Dear PulseLine, While watching the School Committee meeting on live TV Monday night December 03, 2012, I watched a Gentleman stand up to the podium to try to get answers to his questions regarding problems with the removing of school bus drivers by the School Department. I could see that he was a very courageous man and also calm and polite in trying to get answers to his questions in support of the school bus drivers behind him. On the other hand Mayor Daniel Knapik I felt was acting very unprofessional and repeatedly kept smacking his gavel to get the courageous man to sit down and not answer his question. Mr. Knapik looked very nervous about the issue at hand and it was very obvious that the Mayor was out of control not the gentleman that stood up to him. It’s about time someone had the courage to stand up to the Mayor, what a breath of fresh air that was. Our Mayor has been out of control for a long time. If that Gentleman ever decides to run for Mayor he will get my vote in a heartbeat. I didn’t know all the particulars about the bus driver he was talking about when again the Mayor was out of control when he spoke up and said he was appalled with the school bus drivers action that had occurred but I must say that I was appalled by the way the Mayor handled himself being in the position that he is in. I did however talk to a couple of school bus driver friends that I do know and I did find out the truth about what happened on that occasion. Also during the Mayors appalling remark about the incident of the school bus driver he cited that I believe he worked in the safety field for a number of years before becoming Mayor. I did a Google lookup on our Mayor and his safety credentials consisted of environmental job related working type of problems. I hardly think this qualifies the Mayor again to be appalling regarding this incident of the school bus driver since it was a vehicle and safety highway issue. When talking to the school bus drivers about the incident that Mayor Knapik cited I strongly feel that the driver is owed their day in a meeting with the proper representatives of the School Department or maybe an independent panel regarding these issues, because there is a lot more to this story then Mayor Knapik would like the City of Westfield residents to know. The problem I see is that the tightly political closeness and sometimes corrupt things that happen in our city, I don’t think the driver will get their chance to be able to tell their side of the story. I will say and believe that the driver was under extreme pressure brought on by the school teacher that was in charge of this field trip and kept demanding the driver to make an illegal u-turn on the Mass Turnpike and not caring about the safety of her children. The Teacher needs to be brought in front of a board for her actions in this incident. We all know there are a few bad apples that fall from the tree in every profession as we read about all the time. Only problem though I see for the driver is again the system is very politically connected to each other. I will cite a few cases just with the Mayor. We all remember when he was running for election that one day magically his opponents signs for election disappeared by way of the City Workers and a law suit was brought on and the taxpayers had to foot his legal expenses up to $40,000.00 dollars, WOW, if that happened to us can the City help us out too? Another hot topic is the way the Mayor is railroading all these projects into place, the down town project that nobody wanted, the new school placed in a location that is ridiculous and nobody wants there and now the Western Avenue project WOW. Another WASTE of Federal dollars was when the Mayor took a gas station by Eminent Domain from a person that has owned that property for over 55 years to be able to put a parking lot in for his political friends that own the Tavern Restaurant. WHAT A WASTE. I think Westfield Residents get my point. Please give the School Bus Drivers their say. Thank you.
