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| May 19, 2006 Barnstable Patriot |  |
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Following in the
footsteps
To answer Cynthia Cole's
question about who will re-
place Paul Drouin (May 12
Patriot } - the answer is Tom
Holmes, Sr. will.
Why. you ask? For the
same reasons Paul did. I was
born and raised in Hyannis. I
remember what it was when
localpeople ranthe town and
lived here. I know what it
could be and should be. not
the "I am here one day and
gone the next day" crowd.
What people call Hyannis
and what Hyannis really
is are two different things.
What happens in Hyannis af-
fects the tax rate and services
in the rest of the so-called
"City of Barnstable. "
Hyannis shouldn't be the
place to walk your dog. stop,
then go home. I will do my
best to change this attitude
about Hyannis.
We should work with the
people of Osterville. not
against them. For that is our
real industrial park. They
employ more people , pay
better wages than Indepen-
dence Park does year round
year after year.
Here 's to a better town
of Barnstable and village of
Hyannis.
Tom Holmes , Sr.
Hyannis
Hell keep speaking
out
In reference to my partici-
pation at the town council
meeting on Thursday, May
11, 1 was gaveled down sev-
eral times on points of or-
der by President Farnham
and both members from
Marstons Mills - Curtis and
Barton.
I speak truthfully when I
share my thoughts at public
comment and I guess the
truth is too painful for some
to hear.
Overcrowded housing is
eroding the economy of the
town on Olde Cape Cod.
Along with many others, I
wish to see some concrete
CONTINUED ON PAGE A: 11
~LETTERS
~
By Michael Daley
columnist@barnstablepatnot.com
Barnstable 's charter requires a limited number of
leaders. It was designed to allow the elected members
of our Town Council to do it all or to enable them to farm
out research and policy development to multi-member
bodies that the councilors create.
One of the selling points when the charter was mar-
keted was the concept of acontinuously sittinglegislative
body. We don't have periodic town meetings where we
attack every topic under the bigtent of local government
all at once. Unlike other Cape communities, our local
government is always at the ready to address issues and
solve problems. At least that's the theory behind our
municipal organization.
For more than a year, there has been an active effort
to resolve the issue of overcrowded occupancies of in-
dividual dwelling units in Barnstable. The issues range
from public health to public safety with a bunch of plain
old quality of life issues thrown in to complicate matters.
Our local rules and regulations need improvement.Ability
to regulate and enforce is the issue identified by staff.
Solutions have been devised and draft legislationis on
the table. The matter took up a considerable portion of
the most recent town council
meeting. The meeting s lead-
ers and presenters did not
presume to expect a deci-
sion to be reached last week.
The expectation is that the
legislation gets a full review;
some final fine-tuning takes
place and the legislation goes
forward to a vote. After over
a year, the effort should be
winding down.
The meeting last week brought home a new trend that
appears to be making its way into this council. More
and more I am watching and hearing our elected lead-
ers display a tendency to putting off being leaders and
deferring hard choices into an expanding bureaucracy.
Earlier this season our daily paper run a story about
how a volunteer board had been tasked with the charge
of hunting down fat in the Town Manager 's budget.
Fat in municipal budgets is a luxury long gone. Yet our
senior elected leader is convinced it exists and is even
further off base when he suggests a bunch of volunteers
will ferret it out. I'm still waiting with great anticipation
for the divulging of this fat-finding mission'sresults. I'm
sure I'll be disappointed with the results.
Last week,there were at least two council members who
pushed hard to increase the use of volunteer committee
members. The regulations before the council last week
are the work product of more than a year of staff and
legislators ' efforts. They have not worked in a vacuum.
The work done to date is impressive. (Some neighbor-
hoods may disagree with me.) The neighborhoods all
over town that are afflicted with this problem are still
waiting. Yet, here come more leaders who can't seem
to commit to a hard vote. They want to ship a problem
off to volunteer committees for more input. How much
more time and contemplation is needed? Would another
summer be enough? Perhaps the volunteers are as busy
as are most of you in the summer. They may need to do
the work in the fall. Next winter might be a good time
to take a vote on this. It appears that some may like it
if it never comes to a vote.
We have elected these people to be our leaders. We
all want them to succeed and do good things for us.
There are many of us willingto serve in any number of
ways. This fact is supported via the large number of
appointed residents serving the community and/or on
lists to serve.
While volunteers are nice, they are not the leaders we
elected. Let's hope that our elected leaders start lead-
ing and stop this trend of following. Especially when
neighborhoods need quick action.
Councilors can't shift
burden of decisions
RETROSPECTIVES FROM THE ARCHIVES
BARNSTABLt PAIRIOI PHOIO AKCHIVfcS
WELL REGULATED- Theveriticality of SturgisLibrary inthe mid20thcentury
Isstriking. Ourfilephoto reads "Sturgis Librarian/Mrs Marie D." Wewelcome
your information and recollections at editor@barnstablepatriot.com.
ACROSS TIME 6PLACE
1C0RNER
I
_I
_ wmtsmsmmtBy Paul Gauvin
The
522-foot
tank land-
ing ship
Barnstable
County and 10th Con-
gressionalDistrict Re-
publican candidate Jeff Beatty of Harwich
have something in common: They both
participated in 1983's "Operation Urgent
Fury," the three-or-so day invasion of Gre-
nada ordered by then-Commander in Chief
Ronald Reagan to thwart the spread of
Marxism in the Caribbean .
During the brief conflict , the Barnstable
County and Manitowoc landed at Grand
Mai beach , just north of St. George's, and
disgorged Marines of Golf Co., 13 amphibi-
ous vehicles and five tanks, and departed
unscathed.
Beatty wasn't as fortunate. He was with an
assault troop of elite Delta Forcecommandos
aboard a Blackhawk helicopter in an effort
to free political prisoners at mountaintop
Richmond Hill Prison, as a subset mission
to rescue 1,000 American students,when the
chopper was downed by enemy fire.
Author and Army Lt. Col. Lewis H. Bur-
russ (ret. ), Beatty 's deputy commander at
the time, wrote last week that Beatty "was
leading his Delta Force troop in a heliborne
assault on a heavily fortified prison in an
attempt to free the legitimate rulers of
Grenada who had been overthrown by a
Cuban-inspired Marxist coup.
"I was there. When our operations of-
ficer, then-Major William G. Boykin, who is
now a lieutenant general and the Deputy
Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence ,
was critically wounded during the same as-
sault, we needed a capable officer to take
over his duties in the middle of the combat
operation.
"At my request , in spite of his wounds, Jeff
Beatty took over and did an outstandingjob.
In fact , I put him in for a medal for his ac-
tions at the helicopter crash site in which he
was wounded , and for doing an outstanding
job as operations officer for the remainder
of the combat operation and for a time after
our return to Fort Bragg."
The Barnstable County was decommis-
sioned June 29, 1994, and turned over to the
Spanish Navy and renamed Hernan Cortez
L-41.A bronze plaque that had been mounted
on the ship's starboard quarterdeck now
hangs in the office of the Barnstable County
commissioners.
Beatty has now taken on a different kind
of assault by running as a Republican to
unseat U.S. Rep. William Delahunt , who
also has an Independent opponent in Peter
White , of Yarmouth.
Beatty appeared before the Barnstable
Republican Town Committee recently and
while he touched briefly on his military ex-
ploits , it was his work as a counter-terrorism
and security expert with the FBI, CIA and
in the private sector that garnered much of
the attention because he gave his audience
comforting assurances that terrorists "are
not 10 feet tall."
Beatty "met and recruited" terrorists and
spoke of a dinner meeting with one who was
"way better than the people I was working
with," as far as training and commitment
were concerned, "but also could be turned
around to work for us."
Beatty was set to leave the Army and join
the ranks of CIA when the FBI borrowed him
to help lead its National Hostage Rescue
Team for the 1984 Olympics that were boy-
cotted by Russia, East Germany and Cuba
among others and where, for the first time
since 1932, China participated.
He founded TotalSecurity US and has been
working with corporations and other enti-
ties on security issues long enough to have
a studied overview of the terrorism threat.
His take on terrorists:
They select targets of iconic value, that
make a statement , create fear, have a pro-
found economic impact and civilian casu-
alties and those with which they are likely
to have success. Like thieves , they "case"
potential targets, practice the attack with
dry runs, then release it.
His Rx for all Americans to deal with ter-
rorismisfirst to understand the enemy,listen
to him, then be alert to his processes. He
cites the evidently unobserved and ridicu-
lously apparent idea of grown men wanting
to learn to fly airliners without learning to
land them.
Campaign rhetoric aside, he has an in-
teresting take on terrorism to share. Local
clubs and groups looking for speakers ought
to take advantage of it. They can reach him
at www.Beattyforcongress.com
County warship,
candidate have
something in
common
FRf M THE
SENATE
k By Sen. Rob O Leary
Since passage of the Education Re-
form Act of 1993, which established the
current Chapter 70 funding formula ,
residents of the Cape and Islands have
been disheartened about the inequi-
ties of this '•reform. " Parents , local
officials and community activists have
repeatedly called for a more equitable
funding level, but , as many of you know,
these demands have largely gone unac-
knowledged. In the pas.t most urban
legislators dismissed our concerns as
coming from wealthy communities rife
with expensive second homes.
Governor Romney, too , has been
largely indifferent to our arguments
about school funding concerns. Like
many legislators , he saw no further
than our reput ation as a summer re-
sort community. He mentally lumped
together our towns with wealthy subur-
ban communities , and ignored the fact
that Chapter 70 funding formula simply
does not accurately reflect our regional
needs. The evidence: his proposed
Chapter 70 reforms in his FY'07 budget
would result in less school funding for
most Cape towns, not more.
I have been working diligently since
my first day in office to get the message
across to my colleagues that the Cape
and Islands suffer from high property
values, a history of substantial growth.
and low median incomes, all or
which drive down our share of educa-
tion funding from the state. This puts
our schools in a situation where good
teachers are being laid off, and families
have to pay fees for everything from
kindergarten to sports and music to
school transportation. However, at last
we are seeing some momentum towards
reform. With the release of its budget
proposal this week, the state Senate
has made a commitment to address the
flawed education funding formula.
This Wednesday, the state Senate
unveiled a reform package that makes
strides towards fixing the flawed
Chapter 70 education funding formula
seeking to address adequacy, equity
and predictability in school funding.
Under this reform legislation , many
school districts will receive millions
in additional educational assistance
fundin gfrom the Commonwealth.These
changes will allow schools to hire more
teachers , decrease class size, and focus
on educating our children.
The reform will increase Chapter
70 aid statewide by $200 million this
year, and change the funding formula
to give more weight to the aggregate
incomes of a community. This is benefi-
C0NTINUED ON PAGE A:14
Finally, a first step
toward education
funding reform