Wednesday, October 13, 2010

UPDATED: A few October observations

UPDATE to number 3 below. The mayor just announced that the city received a 2.5 million dollar grant for the Blaney Street pier expansion, in addition to the previous grant. You heard it here first.



1. The Bizarre Bazaar is nothing but a giant crap fair.

2. Some idiot threw a cinder block through the Salem Chamber of Commerce window last night, and stole the executive director's laptop. I wonder, was there any confidential or personally identifiable information on it?

3. The mayor recently announced that the city received a 1.3 million dollar grant from the Seaport Advisory Council, the lion's share of which will be used for improvements to the Blaney Street pier. I think it's nice that the city has such grand plans for the pier, but to date we've shown a very limited ability to even do the little things at that location.

When the Salem Ferry started the land was cleaned up, a pedestrian walkway put in, and wooden parking markers placed throughout. Fast forward to the first snowstorm the following winter, and the Salem plow trucks uprooted and destroyed both the path markers, and a good chunk of the parking space markers as well. Go down there right now, and see how overgrown with weeds and shrubs the pedestrian walkway is, during our biggest tourist month, and one of the busiest ferry months. Over the years since the city started leasing this land, it has continually had several abandoned cars, is constantly strewn with nip bottles and beer bottles, broken and not, fishermen constantly leave dead fish on the rocks, used condoms and underwear can frequently be found, people have been seen naked, engaged in sex acts both behind the ferry trailer, and in the old trolley info booth, and let's not forget our own version of the Montauk monster, which washed up on the pier. Finally, this pier is a constant meeting place for people meeting those who are not their spouses, and drug deals can be frequently witnessed here. So, if the city can't deal with those problems, or the sinkholes that appear every year, how do we expect them to care for it when it's paved, and has a permanent structure?


4. Bill Hudak has come out swinging in the wake of Congressman Tierney's family scandal. He just released his first TV ad. View it below. (Open this post for best viewing.)





Now, I'm not sure that there was any actual tax evasion here, but there may be. Much of this money was taxed as personal "commission" income, it sounds like, rather than business profit. Not sure if there's a net gain there, but the rest appears to be pretty spot on, especially JT's love of tax increases.

1 comment:

  1. Re: the Blaney St. Pier

    You also forgot that for several years, the city has put out multiple trash barrels along the walkway. Now there is just one near Macky's place and it is constantly overflowing. This causes people to litter all along the street. Just the other day I counted at least 6 drink/food containers stuck along the bushes of the VFW. Talk about a bad first impression for the city.

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