Thursday, Nov 12: Open Phones

Good morning. Welcome to the final hour of the program for today. Again, I want to thank Selectman Rick Tripello for coming in, spending an hour with us, and he never comes empty-handed. He's a great inspiration for all the other guests, although most people realize not to come in empty-handed. So a lot of ideas, a lot of information about the town of Fairhaven in the region, really, building on what Rick said. Is regionalism something you'd like to do? Does it make sense to have all this capital equipment out there, mostly sitting idle? That's something to really think about. And it depends what communities you want to regionalize with. Certain communities have signed contracts that would raise your costs depending on what community you are. And of course, we see the situation in New Bedford where there's a lot of outstanding contracts. And I don't know that Fairhaven would want to get involved in that or Acushnet. So it's a lot of really interesting stuff, and I'm glad Fairhaven is tackling it. A lot of my callers have brought up this point of receivership. They make it in reference to the city of New Bedford, but really, Fairhaven taxpayers and employees, maybe employees. By the way, a lot of the employees are obviously. Residents and taxpayers here in Fairhaven. Everybody's got to be cognizant of the fact that DOR has a lot of power and could come and impose themselves on a community, any community that doesn't have their fiscal house in order or isn't moving to have their fiscal house in order. So just keep that in mind, Fairhaven, New Bedford, all the rest of it. And guys, I like to keep people well informed, so sometime last week or maybe the week before, I brought up the fact that Pete Hesketh, Secretary of War, Secretary of Defense, had put out a memo, a public memo, or it had become public. He was ordering every domestic military installation, so every military base in the United States To be self-sufficient. For 90 day periods, so why would you have to be like that? Well, that's because if you extrapolate it out, the civilian economy, or at least a good chunk of it, is no longer able to supply the military bases with food, water, electricity, medicine, ammunition under that scenario. Because most domestic military bases get their supply, their sustenance, Food, water, electricity. From outside of the base, so why would the Secretary of War put out a memo like that? But anyway, I brought it to you, brought it to your attention cuz you are the most informed people in this region, quite frankly. So I got an addition to that. So keeping that in mind, this is Newsweek, but it's all over the place. I'm reading from Newsweek, and I'll summarize it. Three high profile cabinet secretaries of this current government, Secretary Rubio, Secretary of State, Secretary of the Treasury Besson, and Pete Hesketh have all moved to living on military bases here in the United States. Three of the cabinet secretaries are now living on military bases in the United States. So keep that in mind with the memo put out by Secretary Hesketh the other day of the week. Saying all military installations have to have 90 days of self-sufficiency. So what is going on? Now, Newsweek mentions threats by Iranian government officials, military officials to assassinate. We know they wanted to assassinate the president, Donald Trump. But also, Secretary Besson has been threatened. We know some of the national security advisors over the years have been threatened by the Iranians. But is there something else going on? The fact that three of our most important officials are now living on military installations. And again, I'm not in the business of causing panic. Does that make you want to maybe be a little more self-sufficient? Have a little extra food, maybe some cash, food, water. If you don't have a generator, maybe a generator. Now, because of where we live. Coastal communities in the Northeast, we do get them. We get hurricanes, we get big snowstorms occasionally, right? We just lived through one last year. A lot of us already have things like generators. You keep canned food just for the sake of having it. Maybe have a water filter system already that you could run anyway. But a lot of us, like I grew up in Freetown, every time There was going to be a storm, my dad would say, fill up the bathtub, call from his office, fill up the bathtub so we can flush the toilet, stuff like that. I mean, you get used to that living here in the Northeast, and we had a generator at some point anyway, eventually we had a generator. But is any of this making you think, hey, maybe, because I've had talks with a couple I have a couple of different friends who... And most people I know, not all of them, but a lot of people I know already have guns. So that's not a major concern. And nobody has just one gun if you have one. But most people have a couple of days worth of food on hand. But it's a real concern. I think the fact that we have multiple cabinet secretaries moving on to military installations, I don't know of that happening in the recent past. I've been paying attention since probably 1979, maybe a little bit beforehand. We were a multiple newspaper family, and my parents always had the news on. I read a lot. We had a lot of magazines at the house. So I've been paying attention, but certainly since 1980, I've really been paying attention. I don't remember, and maybe I'm wrong, but a time in history. Well, we had multiple cabinet secretaries moving to military installations, but my next caller might remember something about that. Good morning, Jim, how you doing? I survived the Cold War, Chris. Yes, I know. But I'm still an avid, active, enthusiastic anti-communist. Me too. And, you know, there was a difference between socialism and communism. And, you know, don't forget, communism is a theory of economics, not government. But the communists are not our friends, never have been. And Russia, from the get-go, came right out and said their goal was worldwide domination. Khrushchev went to the U.N. in 1962 and said, we will bury you. And I remember the epithet response was, when somebody says that, they're going to bury you. You don't hand them a shovel. I'm not concerned about the cabinet secretaries moving on to military installations. But if I had to guess, there are specific threats that are operational. That the security at those facilities is higher than they might be able to provide if they were to continue living in, you know, civilian housing, if you want. There's a generic term. Uh, so... So, but I remember, though, during the Cold War and in the aftermath, that, you know, we had duck and cover drills. And, you know, the point being that We were led to believe that the Russians were coming, and by that, that there was going to be... Quick strike over the North Pole, hence the distant early warning line, D-Line, NORAD, the North American Air Defense Command. And there were a lot of provisions. But people, to survive a nuclear war, some people built bomb shelters. And when the nuclear threat basically subsided in through the late 60s and the 70s and detente, detente was all about... Kissinger convinced Nixon, he said, you know, if we get to know them and they get to know us, it's a lot harder to bomb somebody into oblivion who three weeks ago you were playing basketball with. And I think that serves its purpose because mutually assured destruction, man, we are still the only country that ever used a nuclear bomb. Right. Only one. And when the Soviet Union fell, Chris, it would be... Their military documents and things were declassified and it turned out they were never coming. And that but because they said we're not going to fly into the teeth of the most sophisticated advanced air defense system that's ever been invented. And but we predicated national security and our national defense strategy, the big picture on the fact that we believe the Russians were coming and could, you know, the ICBM from launch from Russia could land somewhere in the United States in a matter of I think they said eight to 10 minutes. After launch, and I'm not concerned about, I call those, I wanted to just comment briefly about your friend from Fairhaven, because I'm somewhat familiar with Fairhaven and their tax picture, and when you talked about regionalization, you touched a chord with me, because I've been, you know, I was on the regional school committee for 18, 20 years back, 70s, 80s, And I'm back on again due to a vacancy. Arrangements. We set up 351 cities and towns and they very jealously guarded things like police and fire. And it was very difficult. But let's be clear, the only constitutional responsibility of any city or town is schools. The rest of them are statutory. Nothing in the Constitution says you've got to have a police department. Nothing in the Constitution says you've got to have a fire department. And when he talked about, I guess apparently there's some dispute and some concern over this budget working group that he's with. But it was good to hear somebody talk about budgets, not just in terms of where the money is going. And you hear people say things like, Government should be run more like a business. Well, you can argue that point, but I said, well, okay, let's try it that way. Show me one business that doesn't look at their revenue even more than they look at their expenses. And the towns, we keep talking, and close with this, Chris, I appreciate you being generous with your time. We keep talking about getting off the property tax. Which is based on potential value. They raise the value of your house, that doesn't mean your income went up, but the taxes sure do. We keep talking about getting off the property tax for running local government. The only reason we use it is because back when we formed the towns, that was the only tax there was. And I think that the solution is, and this is very specific. Freeze property taxes at their current level and then increase them arithmetically two and a half percent each year, not based on value, just on whatever you paid, whatever the current assessed value, and then return to the cities and towns a fixed percentage of the revenue that came out of a city or town. Income, sales, meals, withholding, go down the list. Sure. Right now, local aid is a matter of politics. It should be a matter of arithmetic. If the cities and towns knew in advance that, you know, because you call the farm revenue, hang up, call the farm revenue right now and ask them how much sales tax came out of the town of Fairhaven in the month of October. They'll tell you. They know. They do. If we got off the property tax by... Shifting state revenues and giving it back to the towns where they came from, maybe we wouldn't have some of these budget issues that you're hearing about. Jim, I always appreciate your input. Thanks for the contribution to the program. Folks, I'm going to take a quick break and we'll be right back. Stick around. This portion of programming on WBSM is brought to you by Dee's Hot Dogs in New Bedford, where you can get two hot dogs, chips, and a soda for just six bucks. South Coast Now with Chris McCarthy. Weekdays on 1420 AM and 99.5 FM. WBSM. Good morning. Welcome back to the program. If you're an employer, someone with a lot of employees, or just a few employees, and some really important customers, I'm going to give you a little hint. You know what they want for Christmas? Not the two front teeth. They want an open bar party for Christmas. And they want it at Rose Alley Ale House in downtown New Bedford. Your employees and your best customers want an open bar party this Christmas. So throw them one. Throw them a company holiday party at Rose Alley Ale House. It's very, very easy. It's like a turnkey operation. Just talk to Riley. Tell her you want an open bar party this Christmas at Rose Alley Ale House. They'll take care of everything. You just take care of the HR complaints when someone kisses somebody from work. It should be a blast, upstairs, downstairs. You can even go outside at Rose Alley Ale House, have a couple of drinks, make a few mistakes. It doesn't count, it's at Rose Alley. So we had a couple of things, right? We had a major corporate scandal, major corporate scandal. You've got a local scandal. You can read about it in the Fairhaven Neighborhood News, where you had a convicted sex offender, either level two or level three, that five years ago began serving on appointed boards in the beautiful town of Fairhaven. And it wasn't until the other night when he was reappointed and had been addressing the select board about the blue light program, which is kind of ironic because that's meant To make people safe, so the idea that you have a either level two or level three sex offender, which means their face has to be posted for everybody to know about it. Highly likely to reoffend crimes of a sexual nature, in this case against children. And he was appointed and reappointed to a board, the Living Streets Committee and the Sustainability Committee In the town of Fairhaven. Keep in mind, this was before Andrew Romano was on the board, before Andrew Saunders was on the board, before Rick Trappello was on the board, before Natalie Mello was on the board, before Pam Kieschler was on the board. That this gentleman, if I can use that term, was appointed five years ago. And various boards have reappointed him. Um And quite frankly, before Keith Hickey was the town administrator. Look, when you got a lot of town boards and a lot of people who want to be on those boards, but not as many as you used to want to be on those boards, I it doesn't surprise me, and nor do I think it was negligence, quite frankly. Let's be honest. The fact that it's been uncovered doesn't mean the other boards were negligent. It really doesn't. And in having, like, say, for instance, Since Corey checks. It seems now that you've uncovered it, it seems. Like, wow, we always should have been doing that. I got to tell you the truth. I appointed a lot of people when I was a selectman in Fairhaven. We never did a quarry check on them. Never. It was never done. Never. We had a couple employees. As I think about it, we might have done it for employees occasionally. My point being is that the fact that people want that they're going to do it in Fairhaven is fantastic. The fact that they didn't do it in the past is not extraordinary. It's really not. It didn't surprise me that they didn't do CORI checks because although it's done for people who work with children, and now will be done for people who volunteer for the town, Seems necessary now. But only in light of this recent development. So I don't know. It's outrageous. It's embarrassing. But it's not extraordinary that they weren't doing CORI checks. I don't believe that the city of New Bedford does CORI checks on their appointees. I could be wrong. I could be wrong. But also, guys, how are they going to handle what is disclosed in the CORI checks? That's very important. As an example, someone could have, this is, I'm just running through this in my head and sharing it with you as I think of it, which could be dangerous, but here we go. You apply for a board in the town of Fairhaven, an appointment, you submit an application. You have to fill out a, I'm saying now, you have to fill out a form authorizing a quarry check. It's no big deal. I don't even believe it costs the town any money. They do the check, I would hope that that information would be held by the town administrator and not just shared with the board. Because people can have mistakes in the past, things that happen, things that come up on those CORI checks. Because I've run them on employees before outside of town government, the private sector. And so I would hope that it doesn't become a public document. Unless whatever comes up is so egregious that then a discreet phone call is made by Mr. Hickey in this case, who says, hey, thanks for applying for that position, but we're not going to be able to appoint you. And that ought to be the end of the, unless they want to take it to an appeal or something, but you wouldn't want to see people's CORI checks being put on the agenda. For discussion by the board of selectmen, I can't imagine that that'll be the process. And forgive me for suggesting that it might be, because I don't believe that's how it will go down. But I would think, having run CORI checks, a lot of people don't think stuff that they did years ago is going to come up. Because I run them on people, and it does come up, and you have to meet with them. And sometimes it's really no big deal. But it's kind of embarrassing, and so people wouldn't want it out in the open. So I would think that people in Fairhaven will have that system explained to them, and the Board of Selectmen will figure it all out. But I don't think there's any reason to make everybody's CORI, it may not even be legal to make everybody's CORI public record. In the case of Timothy Garcia, his poster is hanging up in Town Hall. So, um, that makes it, um. It's not secret information, he's on the sex offender registry, which by the way is not a registry designed to harass people. So as long as Mr. Garcia is not doing anything wrong, people should let him go, let him live in peace. Because it's a crime otherwise, to use that list to harass people. So I know you won't do it, so please, please just be mindful of that. The hangover from the election. It's not over yet. Yeah. Peter Lucas has got an article, a column in the Boston Herald saying Mike Minogue could learn from Charlie Baker. It's worth your attention. God, Peter Lucas has been covering politics since the 1970s in Massachusetts. Somewhere I have a book of Peter Lucas's columns from Beacon Hill where he talks about Bill Bill Bowser, Beth McLean, Walter Boverini. Michael Dukakis, Whitey Bulger, I mean, they're very interesting columns, and he's a good columnist, and he knows a lot about Massachusetts politics. So if you remember Charlie Baker, who was a serious Republican, in fact, his dad was part of Citizens for Limited Taxation, that passed Prop 2 1⁄2 overrides, or rather, passed the law that made Proposition 2 1⁄2, it was called Prop 2 1⁄2. We voted for it. Well, at least my parents, they voted in that election. I don't know whether they voted for it or not. But I remember going to the polls that year with my dad, Freetown Fire Station on Chase Road. I'm sorry, on County Road in Freetown and voting that year. So Charlie Baker was a cabinet secretary for Bill Weld and Paul Cellucci, admin in finance and secretary of health and human services. He had dual cabinets at the same time. Fascinatingly bright guy, real fiscal conservative, and he ran that way, was against South Coast Rail, was against a lot of things. But in the end, he didn't want to let the perfect be the enemy of the good, his governorship being the good in his mind, and mine too. So he threw out some of his positions that the voters didn't agree with, made some compromises. The voters of Massachusetts elected him. So what Peter Lucas and a lot of the people are saying is Mike Minogue could learn from Charlie Baker. And I think, I'm not sure, and he wasn't telling us much the other day when I interviewed him. I have a suspicion that Mike Minogue is going to be around for a little while, and he could be back in four years. It's not that long, and he's got a significant investment here in Massachusetts. So it wouldn't surprise me if in two years or less. We hear that Mike Manogue is ramping up to be the governor of Massachusetts. Try one more time, one more time. All right, I'm gonna take a break. Open phones, guys, whatever's on your mind. There's been some interesting stuff in New York City. Mayor Mandani is having some problems with his coalition because they don't feel that he's proactive enough about reparations. Reparations for people who feel they were victims Of the transatlantic slave trade, they want money today and they don't believe that Mayor Mandani is proactive enough on their behalf for reparations. And this is all coming from within the coalition that elected Mandani, mayor of New York City. That's what's very interesting about having these very diverse, very energetic coalitions. We'll be right back. Back to Chris McCarthy and South Coast now on WBSN. Call 508-996-0500. All right, welcome back to the program. So I get this article here from last week's New York Times. Actually, it was the day before the election. And when the Democrat socialists took over the Senate, the House of Representatives, and a bunch of governorships, this article in the New York Times talking about Mayor Mandani in New York City And while he's not our mayor, he's very influential in the world, right? New York City is the big apple, the capital of the world. So what this article talks about is after clashes with Mandani, racial equity leader is on the way out. So Mayor Adams, an avowed Democratic socialist and a Muslim, is a big fan of reparations. However, and he created a group, okay? So reparations are cash payments, well, the theory of reparations are direct cash payments to the people who suffered because of the transatlantic slave trade that was abolished in the United States with the Civil War. So we're talking about pre-Civil War crimes, crimes against human beings done under the cover of law well before the Civil War. And the Emancipation Proclamation, so there's a committee put together in New York City to deal with this, it's called CORE, C-O-R-E. Now, the head of it, one of the members of it anyway, is a woman named Linda Tignani. She was the commission's chairwoman, but Mayor Adams replaced her because she was an outspoken critic of his. Now, guys, I don't think that's racist or non-racist to replace somebody you've appointed to a high-profile position as the mayor of a municipality, and then they use that position to criticize you. The fact that Mayor Adams, I'm not a big fan of Adams. I think he's charismatic, but I'm concerned about his policy, his policies in general. But that being said, when you're the mayor. You can't appoint and you appoint somebody they can't use or you cannot allow them to maintain a position in your government that they use to criticize you. Doesn't make you any less committed to your shared agenda because they can't play in the sandbox. It may be. This, um, Linda Tegnani, I hope I'm saying her name right. Wanted to feud with the mayor. She may be better off on the outside from her own perspective than be in the power dynamic. Because when you're in government, you have a lot of responsibilities. When you're on the outside, you're able to throw bombs. But when you're on the inside, you take an appointment from a mayor, you got to play nice. That's politics. There's a lot of people that become. We see it locally, they're great activists, they're great bomb throwers, they're great at stirring up controversy. But when they get elected, boy, it's hard for them to make meetings and make real contributions and even follow Robert's rules of order, we see that. So this article, it's kind of interesting because people like Reverend Al Sharpton are coming to the defense of the mayor saying, he's been in office a year, he's been in office a year. And the article goes on to talk about reparations from beyond a theoretical standpoint to some of the problems that they're running into around the country. So the community of Evanston, Illinois, became the first American city to make reparations available for the descendants of slavery. Distributing at least $5 million in cash, payments, and housing grants. Who were the descendants of slaves, but they themselves are the descendants of people who were enslaved. The federal government put an end to that by suing them. In California, many of you will be voting in the Democrat primary for president next time around. We'll see the name of Gavin Newsom. He created a task force to study reparations six years ago. In 2020, six years ago, Gavin Newsom. Created a commission to study reparations in the state of California. Bills to establish funds in the agency to distribute reparations failed to move forward the following year. They issued a formal apology. They issued a formal apology. That's nice, right? If you are a legitimate descendant of a slave, is that acceptable? To say, oh, yeah, it's okay. The state of. California says they're sorry, sorry, although he did sign a law forcing corporations to disclose if they've ever, ever participated in or benefited from chattel slavery. So that kind of is significant, kind of significant. All right, 508-996-0500. I guess my larger point is it's really hard to put together big coalitions. They're in favor of, say, Palestinian rights, but also the state of Israel, and reparations, but also property rights. So it gets very messy, gets very messy. And we've seen that. We've seen that on a local level as well. And I would also say this, that if you're a part of a coalition, whether it's a conservative coalition or a left-wing coalition, just remember you're part of a team. It's not about you or your agenda. It's about the combined, and you got to stand behind the person you elected, right? They got to figure it all out. Anyway, we're going to take a break. We'll be right back. Stick around. Welcome back. Jeffrey Toobin, that was his name. Jeffrey Toobin. Jeffrey Zoomin on Toobin. Toobin on Zoom. He was up to self-abuse, and it got caught. Anyway. Anyway. 508-996-0500. So, Rick Trapello talking about the upcoming town meeting. Now, that's a member-only town meeting. You've got to be elected to be a town meeting member. But generally speaking, there are vacancies in your precinct. That's how it works. What I would ask you to do if you're interested in becoming a member of town meeting, call the town clerk, maybe the town administrator. Or if you have a relationship with one of the selectmen, they can help you out as well to see if there's a vacancy in your precinct. And then they have a town meeting, a precinct meeting before the town meetings, and they can elect you. Or also reach out to Andrew Romano or Rick Trapillo or any of the other select board members and ask them about the process so you can get involved. There'll be a couple of really important things. We had a couple of calls. About the ballot question for the 5,000 square foot minimum lot, but that question went down. Now, depending on where you are in life, if you're at the downsizing phase or the looking to buy a home starter home phase, you may have wanted to see that question passed. But what was very interesting about the female that called when Richter Pillow was here is she asked, can an individual town Bring up some reforms or adjustments like that. And the answer is yes. And it would go through town meeting. You'd have to make changes to the bylaws. It could be zoning. It could require a two-thirds vote. But first, you got to get involved in the process. And that's how you become a town meeting member. That gets you involved here in the town of Fairhaven. Now, if you live in the town of Mattapoisett or Freetown, as an example, those are open town meetings. As long as. You're a registered voter in the town of you live in. You can be a member of town meeting if it's an open town meeting. Elected members, you got to become elected, but it's often there's openings. You can get elected through a caucus of your precinct. All right, 508-996-0. The other thing that's going to be on the agenda for Fairhaven town meeting are the automatic license plate readers. We've had a lot of conversations throughout the region about that's going to be on the next town meeting as well. So that'll be an interesting conversation. Let's go to the phones. Good morning. Thanks for holding. Good morning. I know we're pressed up against the time, so I'll make this quick on this subject. You know, I know a lot of people don't think that having a small lot would work. But what you've got to keep in mind is you ask any contractor, the cost of the land is really small compared to the cost it now costs. ...construct the home. You're looking at still $500,000, $600,000 because the current code the state has requires everything to be electrical. That's not cheap compared to the old days when you were able to just hook up, you know, gas or oil, that sort of deal. You're talking a major expense, though. To me, having, you know, small lots is still not going to take away from the fact that that house is still going to cost you well over $500,000 to build. I think you're 100% correct, my friend. Listen, let's pick it up to some degree tomorrow, because as you notice, we're almost out of time. Yeah, look, the building codes that were handled by the legislature and signed by the governor, stretch codes, all of that. We've talked with Lenny Millis Jr. He won't be with us tomorrow because he's still in the Cayman Islands enjoying himself. But Tom Hodgson will be here. We'll pick up a lot of these questions tomorrow, tomorrow morning. From 9 to noon, we'll be talking to you. We'll be taking your calls. But yeah, the smaller lot sizes can now be taken up by the individual communities should they have a consensus at town meeting and among the planning board, the board of selectmen, for warrant articles. So stick around for Barry Richard. God willing, I'll be back.