Take two thick slices of Noonie's day old bread, smear Honey Cup honey mustard
liberally over both. Cover both slices with green leaf lettuce. Then on one slice only lay smoked turkey on the lettuce,
a tomato slice on the turkey and sprinkle it with shredded carrot. Then on the lay a slice of provolone cheese over the
carrot then a green pepper ring on top of the cheese. Sprikle with sprouts. Cover with the other slice, lettuce side down.
The letuce should be stuck to the bread with honey mustard so it doesn't fall off when you turn it upside down to cover the
sandwich. Slice sandwich in half with a knife. Wrap in tightly in plastic wrap. Use too much wrap. Tape on label. Tadaaa!
Weighs one pound. Costs Four Bucks.
"Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses
yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your
teeming shore, Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed,
to me: I lift my lamp beside the golden door."
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Ethan Allen Tower
"During the 1992 campaign, Bill Clinton
sometimes spoke of a 'twofer' (two for the price of one) presidency,
implying that Hillary would play an important role in his
administration."
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Poor America
Friday, June 19, 2015
Poor America. Look how starving they are for Bernie Sanders. We are so lucky to have had him in town for the last 35 years or so. I like him so much I have had virtually nothing to say to him for the last twenty years, if that makes any sense. There's nothing to say except "hi." or the occasional "thank you." More recently "Good luck" but what do I need to engage in a discussion with Bernie for? He does everything I want him to in congress and I know what he would say to just about anything I could ask him so I really have no desire to take his time. That and he's not very friendly. But we love him for that. Who needs friendly? Grow up. Right now it looks like "Saunnerz" (as my dad would say) has a pretty good shot at being president, and that would obviously change the country. But whether he wins and he's 83 after two terms as president or doesn't win and he's 83 after three terms in the senate... Bernie *may* retire in the next ten years or so... what's going to happen to the progressive coalition in Burlington?
Artist: Anna Pierattini
What's happening now? I have no idea. I don't even know how the city council works anymore. I mean... I have a vague idea that I have less representation in Ward 7 than I used to, and this is somehow attributable to Daniel Fogel, UVM's former president who built lots of housing in Ward 1... and that there are councilors who represent districts larger than wards with one vote each... but I'm having a hard time looking directly at it. Councilors having one vote each on the council should represent about the same number of people each. I *think* right now in Burlington we have two councilors whose votes carry the same weight as the others' but who are elected from and represent larger constituencies than their cohorts. I can't face that if it's true. That's just wrong. I don't want to know.
"Had I been there I would have voted against splitting the question, and against the postponment of the letter of intent."-Me from the last post
A prominent local attorney wrote to me yesterday to express his belief that Monday's resolution was more binding than I thought. Why a resolution authorizing the pursuit of funding from a lender, with whom a tentative agreement had clearly already been pursued?
Good point.
The bottom line though- can BT possibly repay one-hundred million dollars in twenty years on its own merits? Based on its current track record, a reasonable person could conclude- no. They could not become cash flow positive after spending fifty million dollars and there is no proof they ever can.
Let's look at the facts, OK? BT has 4,500 subscribers (maybe). Comcast has twenty-five million. That's five thousand times as many. What makes the city interested in competing with that? It feels like we're trying to cross the ocean in a row boat with this thing. For what? We might just want to turn back while we can still see the shore. In another year or two Burlington Taxpayers might only be able to dream of owing just seventeen million dollars.
This re-fi makes the city liable to repay 6o million in principle and 40 more million in interest. Sure the city may repay the money with BT proceeds if it wishes, and if they're sufficient to do so, but as far as Piper Jaffrey is concerned repayment is "fungible." That means they don't give a shit where the money comes from as long as we pay them.
No creditor ever gives a shit where the money that pays them back comes from.
And when BT revenues aren't enough- the money will come from the taxpayers.
At this point it's hard to imagine Chris Burns and Jonathon Leopold can slap together a convincing business plan to show how BT becomes profitable. I mean for heaven's sake- they start their customer service reps out at seventeen dollars per hour. Seventeen dollars per hour! That is so much money! They aren't worth it. Richard Donnelly alone took home nearly 70K in FY08. Somebody could have done whatever the hell he did for BT for half of that I'm sure.
Most of the network is already built in Burlington. Wiring the city with fiber was forward thinking, but who really cares who runs the network? And the value of fiber could easily drop with more and more wi-fi available.
The thing is BT is a totally non-essential city service. It could disappear tomorrow and Bob Kiss could still be remembered as a good mayor for creating a rainy-day fund and paving the roads. Who care about BT? Judge Judy is Judge Judy regardless of the cable carrier. So who cares?
"Um is not an answer, sir!"
Is it worth the risk of owning a 100 million dollar dinosaur that eats? I urge my city councilors Paul and Vince in particular to consider that question carefully, since they are the swing votes.
Well that was one of the more entertaining council meetings I've seen in recent years. In the end Bill Keogh couldn't quite keep up with his officiating duties and posed the motion to postpone in such a way as to be unintelligible by all present except city attorney Ken Schatz, and perhaps Jonathon Leopold. The council didn't really understand that they had just voted to kick the can down the road to December 7, but they did.
The administration wanted the council to give its collective signature to a letter of intent with Piper Jaffrey to start working on the 61 million dollar financing deal. The resolution on the table had two parts. Part one said the BT would come into compliance with condition 60 by repaying pooled cash within sixty days. Part two was the letter of intent.
On a motion from Ed Adrian, the council voted to split parts one and two. He and Joan Shannon had attempted to split the "whereas" clauses, as well as the operative clauses in the resolution, but Ken Schatz and Sharon Bushor correctly pointed out that for Shannon to have assigned her notion of which whereas clauses fit which "resolved" clauses, would have in fact created two new resolutions.
C'mon people. Really? Split the "whereas" clauses? You got to be kidding me.
The council passed part one, but then postponed funding it with part two pending more info.
What info? Mainly like a business plan for Burlington Telecom. Apparently the one they've got is two years old. In other words no planning since Nulty left. Nice. Here's an idea to save BT some money. Besides start their CSRs at $2 less per hour- just eliminate Chris Burns. Does he do anything except fill the space between Leopold and the rest of BT?
Anyway. At one point Sharon Bushor was very vexed, red-faced and at a complete loss of words, quite obviously because of Adrian. You could almost hear her wishing Kurt Wright were there to call the cops on him. That was kind of funny to see.
The meeting started sizzling around 11:30 when words started to fly. Some quotes-
"I won't be scolded!" -Nancy Kaplan
"I won't be boxed in by this council!" -Sharon Bushor
"I am appalled!" -Marrisa Caldwell
"You are voting to destroy Burlington Telecom for the sole purpose of embarassing this administration!" -Jonathon Leopold
"I would appreciate Mr. Leopold it if you would not speak to me in a condeceing way!"-Mary Kehoe
"I screwed up the queue." -Bill Keogh
"How is that doing what's right for the city?"- Marrisa Caldwell
"I really don't like be accused of not having the city's best interest in mind." -Joan Shannon
SPECIAL CITY COUNCIL MEETING CONTOIS AUDITORIUM, CITY HALL TUESDAY, OCTOBER 20, 2009 7:00 P.M.
1. AGENDA 2. REPORT: Mayor Bob Kiss, Jonathan P.A. Leopold, Jr. CAO & Burlington Telecom General Manager Chris Burns, re: Update on Burlington Telecom (oral)
* * * * EXPECTED EXECUTIVE SESSION * * * *
3. ADJOURNMENT
SPECIAL CITY COUNCIL MEETING CONTOIS AUDITORIUM, CITY HALL THURSDAY, OCTOBER 22, 20097:00 P.M.
1. AGENDA 2. PUBLIC FORUM: Re: Burlington Telecom 3. ADJOURNMENT
Burlington Free Press reports the entire council, except for Ed Adrian, approved going to the Public Service Board to "relax" the rule that forces Burlington Telecom to pay back money borrowed from the taxpayers within 60 days, a rule they had apparently been violating anyway.
Good on Ed Adrian for casting the one correct vote. Boo to the rest of the council for acting like sheep on this one. What's up with my supposedly 'fiscally conservative' representation from ward 7? Why do we bother electing Republicans if they are just going to vote however Jonathon Leopold wants? Anybody can wave a flag. It takes a little more than that to actually protect the taxpayers from a bad deal.
Ward One city councilor Ed Adrian will be tweeting live from city council meetings starting Monday. His twitter page is here: http://twitter.com/CouncilorAdrian
In related news, I just found out that I've been mixing up the Heisenberg uncertainty principle (the idea that the precision with which one can measure a particle's position is inversely proportional to the precision with which one can measure its momentum) and the observer effect (the idea that the method by which something is observed changes what it's observing).
How embarassing. For years I've been pontificating on the Heisenberg uncertainty principle as if it were the observer effect. Live and learn.
Is the observer effect absolute? Is it possible to observe something without changing it? Certainly not in Ed's case. It's a logical certainty that anything a councilor does in a council meeting changes the meeting. The question is will the change, will the effect of one councilor tweeting a meeting result in something beyond his own distraction?
John Briggs at Burlington Free Press is reporting on a discussion at the city council about raising the pay for some city employees. I can see it maybe for a couple of really highly skilled and essential engineering positions- if we're not able to fill them now, but I would be highly skeptical about raising pay for anyone else. Especially Leopold! God no!
When I was on the city council I researched what city councils of comparably sized cities pay themselves, because I felt a civic imbalance between the compensation and resources of the mayor and those of the city council. I'll look in records later to see if I can find that info- but I remember Burlington city councilors made far, far under the average- which I think was around 15K. And this was back in 1996 when I was able to live on $8/hr.
If the city council votes to heap even further resources onto the city's executive branch, while continuing starve itself- the body of the people's most direct representatives, they will not be serving the long term interest of Burlington.
They got a little money this year and people got upset because the Dems hired a lawyer with it. I say good for them. The council should have some back up. God knows the mayor does.
I love Bob Kiss. I think he's doing a great job. But institutionally, the council is supposed to be the civic counterweight to the mayor. In practice- the council gets rolled by the mayor every single time.
Larry Kupferman was just reconfirmed as CEDO director by the city council in an 11 to 3 vote with only councilors Keogh, Berezniak and Shannon voting against his re-appointment.
Shannon led the effort against Kupferman, essentially saying he lacked the skills and merit for the job, and alluding to specific concerns which she would not enumerate. "I don't see the point," she said about going into specific detail about those concerns.
The rest of the mayor's appointments were confirmed without discussion, including that of current airport director Brian Searles taking over as interim Parks and Recreation Director. Current director Wayne Gross, mayor Kiss explained, will not be an employee of the city as of July 1.
John Briggs at the Free Press has been blogging about how the Dems might not vote to reappoint Community and Economic Development Office (CEDO) directory Larry Kupferman at tonight's city council meeting, but he's failed to get any of them on the record about why. So I wrote to council Dem Ed Adrian and here's what he said-
"Haik -
I do not think that at this point the Ds are unanimous on this issue. Some will be voting to reappoint and some will not.
I cannot speak for anybody else, but I will be voting to reappoint. Two weeks ago the public was put on notice that there were concerns that have been raised privately about Mr. Kupferman's ability to do the job. So far, I am not aware of one person going public with their concerns. I was privately contacted by one person asking me to reappoint and one person asking not to reappoint.
I am not going to deny the Mayor an appointment based on private conversations/concerns. If people really are so concerned with the CEDO Director's abilities and they have concrete examples, then they should be willing to publically state what they are. I understand the counter-argument which is that it is the Council's responsibility and not the public's to vote on reappointment, but in this case I am erring on the side of caution since it concerns an individual, rather than a matter of policy.
Best, Ed"
So there you have it. Some folks might not like Kupferman, but they are too shy to say why publicly. Based on that I'd have to guess he'll win re-appointment.
*****
What do you think about the new free press "City Hall" blog by John Briggs? Or Briggs's reporting in general for that matter? He's biased right? Doesn't he clearly seem to hate the mayor? I left a comment on his "Not Exactly" post chiding him a little for injecting his own opinions into the posts, and he still hasn't approved it. Funny how Steve Benen can write a national blog with thousands of comments and he doesn't feel the need to vet them first, but Briggs and the Free Press do. Weak.
If I can't get Paul Decelles on my "live at 5:25" show tomorrow, I'll definitely fill some time on it soliciting callers' opinions on John Briggs's city hall coverage.
The first regular monthly installment of BurlingtonPol TV is today at 5:25pm on Channel 17. I'm seeking to engender low expectations with this first show, so I haven't prepared any talking points yet.
I'll be relying heavily on callers to fill the time, so dial 862-3966 to speak with me live on the show.
Of course, I have to talk about something between calls- so I'll be using this post as a scratchpad for brainstorming ideas and links throughout the day. The theme is local politics and current events. Help me out... *****
Adam Cate fired again- (Read Press Article)-Some Background City cracks down on graffiti and the Streets seem to be getting swept a lot- The fight for the city council presidency Cats vs. Birds in new north end What's the deal with frisbee golf? Paul Decelles and Clarance Davis on Board of Finance- One arrested in mass pillow fight on Church Street
What else?
-Charity mentions Maurice Mahoney has a piece on IRV in the Freeps. People love talking about IRV. That's a good one. -Jay Vos spells program "programme" like Benny Hill. Love it.
Fox News reports Clarance Davis has withdrawn from the race for council president, allowing Bill Keogh to be elected council president by acclamation.
Here's a link to the Free Press story by Tim Johnson. I wonder why Briggs didn't write it. I hate linking to the Free Press, because they remove the content after a certain amount of time, but I am today because of these great quotes from Clarence Davis (bold font emphasis added by me)...
"...In its initial meeting last Monday, the newly seated council deadlocked 14 times between Davis, P-Ward 3, and Keogh, D-Ward 5, before adjourning. Each candidate had seven votes: Keogh had support from the council’s Democrats, Davis had backing from three Progressives, two Republicans and two independents.
How the partisan ice jam melted was unclear. Keogh said there was a flurry of phone calls and e-mails over the weekend. Davis said he slept on the decision Sunday night and concluded Monday morning that he would pull out. He said he notified his supporters throughout the day.
“Burlington comes before my personal wants,” Davis said after Monday night’s meeting. “I made the decision that I would not extend this any further.”
In other business Monday, Davis and Paul Decelles, R-Ward 7, were elected unanimously to the Board of Finance..."
This has got to come as a serious blow to Bill Keogh. The guy was born in 1930 and has just been soundly defeated in the wisdom and maturity departments by a much, much younger man. A man who, by the way, could have used "council president" on his resume for a lifetime longer than Bill will.
Congrats to Paul on getting on the board of finance. You better have staff take better minutes than they have been. Don't screw up like Kevin Curley and give Leopold three pensions or something.
Anybody know who it is? They went through ten or eleven rounds of 7-7 tie votes, Keogh-Davis- then they took a break around 8pm. I looked at the TV again at 8:30 and apparently it's over. What happened?
Update. Oh God. I reverted to checking Shay's Twitter page. Eccch...twitter. It served a purpose this time. Shay sez:
"#btv city council will reconvene April 13th to resume the vote for council prez - who will be that eighth vote?"
That's not what you want. I don't get it. Kurt Wright said he'd like to see Davis succeed him. Why isn't that enough? What are the Dems trying to prove?
According the WCAX today is organization day for the City of Burlington. The mayor and councilors get sworn in and the council picks a president. WCAX says the race for president is likely to be between Clarence Davis and Bill Keogh. I'm inclined to think Davis will win.
According to Briggs at the Burlington Free Press, Vince Dober has defeated Eli Lesser-Goldsmith in the Ward Seven run-off by a vote of 515-425. As a result, the Democrats will not have a majority on the new city council.
Because of the special city council meeting last night, the Burlington GOP had to pull out of their regular 5:25pm show at Channel 17, So they asked me to fill in and host the show. It was a lot of fun. You can watch the show with a QuickTime Player here.
I might try to do it again sometime. I love the "talk-radio" style format of talking about news and politics and taking live calls on the air. Which reminds me- My radio show on 105.9 fm Burlington is tomorrow from 11am-12pm. I'm not sure if they got the streaming back up, but tune in on a real radio if you're in town. And if you have money, please consider underwriting the station.
3.PUBLIC FORUM (Time Certain: 6:35 p.m.) *Allotted Time: 20 minutes total
4.ORDINANCE: COMPREHENSIVE DEVELOPMENT ORDINANCE – Downtown Use and Height #ZA 09-15 (Planning Department)(1st reading)
5.ORDINANCE: COMPREHENSIVE DEVELOPMENT ORDINANCE – UVM Core Campus and Height Overlay #ZA 09-13 (Planning Department) (1st reading)
***** Update Friday March 13, 2009:
As you may know already, last night's city council meeting devolved to the point where president Wright actually called the police on councilors Adrian and Berezniak. I'm reserving commentary, except to say the events are unfortunate and regrettable. Shay Totten does an adequate job explaining what happened at Blurt.
If anybody wants to read the police report from last night, here it is.
After the ballots from Wards One, Two, Three and part of Ward Six were counted by the Board of Civil Authority, Kurt Wright has called off the recount. It is not immediately clear why.
Also, it appears Jane Knodell was the first to leave the meeting, while other councilors toiled on in their civic duty much later into the night.
Developing Story...
Update 03.11.09 10:35am: Email from Kurt...
Good Morning Haik,
My original intention was to have entire City recounted but after 4 Wards were complete (except the 3rd round in Ward 6) it was clear that the recount was going to confirm the result. Four Wards were basically done and everything--except for a vote or two -- was matching up. I did not feel the need to drag everyone back for another night of counting.
I believe we accomplished our goal of confirming the integrity of the process as well as having the opportunity to explore how IRV works. Now it is up to the citizens of Burlington as to whether they want to continue with this system of voting in the future. I am sorry if you (or anyone else) is disappointed that we did not complete the recount, but as I said, I believe we accomplished our goal and it is time to move on. I appreciate and Thank all the people that gave up a night in order to do this important work.
I am still gratified to have been the leader in the first round of voting (first place votes) as well as the second round and to have come so close to winning even in the final round. It was a tremendous experience and Hopefully most citizens felt I added something to the debate.
I am remain in the Legislature, but in terms of City politics I will return to the ranks of what I was before--a concerned citizen that loves our City.
To the people that didn't vote--shame on you. To the thousands that did, thank you.
Good luck with with the blog Haik,
Kurt Wright
Thank you Kurt for your service to the city and to the state, and for running a very decent and honorable campaign for mayor. And thanks for asking for a recount. I think it was worth it to verify at least some of the machine totals.
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