Seven Villages, Janet Joakim

priorities or responsiblities – schwaab clearly doesn’t understand a town councilor’s responsiblity

Eric Schwaab wants you to believe that he wants to be a councilor, yet he doesn’t think a councilors job is worth doing….. 

This Thursday, the town council will have a special meeting to conduct public hearings on 12 requests for Community Preservation Funding.  These public hearings are a culmination of work done per the Community Preservation Act, voted in by you, the residents of this town.

I would much rather be writing about how our hard-working CPC committee realized that they needed to design a schedule to accommodate this process rather than bring forth items here and there throughout the year– and about how they have developed an application process and hold public hearings in order to prepare for the meeting this Thursday.

Or how many different individuals, groups, organizations and our staff have worked on preparing applications making presentations and putting on public hearings  leading up to the meeting.

But I am posting tonight because of a scheduling conflict and a disturbing post by Eric Scwhaab that I came across while dealing with this conflict.

The Greater Hyannis Area Civic Association has scheduled a candidates night for the same evening as our special meeting.

Both meetings were scheduled in the mid summer. An article about this issue was posted by David Still on the Barnstable Patriot Website – on their Dot Commons section which allows readers to post responses. This response was by Eric Schwaab and reads as follows:

The debate is on
Written by ; eschwaab , on 09-24-2007 06:20
I spoke with Hyannis Civic yesterday and the debate will be held as scheduled this Thursday at HyWest at 7 PM. 
 
This is our regular meeting. 
 
I understand that there are some on the Council who are in a hurry to build an airport terminal which no one wants. There are others to chose to ignore the growing influence of Hyannis Civic. 
 
The debate will move forward as planned and we expect the Councilors who chose to ignore this debate will suffer at the polls in November. 
 
The current Council has already spent an awful lot of our money. Maybe they should take a break from their spending spree and sit down and talk with some voters. I think they’ll find that not everyone is happy with their priorities. 
 
See you on Thursday night at HyWest @ 7 PM. Tell your friends that we expect a good turnout. 
 
Eric Schwaab 
Candidate for Town Council 
Precinct 3 – Hyannis

Does Mr. Schwaab understand that this meeting was not set up to vote on the airport issue? Does he know that we are hearing CPC items that affect his village of Hyannis and this town as a whole?

Does he understand the legal issues involved in posted public hearings?

Does he KNOW what the Community Preservation Act is? Does he know that you voted for it and we must follow the laws that it dictates? (Of course maybe he doesn’t because it was voted in before he bought his summer house three years ago, and before he changed his residency from Boston to Hyannis 3 months ago…)

Does he respect the town council, the town charter and the will of the voters? 

This post is insulting to all of the people who have prepared for the meeting on Thursday night.

This is insulting to the councilors who were elected to do this job, and who will sit through all of these public hearings, listen to the public, ask questions of the staff and who take their responsibility seriously.

It is insulting to the councilors who are running for reelection and want to participate in debates, but have decided that their priority is their elected responsibility.

 After consulting our town attorneys, the laws, the charter, rules and more we offered to open our town council meeting Thursday night and recess for a half hour, beginning the meeting at 7:30 in hopes that the civic association would somehow compromise and begin their meeting early to allow the councilors to participate before the meeting on Thursday. Any changes more significant that this need to be posted and hand delivered to councilors within 48 hours, legal parametors apply here.

Yes, we will be voting on a resolution regarding the airport, but that is just one small added part to this meeting.

Mr. Schwaab might know this if he cared enough to look at an agenda, or actually consider what a councilor’s true responsibilities are. He also might know which properties and groups in Hyannis are asking for CPC funding…. and consider supporting those people.

No, we don’t set bus fees or design the school budget, that is the school committee.  No, we don’t hire and fire staff. We are legislators and that is a job with specific responsibilities-

 Schwaab has stated he wants his newly adopted town to vote for a mayoral form of goverment. The process to even put this type of change on a ballot for voters will take months to bring forward via a charter commission, if a charter commission is passed this November. In this election he is, however, running to serve as a councilor with respect to the current charter…. would he actually be willing to serve as elected? 

The charter is online. The law’s that dictate public hearings of legislative bodies is detailed in the Mass General Laws available online- Mr. Schwaab’s good friend and the proud scout who drafted him to run, Gary Lopez, can tell him where to find this information.

 Eric Schwaab still needs to do a little homework.