Ignored Facts Are Still Facts

To the Editor:

Ignoring the facts doesn’t change the facts. Recent letters and editorials in The Bee offer no solutions to the ineffective management of Newtown’s expenditures. Writers of these submittals underestimate the intelligence of their neighbors cloaking themselves in their own mask of civility while launching pejorative comments as tirades intended to brand the IPN as “whining babies,” “mean,” and “nasty.”

How do these missives solve Newtown’s lost decade of poor strategic planning and costly mistakes? The facts are the facts.

Newtowners, proud neighbors of the Blue Ribbon School of Excellence that is St Rose of Lima, once had that distinction bestowed on its high school. The past decade has seen that high school become overcrowded and placed on warning from NEASC. A $40 million-plus expansion probably won’t accommodate students and staff comfortably going into the next decade. Many homebuyers, and sellers, appreciate an excellent school system as an added value to their potential transaction. We’re fortunate St Rose has exercised its own potential and, IPN candidates possess the knowledge and expertise to guide our public school system back to the Blue Ribbon caliber it has lost over the past ten years.

The town was implored to set aside land/buildings at FFH for a potential new school, and, not one elected/appointed official, except IPN LC members, advocated such action.

Hundreds of Newtowners voiced their dissatisfaction at spending millions on a new town hall. They were ignored by elected/appointed officials and what was once a $6 million project, deemed integral to attract new businesses that would expand the town’s commercial tax base, is now a $12 million white elephant that has not attracted any new businesses.

In fact, Pitney Bowes is poised to abandon its second facility in Newtown ultimately erasing a large contributor to the tax rolls. Why didn’t Victorinix choose Newtown for its new international headquarters? Why is the Batchelder brownfield site still vacant? Guess who will be stimulating our town’s economy? You and I, because the town has mismanaged itself for the past ten years.

Why are our tax dollars designated for town use in the Department of Public Works being diverted to develop FFH? Why is the cost of man hours and town equipment being withheld?

Why do Democratic and Republican candidates continually demonize anyone who asks such questions as uncivil and, when offering solutions, castigate them?

Where have these representatives been for the past six–ten years?

Last week’s editorial located some erudite quotes defining civility. Perhaps Einstein’s quote defining insanity as repeating the same mistakes looking for different results would have been apropos. Or, as I recall the famous philosopher and New York Knick Michael Ray Richardson, when asked about his team’s downward spiral, responded, “The ship be sinking!”

Our ship isn’t sinking, merely listing. That’s a fact. IPN candidates have the knowledge and foresight to right the ship and lead the town to its rightful place as one of the country’s best towns to live in.

Sincerely,

Robert Hennessey

IPN candidate for

Legislative Council-District 1

21 Sleepy Hollow Road, Sandy Hook                 September 20, 2009