Friday, May 26, 2006

This and that

We're everywhere: There’s nearly a TM quorum in this week's Bulletin: a profile of Irvin Rhodes, Arnie Alper helping the Survival Center, Frank Gatti and Eleanor Manire-Gatti sending e-mail from Iran, Larry Kelley’s karate video, some weird blogger, a column by Paul Bobrowski, a column by “the triumvirate” -- Clare Bertrand, Andy Churchill and Baer Tierkel. That doesn’t even include the article about Monday’s TM session. Or the Police log. (Oh relax – it’s a joke.)

Thanks to Eva: Some helpful clarifications from Eva Schiffer on a couple of references in my post about Wednesday’s meeting. Quoted from her e-mail, with permission:

“Special Town Meeting -- adjourned till after Art. 34:
The Community Preservation Act Committee recommends projects (in separate articles this year) on a) open space, b) affordable housing, c) historical preservation, and d) recreation. Their recommendation on open space got left off the main warrant by mistake. This (as you guessed) was the only way to get it considered during this budget cycle.

"Assistant Town Manager position: eliminated during the budget crisis of the early '90s.

"Treasurer: John Musante's predecessor, Nancy Maglione, was Director of Administration and Finance; in addition, we had a treasurer/collector. Both retired in the same year. John was then appointed Finance Director/Treasurer; in addition, a new collector, Clare McGinnis, was appointed. These are all enormously complex and responsible jobs.”

Attendance update: Out of 244 TM members (the total before the last meeting) 104 have been to all six sessions and 12 haven’t been to any yet. Everyone else is between those two extremes.

Small structural changes: The red post titles are now linked to bring up that post, with its comments (if it has any) on a separate page. To get back to the main page, either hit your “back” button, or click the “Stephanie’s Town Meeting Experience” title at the top, or the little "<< home" thing at the bottom. Also, at the end of each post, I’ve tried to make it a little more obvious how to comment by making the comment link more prominent. Do let me know if there are other tweaks that you think might improve things.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

The 'red post titles' are orange on my browser (Safari on OSX) and also your picture always comes up distorted, kind of like a funny mirror at an amusement park. Still, I'm not complaining...your blog is the best part of Town Meeting this year! Thanks, & keep up the good work.

Jim

Stephanie O'Keeffe said...

You know,I thought the picture was all distorted on my end too. But then I looked in the mirror...

It definitely does look a bit different on different systems and different monitors -- colors in particular. Alas.

Many thanks for all your kind words, and for being an active commenter!