Thursday, February 14, 2013

some things are worth repeating -


Thank you Citizens of Templeton

A while back, I filed an ethics complaint against Dennis O'Brien for his involvement with 252 Baldwinville Road. Imagine a selectmen signing off on a deal that would improve property right across the street from their own property. You can see a blog entry by Julie Farrell citing the conflict of interest law that covers this. Well that complaint was sitting there down in Boston with ethics not doing anything until..........the citizens petition for an investigation finally got going. Within that petition is a question about 252 and how the entire mess was done. It has a senate docket number now so ethics is forced to deal with my complaint and hopefully Mr. O'Brienn will be paying a nice fine for it. Funny how things move along without interference from good ole Len Kopelman (my opinion there by the way) Makes me wonder how many ethics complaints went untouched because of that link. Ethics did nothing when I filed a complaint against Police Chief David Whitaker when he got involved with the so-called hearing involving Paul Cosentino sr.. Remember he read a statement from former con com agent David Koonce, the only he forgot was to mention how Mr. Koonce is a con com agent in Winchendon, where Mr. Whitaker lives and serves on the con com. oops! While serving on the com con, Mr. Whitaker must have been involved in the hiring of David Koonce in March of 2008, right after Mr. Koonce was hired in Templeton in February 2008, double oops. You read a statement on behalf of a con com agent that you work with and probably was involved in hiring and you fail to mention this while getting a citizen banned from town buildings for asking a question. "What do I have to do to get your attention, go postal?" That is the question Mr. Cosentino asked and the selectmen failed to answer that evening. But later on at a BOS meeting that was not posted, I filed a complaint about that as well and the Attorney General found the board guilty of violating the open meeting law! I wonder how many other valid complaints went unchecked because of interference from K&P (my opinion again based on personal observations) I also hope the advisory board will have time to go back and look at past bills from K&P and see how many times the town was billed twice for the same call. Thank You to Paul Cosentino and the citizens of Templeton for standing up for what is right. I believe this will finally show people that Mr. Cosentino was/is not some crazy old man but rather someone who had the interest of Templeton in mind, had facts and proof on paper to back it up, only the deck was stacked against him by his own representatives and law firm. Someone please point this out to Denise Andrews.
Jeff Bennett

3 comments:

  1. I signed the petition, way back when, and I didn't realize the true implications. I feel that if that recall had not happened, the town probably wouldn't have awakened to the problems that have come to light. We should have paid attention to Pauly long before this!

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  2. Pauly deserves a lot of credit for "toughing it out". I don't know if we will ever see the justice and answer that this town deserves.

    Finally people have found their voice and have started to ask questions. The next election will be pivotal for Templeton...do we want to sweep everything under the rug...go along to get along...or do we feel we deserve answers to our questions.

    Only time will tell. Maybe Templeton can resolve its identity crisis.

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    1. At this point I do not think there is a rug big enough to sweep all of the dirt we have uncovered under. I truly believe it will come out in the wash, but in the mean time, we need to keep the town running. The best thing we can do is be honest about where we are financially, and how we got there. We need to let everyone know the truth. It is important for all of the tax payers to know we have no secrets. What you see is what you get. No more conflict of interest, no hiding paperwork, or fudging the numbers. The only worse thing for our town, would have been if Pauly had kept his thoughts to himself, and the hold on the town by Echo Hill, would have continued.

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