A revolting development
A Boston University study recently found that municipal zoning boards, planning boards and redevelopment boards are dominated by white male homeowners.
Wait. Men are more interested in construction, development and zoning than women are? What’s the next bombshell revelation – male drivers won’t ask for directions?
Fight the urban planning patriarchy!
Speaking of zoning and development, it’s time for your periodic reminder that most of the development you’ve been seeing in recent years is happening in and around the downtown district and along public transportation routes, not on the leafy suburban lanes of Greenwood or the West Side.
That’s not by accident, but it’s not a conspiracy, either – unless you consider Wakefield Town Meeting a “conspiracy.” In November of 2015, Town Meeting voters approved a zoning change designed to encourage mixed-use development in the downtown business districts and along public transit lines.
It has worked exactly as Town Meeting intended.
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Sentimental journey
So, it’s settled.
A majority of the Wakefield Town Council gets to define what “Official Town Sentiment” is.
The Council voted earlier this month to give itself the power to determine what constitutes Official Town Sentiment, at least in terms of which flags can be flown from town flagpoles as an expression of such sentiment. (As of now, the American flag is still allowed.)
The impetus for the new Flag Policy dates back to April, when the Wakefield Human Rights Commission approached the Town Council about flying the “Pride” and “Juneteenth” flags from various town-owned flagpoles.
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High school math
Let’s start by stipulating that there will be a new Wakefield Memorial High School.
And it will be fabulous.
We know this because the local education lobby is very motivated and highly coordinated. We saw it in the recent Town Election. The three School Committee winners were all educators or former educators. And all three finished within 72 votes of each other. That’s not a coincidence. The top two had almost identical vote counts.
When the time comes to vote for the debt exclusion or override for the new high school, the same forces will again marshal the vote and overwhelm any feeble pushback from the taxpayers, assuming the taxpayers mount any pushback at all. Phyllis Hull and Mike Conley are no longer here to lead the resistance.
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Tags: ageism, debt exclusion, Douglas Lyons, economy, education, electric, energy, environment, fossil fuels, Galvin Middle School, gasoline, groceries, Humor, inflation, Mark Sardella, Massachusetts School Building Authority, Mike Conley, MSBA, Opinion, override, Phyllis Hull, Politics, schools, sustainability, taxes, taxpayers, townies, Wakefield Daily Item, Wakefield High School, Wakefield MA, WMHS
Flagging allegiance
There aren’t a lot of human rights violations in Wakefield, Massachusetts. So, to justify its existence, the Wakefield Human Rights Commission has to find things to do.
I just wish they’d stick to discussing their favorite Girl Scout Cookies and leave our country’s flag, holidays and traditions alone.
The Wakefield Human Rights Commission (WHRC) recently convinced the Town Council to amend the town’s Flag Policy to allow flags other than the U.S. flag to be flown from public flagpoles. Specifically, they would like the “Pride” flag and the “Juneteenth” flag to share space with Old Glory on various town-owned poles.
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An Irish homecoming
A cold October rain was falling as I turned my rented Nissan Sunny down the dirt lane in the village of Portglenone, Northern Ireland. The road was barely wide enough for one vehicle and had grass growing between tire-worn tracks. Up on a hill in the distance, I could make out a pickup truck. A man closed a gate behind the truck, then got behind the wheel and began driving down the long, winding road in my direction.
One of us was going to have to pull over into the tall grass along the side to let the other pass. Having no idea if I was on private property, I wondered if this could be the land-owner who might not appreciate my trespassing.
It was 1994, and I was in the middle of a three-week solo road trip through Ireland. I had come with no particular itinerary, except at some point I wanted to see where my maternal grandparents had come from. I had crossed the border into Northern Ireland the previous day and made my way farther north to my grandfather’s home village of Portglenone in County Antrim.
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Filed under: Columns & Essays, Family, Feature stories, History, Wakefield | 3 Comments
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Brave New World
Less than a year after dumping the Warrior logo, the Wakefield School Committee continues to demonstrate that they are more in tune with global causes than they are with the local taxpayers who pay the freight.
Last week, they quietly changed Columbus Day to “Columbus Day/Indigenous Peoples Day.”
And nobody said a word.
The 2022-2023 School Calendar approved by the School Committee last week lists Monday, Oct. 10, 2022 as “Columbus Day/Indigenous Peoples Day.” I’m shocked that they gave Columbus top billing.
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The naked and the masked
With COVID on the wane, last week everyone in Wakefield was finally liberated from the imperative to cover their faces. Everyone, that is, except those least at risk from the virus: school children. That’s what’s known as “following the science.”
The Massachusetts Department of Public Health (DPH) lifted the state’s indoor mask mandate last week, and the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) has said that masks no longer need to be worn in public schools as of Feb. 28. When two of the most alarmist state agencies are saying masks can go, you know that everybody is done.
Everybody, that is, except certain overwrought local officials, who can’t seem to let it go.
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Magic bus
Like most of you, I had never heard of “transportation equity” until a week or so ago. It’s one of those terms that members of the Woke Community toss around in casual conversation believing everybody knows what it means, because everybody they know does.
You probably thought “equity” was the value of your home minus what you still owe on the mortgage.
How quaint. Turn off Fox Business and put down the Wall Street Journal, insurrectionist.
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Return to ‘Wakefield Tonight’
Many years before I became an ink-stained wretch, I toiled in another branch of local media. It was way back in the last century, the 1980s, to be precise, when I produced and directed Wakefield’s first regularly-scheduled TV comedy/talk show.
Cable TV was new and all the rage. Cable companies vied for lucrative contracts in every city and town. They would promise the world in order to secure the right to provide cable services to a municipality.
And that’s where the competition ended. The successful cable provider had a monopoly in that community for the next 15-20 years. None of this “choice” between Comcast, Verizon and RCN like we have now.
One of the carrots that cable companies dangled in order to win those contracts was local programming – television that would originate in your very own community. The companies would make grandiose promises of a “state-of-the-art” television studio in your town where professionals would train local people in how to produce television programs “by and for the community.”
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Ethos, pathos and logos
Having endured two previous School Department “forums” on the Wakefield Warrior logo, my expectations were not high for last week’s “Warrior Logo Community Forum.”
Somehow, it still managed to disappoint.
For one thing, it was held via Zoom, which hinders participation by the less technically adept while favoring a demographic more comfortable with technology. If you don’t believe Zoom presents a technical roadblock for many people, consider that the forum started almost 15 minutes late because those in charge of running it encountered – you guessed it – technical problems.
Last week’s forum was billed as an opportunity for members of the Wakefield community to offer their input regarding a new logo to replace the old Warrior logo.
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Mark Sardella 