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As I continue sharing my views on current events with you in this personal website format I feel compelled to remind you that these are just my opinions. Recent events have made me aware that my perspectives are often views from under the proverbial bus. And that’s OK. You can get the party line from other sources. So the page title will be different but that is all.

The View from Under the Bus is my personal perspective. Other points of view and additional information are now on my Another View page. Previous VFUTB items can be found in Archives.

OK – I was trying to mind my own business and be the good little lemming-like citizen that the Board of Selectmen expects us all to be but you can only swallow so much before you just have to regurgitate,

Real journalists don’t use quotes that they don’t get first hand but since I am just an over the hill columnistic hack I can second-hand whenever I like. For example: “We’re disappointed with the decision,” said Doug McGarrah, a partner at the law firm of Foley Hoag in Boston who represents Canton. “(But) we’re still hopeful that our efforts to obtain commitments from the state on infrastructure funding ... are going to be successful.”

McGarrah said the improvements along Dedham Street that town officials would like to see include a new ramp off Interstate 95, a widened five-lane bridge over the interstate and a widening of Dedham Street from two lanes to four lanes.

“The town is not opposed to the Westwood Station project,” McGarrah said. “The town has only been concerned that there is an adequate roadway infrastructure to handle the increased level of traffic on what is already a congested roadway.”

We paid a couple of hundred thousand dollars (I have been told) in legal fees and much more than that in goodwill among our neighbors to promote a situation that is worse than when we started. Don’t talk to me about our victory on Westwood’s Canton Street – talk to me about making Canton’s Dedham Street four lanes. That is what other newspapers are calling “the Dedham Street Corridor”. Where did that come from? I must have missed that sit-in. This Board of Selectmen decided that making Route 138 four lanes was too dangerous but are giving it up for the John F Kennedy School’s Memorial Speedway. Four lanes of Dedham Street meeting a truck driver’s nightmare at the Washington/Pleasant Street interchange. No I haven’t seen the plans. Those of us that were appointed to the Master Plan Monitoring Committee back in April are still waiting for the first meeting to be called by the Infallible Five. Just the same way that the Route 138 Study Committee faded into the sunset without a whimper or a meeting. The Selectmen don’t need the input of mere mortals and certainly wouldn’t see the need to share information. Maybe I wasn’t good enough or smart enough to be asked if I would like to be considered for reappointment to the 138 committee but there is a protocol that is sometimes followed as a courtesy. Am I all bent out of shape because I didn’t get to play committee-person? Not really. I am bent out of shape because our Selectmen for Life have once again screwed up royally and declared it a victory. Good luck to all of us – because we are going to need it,

The first step in the developing a Green Economy is Green Enhanced Demand. Consumers are going to need to start showing a greater interest in green products and services. Government spending may prime the pump (Weatherization Assistance Program and weatherization of public housing) but until there is time for investors to see the potential for Return On Investment they are going to be reluctant to front their money. As far as I know there is only one solar energy home in Canton.

Second Step is Green Enhanced Skills. There are many occupations that, with some tweaking, can come under the green umbrella. Not all construction is structural. Not all infrastructure construction will contribute to greening. Highways and bridges can incorporate green design but most excavation projects are just holes in the ground. The green part is what you build from those holes.

Step Three will be new and emerging occupations. Those for the most part are still in the incubation phase. Their fate depends on Step One. But there will be funding from the Commonwealth’s Office of Small Business and Entrepreneurship as soon as they work out the funding formulae. Weatherization projects for public housing may have an edge.

Having said that there are programs incorporating entrepreneurship into their curriculum. But a thorough knowledge of the product or service plus a viable business plan will be needed. UMass’s University Without Walls will be making entrepreneurship offerings soon as well as some insights into the potential of geothermal energy sources. There is some growing interest in micro-hydro in selected locations. Do you even know what a heliostat is? As far as I know there is only one heliostat company whose home base is in Canton. Not everything has been thought of yet.

The Association of Energy Engineers’ New England Chapter is developing training programs for Certified Energy Manager and Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Certification. Criteria for taking the exams usually involves appropriate education and/or some years of practical experience.

Something for which legislation is being proposed is called Cap and Trade. It establishes a rating system for greenhouse gas emissions. The rating is based on a point system. If a company comes in under it’s carbon budget (rating points) they can sell those points to companies that may be over budget. The process is closely regulated and will require specially trained lawyers and accountants to make sure that it works without being abused. A whole new specialty in those fields.

There are green jobs. The green jobs traditionally connected with the environment are still there. Forestry, agriculture, water and wastewater treatment, environmental management, the regular stuff are as green as ever. But the level of education, training and experience required to do the “new green” jobs may be beyond most job seekers. If you know a post-doctoral microbiologist who is interested in working with the Q microbe to make ethanol from marsh grasses, the HR director at Qteros is available to talk to them.

As you know this dog would prefer a wastewater treatment plant in Canton to address real environmental issues, keep jobs in our water department and have a decent shot at funding from the Green Communities Act. But what do I know.

At the moment most jobs are with ESCOs – Energy Service Companies. An energy service company is a professional business providing a broad range of comprehensive energy solutions including designs and implementation of energy savings projects, energy conservation, energy infrastructure outsourcing, power generation and energy supply, and risk management. The ESCO performs an in-depth analysis of the property, designs an energy efficient solution, installs the required elements, and maintains the system to ensure energy savings during the payback period.The savings in energy costs is often used to pay back the capital investment of the project over a five- to twenty-year period, or reinvested into the building to allow for capital upgrades that may otherwise be unfeasible. If the project does not provide returns on the investment, the ESCO is often responsible to pay the difference. These folks are still “waiting for the gold rush” of people wanting to “green” their homes and businesses. Back to Step One.

A new twist on an old concern is another challenge. Retirement. Many of the people who thought they would be ready to retire soon have seen their retirement equity disappear. Retirements plans have been delayed for as much as 7 years. These folks are far too valuable to a company to pressure them to leave. However, the people who were hired as part of succession planning are stymied. They know too much for the company to let them go and they will be needed in the future – 7 years is the estimation – so companies are taking great pains to retain these people. Bad news for entry level opportunities.

As the value of energy efficiency in building is demonstrated there will be more entry level opportunities through Energy Efficiency and Conservation (Weatherization) Training. These will be the people that will move in when the “successors” move up. Some of the successors will not wait to move up – they will split off and open their own companies; and in some cases develop new technologies that will create new opportunities for the people who have the training and/or experience to ride the “green tide” that will float all boats.

Some of this material is attributable to Kevin Doyle and Van Jones. Don’t miss an opportunity to hear or read them.

Samhain – the Celtic New Year – the second full moon after the autumnal equinox – November 2, 2009. It is upon us. That and several conversations and newspaper articles this week created a confluence of thoughts and ideas that made me think that I could bother you at least one more time. First of all I am well and thank you very much for your concern. Coping with life is still a challenge. After a year and a half I am still surprised by the fact that furniture does not dust itself and credit card companies bear considerable watching. But I am adapting – slowly. I am still working full time at your local Massachusetts One Stop Career Center aka Employment & Training Resources (ETR) in Norwood. As a Business Services Representative I have been assigned the project of trying to make some sense of the Green Economy conundrum as it applies to us at ETR. More about that in a later discussion – I hope.

At the moment ETR is getting it’s fair share of federal funding for training programs. But I was not surprised that the Board of Selectmen was surprised that Canton got zippo from the Feds on its laundry list of “shovel ready” projects. BOS believes that every thing they are doing is right and correct. The fact that they continue to be re-elected by large percentages of the 2000 voters out of the 13,000 registered voters in the Town who actually vote in town elections validates their confidence. They are not so well thought of “off the island”. Our neighbors are not impressed with our insular attitudes on matters that affect the well being of their towns. Some state agencies are less impressed with us than are some others because of our self-serving obstructionist attitudes. I know that Christmas is still 7 weeks away but the success of the Walpole Mall remodel and the rather amazing Legacy Place has not completely choked the highways in those areas. The construction jobs and potential retail and development jobs that were stalled by our opposition to Westwood Station – even though it appears that we demanded mitigation for a billboard on I-95 that will almost certainly advertise Westwood Station – are still fresh in a lot of minds.

Turning a Streetscape Project grant that was based on access to Forge Pond, being pedestrian friendly and encouraging local business; into an aggrandized Chapter 90 project did not escape notice. Ignoring the Forge Pond component (an “expensive distraction” that got us the grant in the first place) in favor a new traffic light that has never functioned properly and is blinking as we speak was not a confidence builder. Because Seniors like kids and kids like baseball I could see some Senior Center money being diverted to a new set of lights at a little league field somewhere. Folks – a lot of people from a lot of agencies live in this town. They see what is going on and they share that information. They are not politicians; they are dedicated professional public servants.

And my favorite elephant – a drinking water treatment plant. A town that has no drinking water problems – quality, quantity or affordability – chooses to spend 11 million dollars for drinking water treatment plants without really knowing or sharing the ongoing operating costs for the plants. The only rationale is to “reduce our dependence on MWRA drinking water” and for what? To save a couple of bucks initially and losing a ton of money as we go forward with operation and maintenance costs? Safety? Please watch the Channel 4 news at 11 pm on Samhain (Monday) to see what they think about drinking water safety. I could be wrong about this. Environmentally? These plants facilitate an eventual interbasin transfer of Neponset Basin water into sewer pipes and sends it out to sea instead of keeping it in our aquifers to enrich the environment of our region. No demonstrable need, no sustainable cost estimates and environmentally harmful. That is not a formula for funding. Oh yeah – add that the only part of Canton on town water (until this week) was the northern section that was on Milton town water. To make that better we appropriated 3 million additional dollars to do a brand new MWRA hookup to increase their dependence on MWRA. I’m not making this up – I couldn’t.

In answer to your questions – no – as far as I know there have been no meetings of the Master Plan Monitoring Committee or the Route 138 Study Committee scheduled.

And the big one – yes I do still care about Canton. But as I grow older I just consider myself to be a source of amusement and potentially a target for retribution. To be honest – I hope I can work up the courage to hit the send button.

Long time between posts but I have had a lot of thinking to do. To say that I was disappointed with the Zoning Board’s PROSD decision is an understatement. I know what I know and I have heard nothing from other members of the former Master Plan Steering Committee that makes me think otherwise. But that is water under the dam. I always thought that it should be “under the bridge or over the dam” until the DPW pulled the bottom boards from the Forge Pond Dam and drained the sludge laden pond water into the watershed. Still wondering why we are masters of the Forge Pond Dam and innocent bystanders at the Reservoir Pond Dam? They are both Napleton assets. I am hoping that a new contact from the Wellesley College team that did an assessment a couple of years ago can shed some light on what might have been in the Forge Pond slurry. Maybe the EPA can also shed some light on what goes into our water on its way to the Fowl Meadow aquifers.

I was going to focus this piece on the unfortunate situation in Milford and Jaffrey, NH. My initial thought was to point out to you that this sort of problem is far less likely to happen in Canton because of our association with MWRA. Not so much because of their world-class water treatment facilities as because of their visionary programs to protect the watersheds that contribute to their water sources and water holding facilities aka Quabbin Reservoir. I believe that the Milford scenario will be found to be less of a water treatment failure as it is a watershed protection failure such as those suggested in the EPA report on some cities and towns in Massachusetts – including Canton.

In looking more closely at Milford I find that the town does not manage the water system. The Milford Water Company does that. It is a privately owned for-profit company. It seems to do all the work, sets the rates and generally puts the Selectmen out of the Water Commissioner business. Whitinsville appears to have a similar arrangement. In Milford and Whitinsville it appears that R H White’s utility management company Whitewater is quite involved in the operations. Both Milford and Whitinsville are listed as customers of R H White Construction. In both Milford and Whitinsville Mr. Leonard H. White is listed as President of those companies and at R.H.White Construction he is named as the Chairman of the Board of Directors. So what? The man knows water. The stuff on their website indicates that they do a lot of really good work. What’s the problem? Wait for the bidding.

Last year they were trying to extend their sphere of control into the Town of Upton. In the published minutes of the Board of Selectmen some things that might have been incorrectly recorded bothered me. At the Feb. 1, 2008 meeting the attendance names Messrs White and Donovan from Whitewater, Mr. Papuga from Milford Water and Mr. Ron Pong from Tata and Howard. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss options available to the Town for private sector companies. Under such arrangements, the municipality retains ownership of the utility, but the private company is brought in to run all or part of the operations. Check the website for the rules and rates put forth by the Milford Water Company. I don’t know where this has gone with Upton but the tone of the minutes for May 29, 2008 was friendly. What struck me was the paragraph that stated – "Milford Water has agreements with the Town of Holliston, Medway, Bellingham and Hopkinton. Upton is the only abutter to the Town of Milford that has no interconnection agreement." That is control over a lot of water. Folks, if Canton was in a bind with regard to our water supply this might be worth a thought. But we are not. Our present and future water and sewer situation is solid. I would be a lot more comfortable with MWRA’s rate setting system than I would be with a for-profit contractor. We are even building new connections to MWRA for “north Canton”. It raises the question - why the heck would we do this? Outsourcing I mean. But I also can’t figure out why we would dump MWRA for even the brief periods of time that our drinking water treatment plant could be on line. Unless the MWRA gets in the way of other things. Even for Canton this is messed up.

The only question this wild speculation does answer is – why won’t anybody tell us the projected operating costs for the drinking water treatment plant? Easy – they wouldn't be the town’s costs. The contractor would set them and adjust our rates to recoup the costs plus a profit. I know – this is up there with my “draining the ponds” theory but – ahem – they are draining the ponds. I have video of Forge. Hey – good luck to all of us.

Liberté, égalité, fraternité. I don’t know how this applies but I just love saying it. Especially when so many questions are being asked. What do I mean by an unchartered town? That’s unchartered not uncharted. Most of the towns in Massachusetts have Town Charters that spell out how the government is formed and run. Canton does not have a charter. We run our town with a hodge-podge of by-laws, regulations and portions of the Massachusetts Constitution and General Laws. It’s a sort of mix and match arrangement that shifts when the spirit moves somebody. Former Town Counsel Mike Curran tried to codify the mess with what he called an Existing Charter but although he did a good job it never stuck. We tried a Charter Commission but so many people were busy keeping their nests feathered that it never really got off the ground. Sorry to bring that up Allen. I’m told that the Selectmen put together a Guide Book that they use but like a medieval bible it is probably chained up somewhere. So we fall back on the Divine Right of Unchartered Government – that is, if God didn’t want them to govern they wouldn’t have won their elections. Easy as that.

Another question. Why do we need a drinking water treatment plant and what happened 14 years ago? Part one – I don’t know. Part two - back in that day there was a scare spread about our water bills becoming greater than our tax bills. During the panic a site in the Fowl Meadow – Major’s Island – just a mound in the wetlands was identified as a source of pure clean “drinking water quality coming out of the ground” water to thwart the MWRA menace. Over the years there have been numerous health questions, legal challenges and restrictions, engineering problems and finally the discovery that the Major’s Island/Well#9 water was not all that clean and it’s ph factor made it incompatible with the MWRA water we blend with town water when we can pump town water.

My question is – what is the status of Well #9? After 14 years have we put a shovel in the ground? Are we digging/drilling to see what we will be getting out of that site? Will it produce the 1.1 million gallons per day that we expect? For how long? Are we proposing a drinking water plant to treat MWRA water that is already some of the best in the country? We have been drinking MWRA water for years – what again is the problem? Just for chuckles I use a Brita water filter pitcher to polish the jewel. Magnificent. It makes no sense.

Another question - what is the big deal about “protecting the environment” in the Fowl Meadow? It is a swamp! Friend, Swamp is a unique flavor of ice cream at Hilliard’s. If you are looking for a good old fashioned Bailey’s style ice cream shop go to Hilliard’s at the Village Shoppes in Canton. If you are looking for a unique environmental, ecological, archeological, historical and recreation site go to the Fowl Meadow. To get a better answer see the attached flyer.

If liberty, equality and family ring a bell with you then go to Town Hall on Thursday, July 16^th at 7 pm and attend the Zoning Board of Appeals meeting. No need to Storm the Bastille but we should make it clear that we have a voice in the running of our town. Good luck to all of us.