Chestnut Hill Yokels: Contempt for the Community
by John Lombardi
Looks like the Exec Committee is willing to meet weekly now, in order to get its way. If votes are taken, as they were on Jan. 22, to broom Pete Mazzaccaro from his job, and the count goes against them -- no problem! They just schedule another vote! If the community turns out to dispute their nonsense and demand their resignatioms for ignoring the CHCA's own bylaw procedural rules -- as happened last week -- they ignore that, too , and squirm out of the public portion of the Board Meeting in order to prevent action! Then someone calls the cops on the people! Reporting "trouble at the Library"!
Now another "special" meeting is being called for the Chestnut Hill Hospital (!), for next Thursday, to accomplish whatever post-literate schemes Dina, Tolis, Herr Keintz and Walter "Foghorn" Sullivan think is "in the interest of Chestnut Hill." Last time they chose the Hospital, in 2006, they garroted Board member Lawrence Walsh's Board seat away from him, for advising two Local journalists to stand up for their free press rights. And for being leader of the opposition to the CHBA-influenced clique in the CHCA, which then operated through Stewart Graham and Maxine Dornneman (who are said to be related!). The pettiness and unreasonable-ness of the anti-Walsh move was so blatant, Walsh obliged them and left. To insure there was no trouble, the CHCA had brought in rent-a-cops. In these more straitened economic times, will they just call 911?
The fact is that the CHCA "leadership" is running out of gas. By turning on Mazzaccaro, a mild editor, they show an unreasonable fanaticism for power and control. By blaming the Local for their economic decline, instead of facing up to the fact that market forces and actuarial tables are changing the nature of the old "village" concept of Chestnut Hill's economic plan, they show a managerial opacity that's hard to fathom in such a highly-educated, wealthy community. By demonizing me for my brief stint as editor nine years ago, claiming that my wild overspending and carelessness in printing objectionable material in the Local dug a financial hole for the CHCA (through the payment of a settlement to an aggrieved reader), that it's still digging out of, it shows a willingness to smear without evidence. Where's the back-up material for your claims, Ms. Hitchcock? We could do a one-on-one debate at one of your frequent meetings.
The community needs to show up at all of your questionable public sessions, and confront you as it did on Feb. 26th. It needs to defeat you and your clique in the Spring elections. It needs to either return the Local to its former free press status, or support a new paper, free of Bush-regime tactics : Stewart Graham as Karl Rove; Mark Keintz as Scooter Libby; Tolis Vardakis as George Tenet ; you as -- Condoleezza Rice?
You can't manage a newspaper the way you'd oversee a fast food restaurant, or even an information-technology operation. Newspapers are dying not only because young people are scanning more "info downloads" online than they used to, but because publishers have devalued the art of writing and reporting honestly and well, and with -- God save us in the Age of Jimmy Kimmel and Oprah! -- a little humanity.
The community needs to show up at all of your questionable public sessions, and confront you as it did on Feb. 26th. It needs to defeat you and your clique in the Spring elections. It needs to either return the Local to its former free press status, or support a new paper, free of Bush-regime tactics : Stewart Graham as Karl Rove; Mark Keintz as Scooter Libby; Tolis Vardakis as George Tenet ; you as -- Condoleezza Rice?
You can't manage a newspaper the way you'd oversee a fast food restaurant, or even an information-technology operation. Newspapers are dying not only because young people are scanning more "info downloads" online than they used to, but because publishers have devalued the art of writing and reporting honestly and well, and with -- God save us in the Age of Jimmy Kimmel and Oprah! -- a little humanity.
Labels: CHCA Board, Chestnut Hill, Chestnut Hill Local
posted by John Lombardi at 3/05/2009 01:18:00 PM
2 Comments:
The CHCA by laws regarding executive session are as follows:
“Except when the Board meets in executive session, all meetings of the Board are open to the public. The Board may not resolve into executive session until it has first voted in open session to do so. The Board may so thus resolve into executive session on matters related to employee conduct, personnel policy, or salary, and on other matters of an unusually sensitive nature. If the presiding officer has anticipated the need for executive session when the Notice of the Meeting was issued and published, then that Notice shall include that on the agenda with as much specificity as possible without compromising the sensitivity of the matter.”
This meeting was made public in the March 5th edition of the local. The proposed meeting agenda makes no mention of an executive session. If Dina, Toils, Keintz and that horrible Cristina Sullivan dare try to resolve into executive session they are in violation of their own rules. The community must turn out on March 12 and they must, once again, prevent the board from resolving into executive session under any circumstances.
Denys, the board can resolve into executive session as they did under the bylaws because the pending litigation would be sensitive in nature. It was just very poor manners to do it in the way they did. They could easily have met separately with the lawyer or held their session at the end of the meeting. This board is conducting itself as if it is at war with both the Local and the community. The board members who have resigned may have been present when certain board members acted outside the law. I can think of no other reason for them to have resigned. Their statements allude to same. Tolis is just not smart enough to have been able to avoid what apparently has happened.
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