption.