This is in response to the letter to the editor written by Steve Dondley. I would like to know if you filed a complaint in June or not. It looks as though one paragraph states that you did not and the next paragraph states that you did. Also, if Mr. Flaherty asked the law department if what he was doing was legal and they gave him the thumbs up, I think that we have a problem in the law department. You also speak of being forwarded emails that you constitute as hard evidence. Who forwarded these emails to you? Does the public have access to the emails of all the councilors without having to go the FOIA route? I spoke to you in the summer face to face while you were running for a city council position yourself. I was clear to me that you were no fan of Mr. Flaherty. In your letter you speak of all the councilors but you call Mr. Flaherty by name. I knew of the open meeting laws to some extent and I want to thank you for teaching me more. I also want to commend you for keeping an eye on this issue for all the citizens but I hope this is not just a personal issue that you can expand to encourage others to have the same thoughts as you do toward Mr. Flaherty. Like him or not, I believe that he is good in his own right at trying to keep money in my pocket as opposed to going to taxes. In the the online versions of Dan Moriarty’s stories on this topic there are links to the letter from the Attorney General regarding the complaint made this summer.
Hello! Just to let people know I won $7,000 tonight. All I had to do was give them my credit card number, bank account number and my social security number. Of course I said “Oh! Thank you! But I didn’t enter a contest.” And I hung up. So please tell people that there is a scam here in Westfield going on, OK? Thank you very much.
Westfield and Holyoke do not technically border Springfield but MGM is negotiating with Holyoke for a surrounding casino agreement, so I ask why is Westfield not negotiating for its share of a casino proposal or is there something not being said in the secret city of Westfield? Thank you for taking this call. When we inquired earlier this month, Community Development Director Peter Miller was planning to meet with City Solicitor Sue Philips to discuss this. If something came of that discussion, he would be in touch with us.
Steve Dondley sounds like a disgruntled sore loser. He’s complaining about one of the most open, honest, communicative city councilors I’ve ever seen. Any citizen can file open meeting law violation complaints.
I have been following the City Councils attempts to try to lower our tax increases. The City has to slow down their spending to be more in touch with the general growth rate of its tax base. The economy is not growing as planned with the city’s current spending levels and spending must be adjusted downward. I believe we took on too much spending on the downtown without considering the long term requirement to maintain this massive implementation of downtown infrastructure improvements. The numbers in revenue growth are just not there to sustain such a spending increase. The city is going to have to throttle back their spending requirements accordingly. If City government is to continue their spending increases then maybe they should consider a per capita user tax for every man woman and child in the city. The home owners and business owners cannot be expected to fund this exorbitant rate of spending anymore.
