Happy New Year, honeybunch. Here we are jest days since the calendar changed from 2024 to 2025. It seems like jest yesterday, we were all worried about Y2K, and whether all the computers in captivity were gonna go belly up. A quarter of a century has passed since then. Go figger. A lotta water has passed under the bridge – and sometimes over it.
In these parts the New Year came with quite the light show that Momma Nature decided to give us. Usually in my neighborhood, New Year’s Eve partying turns into early morning fireworks displays and booms all over the place. This year, we didn’t need the manufactured kind o’ booms cuz the thunderstorms we had that night were quite something. Now, as Iyam scribing this note, we are hearing rumblings of a polar vortex (something we didn’t hear of until jest a few years ago it seems) that is gonna barrel down from the North Pole and make it a verry cold January, indeed. We shall see, but whilst I am scribbling this, the north winds are enuff to knock you offen yore tootsies effen you’re not careful.
Here in the Asylum by the Sea, things were rather quiet as the year ended, but there are some very interesting things coming outta the Actors Colony and setch that makes one see that the years may change, but some things in our corner of the world stay the same.
Sammy Bluejay came onto the sill t’other afternoon to discuss the recent firing of a City Hall worker who was discovered to have fraudulently reimbursed one’s self for things that were never attended. As with setch things, yew might git away with it once or twice, but dip in that well too many times, and the chances of getting caught rise. And they did!
Said employee was brought into the mayor’s office and summarily released from said position. That’s a difficult thing to happen jest before the holidays, but such a thought obviously didn’t occur to the former employee. And Sammy brought up a good pernt.
Here we are in the midst of trying to tie up the many loose ends that allowed a massive fraud of fed’ral dollars being embezzled by a once-trusted cadre of individuals, some of whom are still guests of said fed’ral government in a secure facility. With all the changes being made in procedures and the like, it would seem one should think twice or thrice about pulling off scams like this, given the current atmosphere. But, no.
When it comes to skullduggery, it seems there are some people who are convinced in their own ability to dodge the consequences – until they are not.
The fack the powers that be in the Actors Colony made the thing public and summarily axed the former employee shows the seriousness there is in trying to root out such abuses. In fack, you will notice in these very pages there are mini stories and pictures of various projecks beging funded by federal funds. Well, once the reasons fer that is the fack that the embezzlement controversy showed that putting things out in public is a good way of keeping said public informed where their money is going.
That was not the case in decades past.
One this is certain, the culture that City Hall has had over these many years is on the verge of changing, and carrying everyone with it kicking and screaming. The MARB made the toxic culture over there a target, and was rebuffed at every turn, even though many people believed it was a necessary step.
Now, the word has gone out and should put everyone on notice that things are changing. That’s a good thing – probably the best thing that can happen in City Hall in our long tenure.
~~~
Jest an aside. Before Christmas our esteemed editor had the misfortune of his cell phone dying. What a nightmare. Anone who has gone into an emporium that sells such things knows it can take some time, and then they are gonna try to sell you the top brand at the top price.
Getting a new phone was hassle enuff, but the real difficulty was in trying to revive the old phone so stuff could be taken off it – like contacts and other things. Sure enuff, the phone entered the gates of greater life, and couldn’t be revived. All his contacts were lost.
In the old days we kep’ phone numbers in pads fer setch things. Now, we keep everything electronically. One step forward, two steps back. He’s still recovering his contacts, and it’s gonna be a slog. Modern technology is a wonderous thing – when it works.
~~~
And Nelly Nuthatch visited during the holidays and we got talkin’ about the various projecks Herronner announced over the previous few days. One of the things that caught everyone’s eye was that the former Masonic Temple is gonna be repurposed and not become the arts center that has been fallow for the last decade-and-a-half. Effen there was ever a metaphor for the way this berg makes grand announcements, only to have the projecks heralded dry up and float away, it was this one.
What is going to be done with the building is that it will be converted into some type of meeting space. It was noted in the announcement that meeting space is at a premium in City Hall, and there is need for some other locale where meetings can be held. This building might be well suited to that.
Cobina is gonna put her oars in this one for the same reason she did way back when the project was announced. There was a pipe organ in the building as was the custom for Masonic spaces and even Elks halls of a certain period. The organ was built by Harry Hall of Hall organ, which once stood right next to the railroad tracks on Campbell Avenue. It was closed during the depression.
Now Hall organs weren’t the greatest of instruments, but they are part o’ the fabric o’ this city. That small organ is jest a part, and should be preserved.
Meanwhile, things are planned not only for downtown, but for Allingtown as well.
We have a few queries. Foist, whatever happened to the Enterprise Zone on the West River? While a couple of current businesses got benefits from it, the much-heralded bio-med facilities and the like never really got off the drawing board. In fact, they never really got ON to the drawing board.
The other question is, what about the reconstruction of the bridges on I-95? Any plans for development might be affected by that lit’le projeck, which was announced and the subjeck of public meetings last summer. Here we are entering the a new year, and the ballyhooed projeck was supposed to begin weeks if not months ago. So, where does that stand?
~~~
Iva Lootey fluttered in t’other day and he noted that nothing is being done at the former Haven location. It’s just sitting there as it has for about a year now, totally torn down and the debris moved away. We are now more than a decade past its being announced as a high-end shopping mall – when malls were closing left and right. The Haven Group, a cabal of Empire State mucky-mucks halted the projeck – much as everyone thought they would – and have not let anyone know what the status of the property is.
Sure, there have been rumors – plenty of them – but not much in the way of info. Herronner has been trying to get details, but we understand she is being rebuffed as well. Methinks it’s time to raise a bit of a ruckus with the developers. The time for being nice ended a while ago, years in fact. They have treated us as if we come from the provinces and don’t need any more information than they are willing to give. Meanwhile, the residents in the neighborhood have to put up with the developers’ decisions.
The only thing nice about the site right now is it gives a great view of the harbor, but that is little compensation for a decade of neglect.
~~~
Of course, one of the issues that percolated jest before the holidays was the mailing out of the new revaluation notices to city homeowners. To say the home market is “inflated” is quiet the understatement. It’s not dealing in reality. And, we’re old enuff to remember when this has happened in the past and it’s not been good.
People are seeing their property values explode because of inflation and outside factors, and we jest hope things don’t git super-heated like they did almost 40 years ago. That market collapsed and people had values that collapsed with them.
People are upset with the revaluations and have a right to be, but things aren’t gonna be better until some type of cap is put on the amount of increase an owner can see because of the volatility of the market. This city is still feeling the effects of 1988. We don’t wanna see that happen again.
~~~
Finally, didja see over the holiday that Rosa DeLauro Greenberg, our batty congresswoman with the purple hair, made herself a laughing stock? Rosa is known for saying whatever her party wants her to say made quite the show when she talked about “Preside Musk,” the most recent talking pernt by the soon-to-be out of power party.
The discussion was so out of it, that some news outlets were wondering effen she still had all her marbles. Some of us have wondered that, too!
It’s jest amazing that our congressional delegation in the Nutmeg State has such looney tunes, headed by Rosa, and, of course, our two senators, Rosencranz and Gildenstern.
With that bit o’ chatter, I’ll close mitt luff und kizzez,
Leave a Reply