Complaints are legion about the quality and quantity of development in Peabody. Yet seemingly little attention is paid to the fact that the most influential body in determining who builds what where is the City Council.
It's the council that has the final say on zoning policy, and it's the council that largely rules on exceptions to those policies via the special-permit process. And there's seemingly no end to members' desire to consolidate their power.
Recent fears over the possibility a special permit granted for a bank drive-through on Route 1 might be turned to some other purpose prompted Councilor at large Jim Liacos to ask the city's lawyer to draw up a new ordinance requiring council approval anytime a property for which a permit was granted changes hands. So if Bank X becomes Bank Y, it's back to the council.
If you like the way downtown Peabody looks now, or think driving on Lynnfield or Lowell streets is a breeze, call your councilor to offer your thanks. If not, well you ought to know who to blame.
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A confused Salem City Council has decided it needs to pay someone $7,000 a year to analyze the city budget for its members. In most towns this job is performed by members of a finance committee; and unlike the good councilors, they don't receive any salary and aren't eligible for benefits either.
And then there's the fact voters rejected a proposed charter change several years ago that would have authorized the creation of a financial analyst's position. It's not like the city is in a better position to afford it now.
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Pension outrage of the week: There was a familiar name on a recent list of "double-dipping" school administrators compiled by The Boston Globe. Peabody's Herbert Levine, the former superintendent of schools in Salem, is supplementing his $116,000-a-year pension with a $130,000-a-year salary as head of the Blackstone-Millville Regional School District.
Readers may recall that back in 2004 Levine's scheme to both collect his pension and continue leading the Salem school system in a "consulting" capacity, was thwarted when the plan became public before he'd had a chance to line up the votes he needed on the School Committee.
Meanwhile, that former Weymouth mayor who sought to pad his pension by returning — for a couple of days — to his old post as fire chief, has suffered a reverse. The town's retirement board, under pressure from the state, rescinded its decision to allow him to calculate his pension using the chief's pay rather than the salary he'd earned as mayor for the previous eight years — a difference of about $30,000.
Daniel Madden, 53, says he plans to appeal however; so stay tuned.
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Some recommended summer reading: Brooklyn-based author Theodore Hamm has a new book out on the progressive alternatives to right-wing radio talk shows and cable TV called "The New Blue Media."
One of his subjects is the satiric Onion which ran the following prophetic headline over its story on the current president's first inaugural in January 2001: "Bush: Our Long National Nightmare of Peace and Prosperity Is Finally Over."
And belatedly, we'd suggest readers have a look at WBZ-TV political commentator Jon Keller's "The Bluest State: How Democrats Created the Massachusetts Blueprint for American Political Disaster." Think Big Dig and John Kerry's campaign for president.
Says Keller of those now in control on Beacon Hill: "They cannot comprehend the idea that most citizens will pay their fair share without complaint, but not without limit, and most assuredly not without a sense that their money is well spent and their generosity is not exploited. ... And they cannot countenance the thought that tax resistance might be a backlash of the working classes against elites who take them for chumps, and don't know or care how difficult life is in one of America's costliest states."
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Nelson Benton writes on North Shore politics.
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