Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Praise for the Cambridge Chronicle, Charles River Conservancy analysis

1. Introduction.
2. Marilyn's Response.
3. Kathy Podgers' comment.
4. Update, March 26, 2009.
a. Marilyn printing.
b. Well intended but back-stabbed letter on Alewife not published in hard copy.

Bob La Trémouille reports.

1. Introduction.

The Cambridge Chronicle seems to be getting better at weeding out misleading communications.

The very destructive Charles River Conservancy put out a press release praising itself concerning swimming in the Charles River.

This was printed by the Chronicle on line, but does not seem to have been printed in last week's (March 19, 2009) Cambridge Chronicle.

One of the City Manager's groups announced that the press release was going to be in that edition of the Chronicle. Marilyn Wellons sent in a response, which is now posted by the Chronicle at http://www.wickedlocal.com/cambridge/news/opinions/x1331540183/Letter-Swimming-in-the-Charles-is-bait.

2. Marilyn's Response.

Her response reads:

“Swimming in the Charles” is the bait repeatedly offered by the Charles River Conservancy to mobilize support for whatever “restoration” or “enhancement” of riverfront parkland the Department of Conservation and Recreation and Cambridge are offering at the moment. Now, as Cambridge prepares to replace grass adapted to the riverfront at the DCR’s Magazine Beach with commercial sod, an irrigation system, fences and chemical maintenance, we see the bait once more.

Once again people are invited to connect their hopes for safe swimming to what is, in fact, further destruction of the environment. To swim safely in the river at Magazine Beach, the DCR, Cambridge, the CRC, or any other entity with money would have to build an entire swimming pool, complete with filtration system, and sink it in the river. Sediment with heavy metals, not any poop from waterfowl, is the toxic element here.

The fields Cambridge and the DCR are installing must be chemically maintained and their use restricted, as Cambridge intends, to keep the “quality of turf our players deserve,” in the words of a DCR official defending the use of herbicides at the DCR’s Ebersol Fields, also on the Charles.

In correspondence with elected officials, the DCR has said only it never “intends” to use chemicals. It uses them anyway, when “needed.” Algae blooms fed by the chemical runoff from Ebersol Fields near MGH in Boston forced the cancellation of the Charles River swim in 2006. Since then, the CRC has been forced to move the event ever earlier, from September to June, to avoid the now inevitable toxic bloom just offshore.

Maintenance of the commercial sod at Magazine Beach will apparently be at the discretion of Cambridge officials. They make noises about “integrated pest management,” a euphemism for continued use of pesticides and other chemicals. Children and wildlife alike need no exposure to these toxins courtesy of our city or the DCR.

This bait invites “environmentalists” to weigh in once again with misinformation against waterfowl, who legitimately belong on the river (if not on a river, where?) and to dismiss those of us who actually enjoy contact with the natural world, including geese.

As for any “organic” care of lawn grasses, why are these “environmentalists” not celebrating the nitrogen, naturally applied by geese, to riverfront meadows?

3. Kathy Podgers' comment.

Kathy Podgers offers the following comment:

Thanks for posting this. Marilyn's letter is special, especially considering all the hours she has put into attending numerous meetings by half a dozen "official" organizations. I appreciate her knowledge and advocacy on this issue, and count her a true friend to Cambridge neighbors, as well as a fount of knowledge.

We have collected some 500 signatures to end the folly at Magazine Beach, which is rightfully called Captain's Island, and I hope you can all join us to end the further destruction of one of Cambridge's precious natural resource's, and work with us to restore it to it's beauty. Perhaps you saw the piece in the Sunday Globe Magazine on the 10 best places to live? Two of them featured wetlands and geese.

4. Update, March 26, 2009.

a. Marilyn printing.

In the March 26, 2009 edition, the Cambridge Chronicle printed a version of Marilyn's letter which was improved by her after she posted the above on the Internet.

b. Well intended but back-stabbed letter on Alewife not published in hard copy.

Also on line but not in the Cambridge Chronicle is a letter signed by a bunch of apparently well intentioned people which reads like they have been shafted by operatives friendly to the City of Cambridge / the eight plus bad city councilors (eight because there is one new member).

After speaking out in defense of the Silver Maple Forest, the letter supports the destruction of the Alewife reservation based on "planning."

"Planning" is another con game. People appointed by the Cambridge City Manager support destruction of whatever the Cambridge City Manager and eight plus bad city councilors are destroying.

Operatives friendly to the Cambridge City Manager / eight plus bad city councilors con well intentioned people into stabbing themselves in the back loudly proclaiming the beauties of "Planning." The operatives neglect to mention the vile environmental record of the Cambridge City Manager and neglect to mention the vile environmental record of eight plus Cambridge city councilors.

They also neglect to mention Monteiro v. City of Cambridge in which a jury found that the Cambridge City Manager destroyed the life of a black woman Cape Verdean department head because she filed a civil rights complaint.

The jury awarded $1.1 million plus damages and $3.5 million penal damages. The judge is reviewing the decision. It is my hope she orders the City Manager fired and stripped of his pension.

But the operatives always sound so good.

Monday, March 23, 2009

Silver Maple Forest

Bob reports:

The following letter was printed by the Cambridge Chronicle in its March 19, 2009 edition. It was side by side with a letter from Ellen Maas on the Silver Maple.

Ellen has worked closely with the City of Cambridge and friends of the Cambridge City Manager on the issue.

In particular, Ellen bitterly opposes prevention of destruction of the Alewife reservation by the City of Cambridge. Additionally, to the best of my knowledge, the only constructive achievement by any member of the public in the area was the downzoning of a parking lot to open space followed by its conversion to open space. This was accomplished by Sheila Cook with my drafting. Ellen and her friends severely mistreated Sheila Cook.

*******

Editor
Cambridge Chronicle

RE: Silver Maple Forest

The Cambridge City Council’s vote in favor of protecting the Silver Maple Forest should be looked at in context.

This is private property, mostly in Belmont .

The environmental record of the eight continuing city councilors on public property in or related to Cambridge is outrageously bad.

On the Charles, they and their friends seem to be destroying all animals living or visiting the river or its banks. This is emphasized by the bizarre wall of introduced vegetation at Magazine Beach which seems to have no purpose except starvation, and by the ongoing mudpit at Magazine Beach which is intended to destroy green maintenance and replace it with fertilizer maintenance poisoning the resident birds. Then there is the needlessly destructive BU Bridge repair project.

Then there is Fresh Pond, apparently thousands of healthy trees and animal habitat being destroyed to introduce 1000 saplings.

Then there is the Alewife Reservation, in Cambridge , a hundred or so feet from Silver Maple. Slated to be destroyed with destruction of habitat. Why? For flood storage that should be placed under a parking lot 500 feet to the south, a parking lot which is about to be built on.

So how should we react to Silver Maple, Cambridge city councilors who destroy Cambridge ’s publicly owned environment, loudly proclaiming their environmental sanctity with regard to privately owned property mostly in Belmont ?

Nothing complicated about it, just another cynical con game.

Robert J. La Trémouille
875 Massachusetts Avenue, #31
Post Office Box 391412
Cambridge, MA 02139-0015
617-283-7649

Friday, March 20, 2009

Magazine Beach pesticides opposition

Cambridge residents concerned about the environment are contacting the City Council, registering opposition to the city's plans for Magazine Beach. These plans are to install professional-level fields, maintain them with chemicals including pesticides, and, to protect the stressed commercial turf, restrict use. Parts of Russell Field in North Cambridge are now open only with advance approval from the city.

Ann Spanel submitted the following letter to the City Council and copied it to the Cambridge Conservation Commission.

******

Dear Cambridge City Councilors:

I am strongly opposed to the use of pesiticides on ANY of Cambridge's fields, for any reason. I testified to that effect some years ago at a number of City hearings, and it was my understanding that the City's policy was NOT to use these poisons on our fields. Children and pets use these fields, and I am very concerned that you are adding ONE MORE TOXIN to our parks. . . . Cambridge is making it very hard for me to walk my dog safely in a City park. I am not at all pleased to learn that you plan to spray a field at Danehy Park as well. The idea that a field I could be walking on a pesticided field and my dog tracking pesticides into my house is unacceptable to me.

Cambridge is digging up and replacing the grass adapted to the riverfront environment [at Magazine Beach]. At great expense it's installing 7 acres of gravel, topsoil, commercial sod, and an irrigation system. The resulting, very expensive fields will need restricted use (as the city is doing at a new field in Danehy Park) and chemicals to maintain the "quality of turf our players deserve," as the DCR spokesperson told the Boston Conservation Commission about Ebersol Fields.

I am further concerned that Cambridge may follow suit in using Tartan, a pesticide forbidden to be used near water, that the DCR used on Ebersoll Field.

I look forward to hearing back from you.

****

Other residents wishing to register opposition can also e-mail the City Council (Council@Cambridgema.gov), and the Conservation Commission (jwright@CambridgeMA.GOV).

Marilyn Wellons

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Analysis of the Urban Ring Certificate and Update

Bob La Trémouille reports:

1. Analysis by Archie Mazmanian.
2. Update from the State: Comments Posted.

1. Analysis by Archie Mazmanian.

Archie Mazmanian provides the following.

I apologize to Archie and the reader for my delay in posting this. I have been overloaded and I thought it was a lot longer than it is.

**************

There follow some of my initial reactions to MEPA’s Certificate dated March 6, 2009, in response to EOT’s RDEIR/DEIS filing. It runs some 9 pages and is available via EOT’s Urban Ring website: www.theurbanring.com.

1. While the bottom line of the Certificate calls for EOT to “ … submit a Notice of Project Change [NPC] to identify early action items and address issues pertaining to the phasing, financing, timing of construction, and implementation of the overall project … “ in effect it calls for a “do-over.” Reading between the lines, the Secretary tries to make lemonade out of the lemon that is EOT’s RDEIR/DEIS.

2. The Certificate state: “ … the NPC should include a copy of each comment letter … and thoroughly respond to each substantive comment received.” This is to be accomplished “ … no later than June 30, 2009.” I can hardly wait. The Certificate, at its end, lists 72 “Comments Received.”

3. For some reason, the Secretary gushes over “A Better City” (ABC), a not-for-profit (but perhaps not charitable) organization made up of developers and their support systems of attorneys, etc. This is the same ABC that lauded the Big Dig through its many travails over a long period of time at great taxpayers’ expense, a significant portion of which expense perhaps made its way into the coffers of ABC members. I recall ABC chastising complaints of North Enders whose neighborhood greatly suffered and was inconvenienced by the Big Dig for such a long period of time. With the same “usual suspects” salivating over Phase 2, what can we expect from ABC if and when Phase 2 gets underway?

4. And the Secretary applauds the CAC for its support of Phase 2. We all know that the main co-chair of the CAC is ABC’s designee. And there are many CAC members who are designees of powerful institutions, such as the LMA, Harvard, MIT and BU. Perhaps a review of the “Comments” made by CAC members representing residential neighborhoods and EOT’s responses thereto may paint a distinct minority position from that of the CAC institutional majority.

You may post this on your website if you wish. Perhaps others with residential neighborhoods interests may wish to provide their comments on the Certificate. Pending June 30th, might we expect CAC or other public meetings?

Thanks, Archie.

***********

I know nothing about “A Better City.” It, however, sounds very much and too much like entities which show up in Cambridge featuring friends of the Cambridge City Manager and the ilk.

2. Update from the State: Comments Posted.

Archie forwarded the following update:

*************

Dear CAC Members and Interested Parties,

All of the comment letters submitted to the MEPA office on the RDEIR have now been posted to the project website, www.theurbanring.com. The direct link to the comment letters is here https://www.commentmgr.com/projects/1169/docs/RDEIR_Comment_Ltrs.pdf

Please let me know if you have any questions or problems accessing the file.

Thanks,

Regan

Regan Checchio
Public Affairs Manager
Regina Villa Associates
51 Franklin St., 4th floor
Boston, MA 02110
Ph: 617-357-5772 ext. 14
Fax: 617-357-8361
E-mail: rchecchio@reginavilla.com

Wednesday, March 04, 2009

Environmental Destruction in North Cambridge

Bob La Trémouille reports:

About a week or so ago, I attended a meeting of the North Cambridge city manager group, the North Cambridge Defense Fund.

A lady attended who was distressed about the denial of use of a playing field at Russell Field to residents.

Russell Field is perhaps 300 feet east of Alewife station.

It has recently been “improved.”

Children have been thrown off an unused soccer field because they did not obtain permission from city officials to use this soccer field, right near their homes.

The same sort of outrage is scheduled for Magazine Beach after the eight environmental destroyers on the Cambridge City Council finish replacement of green maintenance with chemical maintenance.

An individual in the room who has more than ten years experience fighting for fake downzonings recommended talking with the group’s former leader, Craig Kelley.

Kelley is one of the eight continuing environmental destroyers on the Cambridge City Council. Kelley had the fraud to run as an environmentalist while “neglecting” to mention support for environmental destruction by the city of Cambridge where it counts. Kelley also neglected to mention support for heartless animal abuse on the Charles River. Kelley is a tertiary environmentalist and a primary environmental destroyer. In the secret definition the Cambridge pols use, this is “environmentalism.”

Kelley also has been part of the more than a decade of destruction of zoning protections through fake downzonings.

The individual recommending Kelley calls himself a zoning expert. He goes to the City Manager to find out his opinion on zoning issues.

This neighborhood is near where Jeff Manzelli lived, and for whose “leaders” Jeff expressed such contempt in his report in his report at http://charlesriverwhitegeeseblog.blogspot.com/2009/03/litigants-opinion-on-monteiro-judge.html. I entitled Jeff's report “A litigant’s opinion on the Monteiro judge."

Papers filed in Monteiro Case

Bob La Trémouille reports.

The following docket entry was added on March 3, 2009:

1 Defendant's submission of trial transcripts as available on date of
2 filing

This is an apparent implementation of the entries I reported on at http://charlesriverwhitegeeseblog.blogspot.com/2009/02/monteiro-case-update.html, below.

Sunday, March 01, 2009

A litigant's opinion on the Monteiro judge

Jeff Manzelli, who did an excellent job creating the Charles River White Goose website, was a defendant in a pro-se tort suit in front of the judge handling the Melvina Monteiro court case.

He reports that the pro-se action against him was rather outrageously false.

According to Jeff, some new neighbors had moved into the upstairs apartment in the two family where he had lived for quite awhile. The new neighbors decided they wanted him out, not because of bad behavior by him, but essentially because he was not their "type."

Jeff gives the following report on what he saw of the judge. I have edited his comments to delete details of the situation which brought him to Court and to substitute generic descriptions for the names of two male participants. I have otherwise fully retained his report on the court experience.

**************

The Court Case

The Ugly One and matriarch coerced their dim-witted bully son to file a pathetic, hand-scrawled tort court against me. All allegations were false, and he appeared sans witnesses. Given the risk associated with such allegations, I was well prepared, with eight supporters, having also been prepped pro-bono, by various friendly attorneys. I watched McLeod-Mancuso judgify for hours until our turn. During this time, she had the judgely opportunity to observe all of us there in the pews of the religion of bogosity called American Justice.

Due to the child being involved, (the child was being abused, but by his psycho "family") their complaint was given way too much weight, of course. Then my complaint was presented, and the tide turn (because it predated theirs. Sick as Shit Legal Tip: ALWAYS FILE FIRST!!!) Within minutes the complaining son was shouting at Mancuso who asked him whether he was "thick-headed." (Words cannot describe.) I felt the cloud lifting and showed my new lease, and explained I had been driven out. She sent the dispute to mediation.

Mediation is "secret" but I can say that things worked out to minimize harm to me, and to the poor kid, whom the "family" had terrorized for their "gain," calling me "the bad man."

My View on Da Judge

My opinion's a bit limited on her handling of technical questions, as the legal points I saw argued were mostly obscure case law. So I see her as being very cautious and thorough, unlikely to have a mistrial. Bends over backwards, giving benefit of doubt in all situations, extending deadlines, and so forth. She's infinitely patient, the opposite of a "Judge" Judy.

But where the City is involved, even a strong Judge can cave to "influence." and Cambridge is probably the most elite-controlled city I've lived in, CCTV being an example of a well-controlled PR front for the powers that do be do be doo.