Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Apparent waste in latest Cambridge Library / High School project?

1. Background.
2. The latest construction.
3. A little more background.

1. Background.

My initial exposure to the very real dark side of Cambridge, MA “environmentalism” was when the city needlessly destroyed something like 23 one hundred year plus old trees when Cambridge rearranged the city High School.

The construction could very easily have gone elsewhere on the site. The alternate location was designated as blood money. People on Broadway got paid off for supporting needless destruction on Cambridge Street.

It was obvious landbanking. The fully predictable stab in the back to the back stabbers on Broadway came in the rearrangement of the city’s public library. This “improvement” reduced the shelf space of the public library. It also took away a significant part of the Judas coins given to Broadway.

The Library rearrangement destroyed much of the essentially unimproved grass put in where the High School building should have gone. This unimproved grass was called a “replacement” for the hundred year old trees. The library rearrangement also destroyed 50 or so trees which were planted as saplings and advertised as other blood money in the needless destruction of those hundred year old trees.

Very prominent in the destruction was a “neighborhood association” created in coordination with the Cambridge City Manager. Need I say more?

2. The latest construction.

Roy Bercaw, at http://enoughroomvideo.blogspot.com/2011/06/if-at-first-you-don’t-succeed-don’t-kill.html, reports on apparently rather blatant waste in the latest rearrangement of the Public Library / High School site.

He provides photos.

3. A little more background.

I got a preliminary injunction on appeal against the destruction of the park containing those hundred year old trees.

Such an order is next to impossible on appeal. It indicated a very strong case.

In the middle of the case, the state Supreme Judicial Court came down with a decision ignoring a key distinction in trust law. The error was dicta but exactly on point. The error was corrected ten years later.

In the meantime, I had lost a key part of my case. I needed to win on a statute protecting parks. The judge made a finding of fact that this excellent park was not a park but Library grounds. He authorized the destruction on Cambridge Street praising all the saplings being planted on Broadway.

Monteiro: Machinations in Superior Court? Final pre-trial hearing for last two plaintiffs rescheduled again

1. General Introduction.
2. Monteiro: Final two plaintiffs get deferred again.

1. General Introduction.

I do not consider the outrageous environmental destruction being inflicted by the City of Cambridge with the very clear unanimous support of the Cambridge City Council at all unrelated to other aspects of Cambridge City Government.

There is a stench about this government hidden by a massive machine which runs around passing on a lot of lying.

The big issue, to my mind, is just how rotten the situation is. It is very difficult to evaluate the situation when you are as close as I am even though I know a very significant part of just how bad things are by looking at the environmental situation and those portions of the civil rights situation which are not hidden.

The reality is that the large number of people running around passing around lies about reality do not do such behavior in a vacuum. The reality certainly is that a very significant portion of the people spouting the lies do not know what they are talking about. They are just passing on what they are told are their opinions. Nevertheless, as tiny as the number of people really doing the thinking may be, they clearly have a lot of people passing on as reality a whole bunch of false statements.

Then again, people do not usually behave this badly in a vacuum.

Cambridge looks like a house of cards.

2. Monteiro: Final two plaintiffs get deferred again.

The Monteiro case originally had five plaintiffs. Two settled and, I understand, got pretty big payments.

Malvina Monteiro went to trial. She then was retried on the retaliation issue which she won impressively. That case is now in Appeals Court.

Papers, to my knowledge, have been filed informing appropriate courts that the last two plaintiffs still have yet to be tried.

Most recently, there have been stirrings in Superior Court about going forward toward trial with the last two plaintiffs. The final pre-trial hearing to set matters in place to go forward has now been rescheduled a few times. The last change I had been aware of was to July 12, 2011 at the Woburn, MA courthouse for the Middlesex County Superior Court. This change was apparently by agreement of the parties.

The docket shows another delay, to August 10, 2011, at 2 pm, rescheduling by the Court.

Whether this had anything to do with the latest exchange in Appeals Court is beyond me. All I am looking at, in each case, is the on line docket.