Hey Templeton – I am letting me speak.

 Well to all that couldn’t attend the selectmen’s meeting last night – you missed a good one. The members of the Municipal Building Committee were there,  Jerry Skelton, Dennis O’Brien and of course Bob Columbus and Chris Stewart. A question was asked if a building inspection had been done prior to the purchase of the building at 252 Baldwinville Road – (like you have when you purchase a home) all Mr. Skelton could say was an environmental study had been done. So no one inspected the building  prior to the purchase and as far as the environmental study goes – all that was done was what the Mass Department of Environmental Protection calls a “phase 1” which in their words is a “nothing” just paper records, no ground water testing or soil testing was done. Now if you ask the people who manufacture cement blocks, Graves Concrete and Jandris Concrete they will tell you that any building built in the 1970’s as that building was – the concrete is very porous. So go to www.thetruthisouttheretempleton.com and click on “252 Baldwinville Road Environmental  Site Assessment” it’s a very big report – read through it – note the words “chromium” “mercury”
Particularly the statement  on (their) page 4 that reads “the hazardous waste generated from the carbonizing furnaces is 85% water but contains cresol, and the heavy metals chromium and mercury. Read page 5 about more chemical storage (and note mention of the complaint from the neighbor at 259 Baldwinville Road – Dennis O’Brien) Humm – would his house be worth more across the street from a Municipal building or a vacant toxic black carbon manufacturing plant???? On page 24 it states what should be done to clean the building – why did we pay $400,000 for a building that wasn’t cleaned up?? And why did Mr. Skelton and the Building Committee ask for 3000 cubic yards of fill from the town pit to be brought over to 252 Baldwinville Rd for fill – what are they trying to bury?? Or are they filling in wetlands??   Well you get the point we paid too much for a building and land that has not been checked out completely – oh and please note this never went to a ballot question – when Mr. Skelton states –“ well you people voted to buy it” –no only the majority of 118 people who attended that town meeting in May of 2010 – oh yea and Article 64 was passed on  May 17, 2010 – the third night of town meeting!   So Mr. Skelton – exactly who voted for this mess you and the build committee have gotten us into???

All should notice when you watch the meeting on cable, that Julie did not stop 88 year old Rudy Sundstrom from speaking his peace – good for Rudy and good for Julie – so the let the people speak crowd should change their saying to – all’s well, we made a mistake forgive us.  But I bet Gerry Skelton wishes Rudy didn’t speak when Rudy said “buying that building was stupid”

Another issue is that no one seems to know exactly what is going on with the Municipal Building committee. When asked for an update at selectmen’s meetings the other members of the committee state the they need Mr. Skelton to speak. – I guess this proves it – they can’t think for themselves!! Why did it take a public records request to the town clerk for the minutes of their meetings for the minutes to suddenly be filed with the town clerk? How many years has the building committee been in existence? Now Mr. Skelton states that there aren’t any updates on the senior center -  not true – I have attended many a Selectmen meeting, where Mr. Morrison gave and update, updates are also given at the COA meetings and in the monthly  newsletters – good job Senior oversight committee – could you explain “open government” to the municipal building committee?? 

At last nights meeting when Mr. Skelton was asked about the environmental testing at 252 Baldwinville Road – his answer was” did the town test the senior center land?” my answer to you Mr. Skelton is – the Baldwinville Nursing Home, that so generously donated land for the senior center never used – chromium, mercury, formaldehyde etc., etc. !!!!

Also at last night’s selectmen’s meeting  they talked about the “borrowing”  have you notice that Mr. Skelton likes to blame the treasure for a lot of things? Well, we have already “borrowed” the $1.9 million – why? Well first we paid $400,000.00  to purchase 252 Baldwinville Road the we paid out another $100,000.00 for architect fees. Then  because of the Building Committee sent a cash flow statement to the treasurer stating that additional moneys would be need to be paid out over a certain time line  – the town had to borrow – what has this cost the town because the building committee has put a timeline  stating that they would need to start paying for other things – when we haven’t even voted on the extra money for the roof – this has cost the town an additional $23,000.00 in interest.

So do the math everybody – we paid $400,000.00 for a disgusting building, $100,000.00 for architect fees $23,000.00 in interest – we will take on 40 years of debt to pay back $1.9 million dollars, and we will wipe out the Pajari fund.  Can we as tax payers afford this?  Isn’t this what they call “throwing good money after bad”.

 To quote Selectman Bennett, yes we can stop this bull---- now, put the building on the commercial market and renovate the East Templeton school for our town offices, do we need state of the art furniture and a lounging area and all that other elegant bull----. A good comfortable office chair, a good office desk, good office file cabinets which we already have when you come to work at 8am and leave at 3pm how comfortable do you have to be and not fall asleep or whatever else they might do – in other words – most who work for the town are tax payers and can live without a psychedelic desk or a high rise office chair, or mahogany file cabinets and a worldwide computer with its own mind. At 3:30 on any day go to 690 Patriots Road and see our deserted office building. Has anybody  seen our employees sitting around admiring their work place, hee-hee-hee. Hey its 3:00 or 3:30 we are out of here for the day, end of town office building story.

Thanks for listening to my opinion.