VIVA LA REVOLUCION

CLICK ON CARTOON!!

It sounds so bizarre to hear a Mayor for a municipality anywhere in the United States in the year 2010 have to make a statement that the "GAG ORDER HAS BEEN LIFTED". Just imagine the absolute terror Correia the Destroyer tried to instill in every department head at Fall River City Hall. They all knew they'd better darn well do as he said or they'd be out of jobs. This swine was a bully, pure and simple. I sincerely hope that all those on the City Council who carried his water understand how deeply their reputations and future prospects for election in this City will forever be damaged because of their staunch support for all things Correia. And you deserve it. Especially this idiot salesman Joey Camara.  I mean, how spineless must the other members of the City Council be NOT to elect someone else President of the City Council. Sorry Joey, you will forever own the only title you deserve...CORREIA'S BUTT-BOY !!!

Only the most dim of this City's bulbs could not see what this clown Correia was from the very beginning. His reputation of being a Neanderthal"ish" cretin has been known at the State House for decades, from day 1 in his service. It's so unfortunate that people from Fall River who never venture from the boundries of this City never hear what is said about some of our representatives to the Great and General Court. If you got out of the house  , so to speak, you would have known that those who had any dealings with him, or knew of him,  would tell you that every horror story connected to this guy we are now hearing are  NOT a surprise to them. Not at all. In fact, more horror stories are likely coming your way thanks to the mental meanderings on the dark side of one Ol' Hamhocks LaRue.

 WE just have to give Mayor Flanagan a few months to sort out all of this guy's, his staff's and supporter's misdeeds before making any kind of lasting judgement about the new Mayor. Imagine how tired Mayor Flanagan is tonight! How his head must be spinning just thinking about all the rumors he's heard about life under the Great Pretender. He was probably AMAZED to see the AMOUNT of obvious relief on the faces of his department heads about lifting this Gag Order! A whole bunch of what some people reported as sullen, rude behavior on the part of City Hall employees was probably directly related to not having the freedom to answer questions and actually do their jobs. And as I write this all I can keep thinking about is how GUILTY Correia must have been feeling for things he was doing, or knew he was about to do, to throw up such a blanket blockade of information. Oh, I'm quite sure his apologists will say this was done to have only "ONE voice speak for his administration and to make sure accurrate information was given to the public, and blah, blah, blah..." Yeah, I worked in municipal government for years, I know the excuse! This was nothing more than a control, a blatant power move. It was like a dog urinating on your lawn to mark it as his territory, nothing more. No, if there is some kind of combination possible of the legal concept of what is called "Conciousness of Guilt" and what in a psychological sense was an effort to conceal the true essence of Bobbo and what evil he had up his sleve, this gag order was a reflection of that.  I promise you all, we are going to keep hearing nasty things about what this chump pulled as the days and weeks and months roll by! It's going to be bad business indeed. Like I have already said on this blog, he was nothing more than an "ID" with shoes.
Now the chickens are coming home to roost, or be fired, as the case may be. Resignations would reflect a sense of honest pride , something we all now know was sorely lacking in Correia and his supporters. Like the City he was elected to run and onto which he hung a self mocking motto, "Pride City Wide", I'm sure he never felt pride for what he had done here as mayor. But I also do not think him capable of feeling shame either. An ID with shoes, a real budding sociopath, indeed. A politician totally devoid of a soul.

I say VIVA LA REVOLUCION! Between this news and the announcement of the DEATH of the "Pride, City Wide" motto and City Seal, plus the expungement of all traces of The Great Pretender from the City's web site, we may have turned a critical corner for recovery of Fall River's soul. PEOPLE WILL ACTUALLY SMILE TOMORROW MORNING AND NOT KNOW WHY! But they soon will. VIVA LA REVOLUCION! The streets will spontaneously fill with cheering throngs marching down Pleasant Street, South Main Street, North Main Street, Robeson Street and Plymouth Ave., all headed for City Hall! VIVA LA REVOLUCION! Fire engines and police cars with their sirens blaring and their strobes on will circle City Hall as Fall River officials, once kept under lock and key and virtual indentured servitude by the Great Tyrant Correia will be hoisted upon the shoulders of THE PEOPLE and carried to the top of City Hall steps to make impassioned speachess declaring the City's freedom from the clutches of the dreaded, ham handed oppressor Correia. Someone will pass out large yellow beach balls with photo's of Correia attached with the crowd exorted to "Pound the Grapefruit" in "honor" of the toppled dictator in his Florida exile! And finally, Mayor Flanagan will lead the crowd in the chant they all came to hear...

VIVA LA REVOLUCION!

VIVA LA REVOLUCION!

VIVA LA REVOLUCION!

VIVA LA REVOLUCION!

VIVA LA REVOLUCION!

VIVA LA REVOLUCION!

Well...I can dream, can't I?......   :)

"WHAT DID THEY KNOW, AND WHEN DID THEY KNOW IT ?"

(from AnnMartin: Narrative Art On Paper)

WATERGATE

The  Senate Select Committee on

Presidential Campaign Activities whose every move was recorded by television cameras in 1973.

 This is a look at a drawing of The Committee Table, Watergate

Washington, D.C.

1973

Today, on WSAR, ex-City Councilor Ray Hague stated that he knew of the deficit  in the Sewer Enterprise Fund as early as June last year.There are also rumors abounding that he may be in line for the Director of Public Utilities position if, and when, the current incumbent is forced out by the Flanagan Administration for his role in what is quicly becoming "Sewer-Gate". It is widely known that Mr. Hague originally asked Ms. Cathy Anne Viverios  for a job in exchange for his support during the mayoral election and that she refused to go along with that arrangement. Mr. Hague then threw his support in the direction of Mayor Flanagan.

What is troubling about this information is that the circle of misbehavior, the lack of any Profiles In Courage concerning bringing the information directly to light for the public and ratepayers, has probably grown to include most, if not all, of the City Councilors.
These cats and kittys do not keep secrets very well. In fact, they trade in well placed rumor. That is how the business of political horsetrading is done, the swapping of inside information during informal discussion to determine votes, say, while waiting for the Council Meetings to start, or in one on one discussions with individuals in City Hall, or the most direct way, via phonecalls, and now, emails. City and Town Halls, especially during election time, are veritable seives. It's the nature of the business, part of the process of concensus building, the art of policy decision making. The only Councilor that I know of who spoke openly about the prospect of Sewer Enterprise Fund deficit was CAV. I mean, God forbid you actually take the time to look at the budgets and analyze the numbers put before you for approval. AMAZING!!! And I don't mean that in a good way!
Where was City Councilor Brian "I'm the Accountant for the County Jail- Sport Coat the Lesser" Bigelow.? Now I think we all know why the Jail has a $9.5 million budget deficit! Well Bri, what's your lame excuse?! How In God's name is anyone stupid enough to vote for you? You can't have THAT many family members in the City!
I blame them all for this mess. It's not just that the Mr. Patten wasn't asked the right question, it's pretty much now looking like the City Council REFUSED TO ASK that question. Nice.....really nice.... the circle has now been closed.
Looks like we have Councilors that refisue to ask questions in public because they might be running for office and don't want to be proven wrong, and Councilors who back the powers that be with everything they have because they are allied with the incumbent and don't wish to make him own his mistakes in public . Add City financial and utility managers who act like the three wise monkeys , and there you have the perfect description of why Fall River is where it is right now, why it's just so much a MINOR LEAGUE CITY.
 Bush League, Bush League, Bush League. Gutless and guileless is some kind of sad truth about the politicians we elect, and the unprepared and unqualified managers we hire to run things.
One probable good thing to come out of this is Ray Hague will most likely have no shot at becoming the Director of Public Utilities after his discussion on WSAR today. I mean, not only would the new mayor look like the type of common wheeler, dealer he promised not to be during his election campaign, it might also place extreme focus on just what he knew about the truth related to likely Sewer Enterprise Fund deficts and his ability to live up to the promise to repeal the CSO fee. Just something to consider.

What did they know, and when did they know it?

" If the council had asked me the question.............."

Patten: Administration delayed raising sewer rates until after election
----------------------------
By Michael Holtzman
Herald News Staff Reporter
Posted Jan 06, 2010 @ 08:55 PM
Last update Jan 06, 2010 @ 10:41 PM
----------------------------
FALL RIVER — Shortly before former Mayor Robert Correia submitted his fiscal 2010 budget on June 1, the decision was made not to increase the sewer rates until after the November election, despite a projected deficit of “millions,” city officials said.
They confirmed what Dan Patten — the city treasurer/financial services director fired by Mayor Will Flanagan — said in an interview Wednesday.
The prior administration took no action to balance budget expenses and revenues while knowing the state Department of Revenue would not certify the tax rate until the city implemented sewer rate increases to balance it, Patten said.
Flanagan fired Patten on his first full day in office Tuesday, citing the projected $3.5 million sewer enterprise deficit for fiscal 2009 and 2010 as the prime reasons. All but $603,000 would be a shortfall this fiscal year ending June 30.
Flanagan the same day also fired longtime Correia staffers, Jeffrey Santos and Kathleen Edwards, whom Correia appointed the past two months to high-paying jobs with long-term contracts in the Community Development Agency.
Patten, answering questions about the sewer deficit, stated at the outset he understood the political conditions under which he was fired.
“It’s a mayor’s decision which people they want to keep and which they want to let go,” Patten said. “I’ve worked for eight mayors and been lucky up to this point that I’ve kept my job.”
The New Bedford resident worked for 20 years in that city’s mayor’s office, auditor’s office and for a decade as its treasurer before former Mayor Edward M. Lambert Jr. hired him on Jan. 8, 2007.
The job paid $94,000, although Patten was one of many city workers who accepted an 8 percent pay cut to balance this year’s budget.
He did not have a contract, and along with Santos and Edwards will receive any vacation and related time owed.
Patten told the City Council a week ago that budget revenues were “overstated” after Flanagan announced he wanted answers from Patten and Director of Public Utilities Terry Sullivan about the huge deficit left unreconciled.
On the same day, Sullivan said he had recommended a significant rate increase to Correia in May.
Yesterday, city officials supplied a May 21 e-mail that Patten sent to Correia, City Administrator Adam Chapdelaine, Auditor Kevin Almeida and Santos, an administrative aide to Correia for more than 30 years.
The e-mail refers to the city not receiving DOR certification of its tax rate unless sewer fees were substantially increased. Patten detailed what he said was the city’s “back-up plan” to set the rate and issue end-of-year tax bills.
“Mayor Correia said he was going to raise the rates in November, which was after the election,” Patten said in the most specific statement of how the prior administration was planned to proceed.
Correia lost his office in the preliminary Sept. 15 election, and Flanagan subsequently defeated City Councilor Cathy Ann Viveiros on Nov. 3.
Correia declined several requests for interviews during his final days in office. He left the area Sunday for Florida.
Seven months ago and shortly before the City Council began to deliberate the new budget, Patten e-mailed Correia and his administrators that an increase was necessary.
“Sewer requires a rate increase or the tax recap will not be approved in December (by the DOR) and tax bills will not be mailed,” says the May 21 e-mail Chapdelaine provided upon request.
Patten, based upon information from Sullivan, wrote that “revenues for 2009 have been declining, based on usage, from $13.9 million to $13.7 million to $12.8 million. The 2010 budget is based on revenues of $15.8 million.”
Patten said revenues this year and last year included the controversial stormwater fees. Those amounted to about $5 million, Sullivan said.
“We were concerned because revenues were coming in lower than projected, and they were continuing to decline,” Patten said during Wednesday’s interview.
Chapdelaine concurred that Patten, before the budget ratification, told the administration the deficit could be $3 million based on the prior year. He agreed the message was the city “could not send out tax bills unless we do something.”
Sullivan, in a Nov. 14 memo he prepared for the mayoral transition, wrote that sewer revenue collection was 10 percent behind what was budgeted for the first four months of the year. The shortfall was in the range of $1.6 million.
Flanagan said this week he is prepared to raise the rates. “We’re working on a solution, which we should have by the end of the week. There does have to be a substantial alteration or increase to the sewer rate structure,” Chapdelaine said.
That change would require City Council approval.
After several city councilors recently said they were shocked over the magnitude of the sewer deficit, Patten answered yesterday why they were not made aware of the $3 million projected gap.
“If the council had asked me the question, if had to give an answer, I would not have lied to them. I would have told them the revenues are going to come in short, and we would require a combination of rate increases and budget cuts,” Patten said.
Patten said he gave that information to Flanagan during a recent transition meeting that included other administrators.
“He didn’t think it was good enough,” Patten said after being fired.
Flanagan said he plans to conduct a national search for a chief financial officer, calling it “probably one of the most important positions within city government.”
He said he did not have plans to remove any other municipal employees.
E-mail Michael Holtzman at mholtzman@heraldnews.com.

I'm kind of amazed right now. Not at the fact former mayor Correia would be capable of such a thing, because he did nothing since day 1 in office but demonstrate clearly he was capable of such consummate piggery. No, I'm amazed that after all the years I worked for many municipalities, and after all the years I thought I had seen shocking things, this might be the worst, and trust me, I've worked to end County government and I thought THAT was the worst I've seen. This is far, far worse.
But what I'm more amazed than anything else is the profound and stunning sadness I feel right now. I really do. I assumed there would be some sordid tale involved in how the City was being run, but this................this was, frankly, unimaginable to me, and I've spent many nights typing here attacking Correia. This is stunning to a state of disbelief!
Honestly, the article speaks for itself. I actually have to thank Mr. Patten for coming clean about what really happened. We all should, because I have doubts the truth would ever have come out of the mouths of the Public Utilities Director, the City Auditor or that weasel Chapdelaine. They knew, sold you and I down the River of Sewerage for a pay check, and all I can think is God knows what else is hiding in the City's financial dealings and elsewhere based on Correia's attitude of win the election at all costs. I'm a little disappointed we didn't hear all this from Mayor Flanagan as well.

Mayor Flanagan, all your top financial management people knew about this problem, and said nothing. Your Director of Public Utilities knew, and said nothing. Your City Administrator knew, and said nothing. This was a dirty conspiracy by a collection of cowardly employees, because I refuse to call any of them public servants. They are just like their old boss in that they all made it clear they had only their own welfare in mind at all times. No where was there any concern for the City and it's welfare, which each and every one of these people took a solemn and sworn oath to  protect from precisely the type of politicly based deception in which they willingly participated. You MUST replace them all. It's no longer a situation you can accept. In fact, unless they are ALL gone within the end of your first year in office, you will share in the shameful actions they perpitrated upon the City and it's citizens. You are left with no other choice, I, for one, cannot cut you any slack on this one because you were just sworn in. However, I have a funny feeling what I suggested a few sentences ago has already been planned. At least I hope so. Cleanse this City from any trace of that swine Correia and all those who helped him shame this City.  The irony of "Pride City Wide" has reached all new , and very disturbing depths, because there is nothing  "of the heights" in this sordid mess.

What may have been the worst thing? THAT statement. That poisonous, hedious statement of explanation of why Mr. Patten failed to inform the City Council, and thereby, the citizens of Fall River of this whole regrettable affair.

"If the council had asked me the question, if had to give an answer, I would not have lied to them. I would have told them the revenues are going to come in short, and we would require a combination of rate increases and budget cuts,” Patten said.

"If I... HAD...to give an answer." Public servants, real public servants would never have allowed themselves to be in that position to begin with.

Note to Fall River - if your employees can't be trusted to live up to their oaths of office, what's the point?! This entire City needs to do some soul searching!

Just a reminder about Scott Brown!!!!!!

I thought I'd remind all you undecided voters out there about a tasty little tidbit about Republican candidate for  US Senate Scott Brown . If you believe that it's a very difficult thing for any person to change their essential being, you should re-read this little gem which ran in  Cape Cod Today in 2007. I think it says volumes about the character of this guy....and would YOU want him representing YOU in the US Senate?


Brown is not beautiful

 (but he was in Comos as a "Hunk")

"This is a great story about how State Senator Scott Brown, (on right in Cosmo) out of Wrentham and leading candidate for the Massachusetts Republican nomination for U.S. Senate in 2008, had a "meltdown" in front of 80 King Philip's High School students at a student assembly. Brown had asked to speak to the students because he felt he had been "abused" by student detractors from King's Philip High School who made fun of him on their student run internet chatroom, "facebook."



At the assembly in King Phillip's High School auditorium, State Senator Brown called each student out, one by one, using curse words that every mother would be horrified to hear and would've covered their children's ears if they were there. Above the protests of all the teachers who were aghast at the state Senator's anti-social behavior and foul language, Brown refused to stop his child-like tirade calling each student out one by one in great pleasure.



If this man thinks he should be entitled to the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate just because there are only a few GOP contenders out there, then how can a man with such thin skin be able to defeat John Kerry whose skin is thin and cold-blooded already. What make's Brown think he can represent Massachusetts as United States Senator when it's obvious he can't even handle a few teenagers teasing him."(source: capecodtoday)



http://www.capecodtoday.com/blogs/index.php/2007/03/02/massachusetts_state_senator_scott_brown?blog=119

How is this man going to react to adult democrats? What will he say in publc? Think about it!

OH NO!!!...IT'S SPORT COAT!!!!!!

From "URBAN DICTIONARY""

1. Sport coat
Descriptive of a player, who's slick, and all about himself, confident. A nick name for a dude who's got it going on, or thinks he does

" Yo, you look like da king napster of porn sport coat, you dog!"


pimp ladies man dude slick player

2. Sport Coat
A guy who is screwing your girl while you are away, especially in prison. See "Jody"


Your girl comes to see you on the weekend, but Sport Coat is f@&*king her during the week.

jody sport's coat sports coat sportcoat sportscoat

3. sport coat

What the biggest pimps wear when they are looking fresh.


Yo, thats a pimped skizzed sport coat playa.

Well...today they inaugurated all of Fall River's elected officials...I can't wait until they decide to expand the term of Mayor to four (4) years so they have a chance to effectuate real and meaningful change before making them cow-tow to popular sentiment and lie their collective butts off just to win reelection, like the popular litany of promises that never seems to happen; "fix the schools, restore public safety, develop the waterfront, improve the local economy", and my personal favorite, because it just AIN"T GONNA HAPPEN any time in the next 20 years ,my friends, "lower property taxes and sewer rates". How many times did you hear this crap being spoken by every single candidate for City Council and Mayor last year?...or two years before that?....or ten years before that?...or twenty years before that? What's that definition of insanity? Oh yeah, " doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results". Well, this whole City has gone CHICKEN CRAZY! IT'S BAT GUANO,  WING NUT CRAZY! This isn't a case of voters being eternally hopeful, it's a flat out case of voters being FALL RIVER STUPID! When it comes to swallowing the same old election year pap from the same old collection of Pinocchio boy's and girl's running for elective office in Fall River, if the City was a child, and the election was a stove, this kid would have lost it's hands to third degree burns long ago! It just never, ever learns. But hey, if you were a local Pol, why not trot out all the same old B.S. if the voters are stupid enough to accept it, right?! Can't blame them, right?!
 

Not so fast my little chickadees! I got a huge gripe with one clown on the City Council in particular. The head Bozo, in fact. You guessed it, one Joseph "Sport Coat" Camara! As you can see from the "Urban Dictionary" definitions above, "Sport Coat" is a clown who wears a loud sport coat and a louder permanent smile, thinking he's all that when he is far from anything at all and trying to B.S. everybody when he's so transparent he's akin to a man with an x-ray machine permanently attached to his rib cage! That's our Joey...Joey "Sport Coat". I also call  Brian Bigelow " sport coat" but that's because he's always smiling that idiot's smile and saying things like "I'm an accountant, a vote for me is a vote for financial stability" and is serious, especially after the place he works for as Comptroller, the County Jail, just finished the year a mere $9.5 million over budget and had to be taken over by the state! Yeah, I just dig that financial stability there, "Sport Coat"! From now on, since Joey Sport Coat was once again elected President of the City Council, and Brian "sport coat" is just, well, dumbass, smilin' Brian, Brian Bigelow will now be "sport coat the Lesser".
 
Why my strong opinion about Joey Sport Coat? He was Correia The Destroyer's hemmoroid! Correia had no bigger fan on the City Council and he had way too many!
This clown undermined rational leadership and responsible representative governance by pulling stunts like holding meetings on Friday afternoons when the general public would be working and no one but those participants with skin in the game would attend. Sickening. This is a guy who trades on his Portuguese heritage and comes across like a man of the people when he's just a hack and gutless wonder who refused to stand up to the worst, most despotic opportunist this City has ever seen as mayor. (And let me tell you my friends, he SOUNDS like a guy with a third grade education when he speaks - the suits can't make up for the man who fills them, Joey Sport Coat!)
If Joey Sport Coat stands up to Ol' Hamhocks LaRue , there's no bleeding of $11 million in Free Cash, there are no unaudited fiscal years without a fight and public questioning, and there are no gross conflicts of interest like a principal of the City's Audit firm maintaining the contract for audits AND a Correia appointed seat on the Board of Directors of the Fall River Housing Authority! Everything Correia wanted he got with no argument from this smilin' phony. In the Italian to English dictionary, there's a picture of this guy next to the term "GAVONE"!
All this brings us to today's inauguration. would it surprise you to hear him say he's excited about our prospect for "Greatness"?  Dig this :

“As a newly re-elected city councilor, I cannot help but feel a heightened sense of purpose,” Camara said.
He re-emphasized his statement when elected president two years ago that “Fall River is on the threshold of greatness… I firmly believe these words to be true today,” Camara said.
He said the council needs to act purposefully to improve the quality of schools and its commitment to public safety and public works services.
He said when it comes to negotiating contracts with city workers, they should be treated fairly and honestly, while working toward “the common good.”
“The time for action is now,” said Camara, who used a quote by John F. Kennedy and life-saving action by Mother Theresa in the Middle East to reflect what he believes is possible to achieve."

Wow....just too, too much even for a guy who's a butt licking salesman for a living...couldn't tell , huh? And he sure lets the voters of Fall River know how stupid he thinks they are by using those lofty names like "JFK" and "Mother Theresa" , two names I could NEVER mix up with Joey Sport Coat or Correia The Destroyer, just to sound lofty, like a man with high ideals. Nope, anyone that close to Correia has no idea what lofty ideals are because "Correia" and "lofty ideals" are mutually exclusive terms!
A "heightened sense of purpose"? Yeah, pending municipal bankruptcy after your best political buddy just ran through $11 million on God-knows-what and left the City with $4.5 million in deficit in the Sewer Enterprise Funds ($1 million already covered by the General Fund and the rest to be decided), would certainly be cause for A "heightened sense of purpose". Threashold of Greatness? WTF? I said W-T-F? This guy really is a hoot at a funeral, isn't he? Just a clown is about the best thing I can say about Joey Sport Coat! 
Joey, I have to be honest with you. I have this little trick I use to motivate me. I like to pick the biggest boogie man I can think of and make them my universal object of sarcasm and derision. Since Correia is gone and that leaves a vacumn, and since nature abhors a vacumn, I'm going to fill that sarcasm void with YOU for the next two years! Count on it Joey Sport Coat. And I don' think I'm going to stop until you are no longer a member of the City Council! Keep smiling and talking crap, Joey Sport Coat.
We'll be watching!

Culture of Failure

Sloppy accounting
(source: Editorial, Cape Cod Times 12/29/09)

With a new business manager and, before long, a new superintendent and deputy superintendent, Bourne residents can hope that bookkeeping blunders and surprise deficits at the schools will soon become a bad memory.
Meanwhile, they should remember two lessons from the accounting mess reported by an outside auditor.
One is the value of a smart and experienced financial manager and staff — exacting people who know the rules and practices and consistently get things right in their accounting.
The other is the value of a second set of eyes — administrators and department heads reviewing financial reports, matching budget and expenses, making sure their line items are reported correctly.
The Bourne school system seems not to have met those requirements. So reported the auditor retained by the town to explain the school deficit that caused a turmoil last summer and recommend "internal controls" to prevent future deficits.
The deficit was discovered only when the town's finance director tried to match school expenses with the approved budget at the end of the fiscal year in June and discovered a gap of somewhere between $300,000 and $600,000.
That news, plus a cut in state aid, cost the jobs of two assistant principals, three teachers, a bus driver and a bus aide; it caused cutbacks in custodian and lunch room monitor staffing and other belt-tightening measures; it forced a major reshuffling of classroom positions.
The actual deficit proved to be $370,740, the report says. The auditor found unbudgeted payroll costs of $415,940 and unbudgeted school lunch costs of $126,152. Somehow, $243,473 in "impact aid" (for teaching children of military reservation families) got counted twice and that certainly was a major problem.
Item after item, the audit reports such inanities as "transportation costs should not be classified as salaries" and "refrigeration repairs...were recorded to a substitute teacher salary account... ." How could "telephone services" wind up in a fuel account? How could the business office overspend because "consulting services totaling $27,115 did not appear to have been budgeted... ."?
Documentation for expenditures and for accounting changes often seem to be skimpy. The auditor urges that the business office "eliminate making manual adjustments to the payroll journal," which are "time-consuming and susceptible to human error... ."
The business manager has left, but the problem doesn't end with confused bookkeeping entries. Why weren't the mistakes noticed? Didn't the person in charge of spending for substitute teachers notice he or she was being charged for refrigeration repairs? Don't the principals and department heads study financial reports?
Maybe that's the problem. One of the "primary reasons" the deficit was allowed to develop was the "lack of monitoring the school budget on a line-item basis," the report concludes.
The auditor doesn't say who should monitor, but the target is pretty clear. The superintendent and deputy superintendent have announced they will retire next summer. Their successors don't need to be accountants, but they need to understand financial management.

Why publish this recent editorial by the Cape Cod Times related to the Town of Bourne's School Department's abysmal record of internal financial controls? Because when I worked at DOR we had to examine similar problems on theTown AND School sides of Bourne's financial operations. That was almost 20 years ago. So, you may ask, was I surprised to see this editorial about problems of the most basic day to day operations of how the Bourne School System deals with their budget? NO.

That is because the type of shoddy accounting and auditing procedures in any community have a historical imperative. It's almost as if a lack of repsect for the correct way of doing the simplest things gets lost under the great weight of prevailing culture and the values that culture and custom reflect. Obviously, in Bourne, after several warnings and serious consequences due to poor performance of simple, yet necessary procedures, they once again need retraining and hiring of the top management postions. And even in a School System, a Superintendent is a manager first and overseer of education second. Or they should be.

How does this relate to Fall River? Well, aside from the fact both communities share an ocean view and long bridges for which they are famous, I believe they also share an obvious disdain for doing things the way they should be done in a day-to-day business procedures sense. It is obvious to even the casual observer that doing things the right way simply because it's the right way to do them is not high on this City's priority list, and never has been.
While the elected officals in Fall River pay lip service to good administration, they sit by without truly understanding whether those doing the jobs of Finance Director/Treasurer, Tax Collector, Property Tax Assessor, City Auditor and finally, on the City side of things, The Auditors of the City's financial operations, are doing their jobs adequately, let alone well. While the Mayor is directly responsible for appointment of these individuals, and must make final determination of the quality and competence of their and their departments work, the City Council also plays a substantial role in monitoring just how effectively these people perform. Afterall, the final approval of requested budgets is only a part of their involvement.
The part of checks and balances that exist in a City with a strong Mayor form of government like this one mandates that, necessarily, the City Council  monitor progress of all the operations in this City, but particularly the engine that collects and expends tax dollars to keep city services moving. In fact, it may just be the most important thing the City Council does, their REAL reason for existing. At a minmum  I would expect to see a truly committed City Council  request what amounts to workplans and goals and objectives for each financial operation in the City. This could be set by the Mayor with the Council's input, but made as a condition of budget approval. That way there is a formal insistance on legal, competent, and hopefully eventually, "motivated to excellence"  performance. Right now, as we have seen these past two years, nothing like that comes close to existing. The more resolute City Council would serve as an effective counterbalance to a Mayor who may wish to steer this City in the wrong direction for personal gain, or simply out of pure ignorance of how things SHOULD be done.
There is simply too much evidence, historically, that the City itself does not place a high enough value on excellent performance of it's managers. It lacks even the most rudimentary methods to measure the job performance of managers. Goals and objectives don't even exist as viable, measureable concepts to the City Council. Excellence in performance has occurred by luck or the "golden hire" or two, people self motivated to do things well because they demand a level or personal excellence in all things they do. But that, clearly, has not been the case in Fall River as the norm. It seemingly cannot raise itself beyond the dictates of local controlling politics, the type of controlling politics that perpetuates poor performance because it does not make excellent performance it's primary objective. Convenience and control are all that are valued. It is this half hearted commitment and customary lax attitude towards excellence that allowed the truly egregious behavior of Mayor Correia, and his phalanx of all too willing incompetents too afraid of their own shadow to stop the madness we now have to deal with. And simply electing a new Mayor and replacing the toadies who aided and abetted the great rape of Fall River by Corriea, his top managers and staff, will not make the difference to turn Fall River around and once again put the City in the black unless there is a major, generations long committment to excellence in performance. It will take everyone involved to make this happen.
It takes a village to raise a child, but it also takes a village to raise expectaions as well. Goals and objectives must be promulgated for each City department, and the level of resource allocation as shown through budget funding has to be explained and defended each year in terms of reaching those goals and objectives. There is no better proven way to demand, and get, excellent performance from a qualified manager.
But this is not enough. I have never felt that this City's motto must be changed more than I do now. "We'll Try" bespeaks boldly only of feckless failure. It raises Fall River excellence to the level of mediocrity. Fall River has not been a successful going concern for generations now. I'm not spending much time worrying about a movie theater that has long since closed. That is for others to worry about.
What we all must be directly concerned with is establishing a tradition throughout this City of expecting and supporting the very best out of the people we hire to run things. It's not the resource level committed to the effort. Plenty of money has been spent trying to improve things. It's a real , city-wide commitment to expecting the best from the people we hire for them to do the right things for the right reason.. Phony slogans like "Pride, City Wide" will only become the object of derision, and as we have seen,  a sad irony given where we are now after the short reign of the man who foistered that slogan on a City wanting to believe. We all want to believe. This is one of the few areas where Fall River can start over from scratch.

"DRAIN MAN"

As we run down the final hours of the term of Robert Correa as Mayor of Fall River, we must look back to the days of yesteryear, when he first burst upon the scene as the most prominant idiot savant to ever serve so highly in the Massachusetts Legislature. Of course, there have been a legion of members of the Great and General Court who have had their intelligence, ethics, sexulaity, sobriety, probity  and progeny questioned, but none were as clearly defind in their limited capacities, with one area of  brilliance, as was Robert Correia, known forever more as the "DRAIN MAN"

Yes, the secret can now be told. Robert Correia had extremely limited intelligence caused by getting his infant head stuck in drain pipe when he was just a young lad of 3 months. In fact, most thought he wore the pointed dunce cap throughout his grade school years, until he reached 18 years of age, because he was, well, "limited". In point of fact he was, but also in point of fact...he had a point, in fact, at the top of his head! It simply had to be hidden, declared his loving mother.  In  fact, his first spoken words were not "mama" or "papa" but "pumba", or "plumber" for the person who saved his life. Psychiatrists felt the trauma of having his small head stuck in a drain and hearing that endless sound of water running along the sides of his skull and tumbling down the drain in a swirling tin-like grinding cacophony for 12 hours had caused his condition but also made him a devotee' of all thing DRAINS. His head had been a near perfect fit and caused an extremely powerful vacumn. He would suffer for the rest of his life with the never ending echo of water running down a drain rattling around his atrophied brain. It could be quite embarrassing for those with him when he felt the urge to get down on his knees at a moments notice , stick his head near any drain opening or pipe fixture through which he could hear draining water , and display the uncanny ability to tell those listening the cost of the water running through the water or sewer pipe, just by the sound. He could guague force and speed of the flow as well as volume, and his hobby of memorizing the water and sewer rates for all 351 Cities and Towns in Massachusetts soon paid off.

 " Melrose sewer rate and flow, that's $22.00 a month for this restaurant, $22 dollars, $22 dollars...no pennies, $22 dollars"! AMAZING...and he was never wrong. But alas, he had to sign his paychecks with an "X", like an Indian Chief from the Wild, Wild West contained in an old fashioned cheap ten cent novel. But even on vacations, like the photo from a trip to Thailand taken with the only other water flow idiot savant in the world, the one thing that gave him pleasure was to listen to the flow of water or sewerage through a pipe, any pipe, whether steel, copper or yes, even bamboo!

His political career started completely by accident. After a brief stint as a water meter reader for the Fall River Water/Sewer Department, a position he was granted with the help of a friendly City Councilor  his parents and family members had been giving maximum campaign contributions for over ten years. He happened to be at a political speech near what was to become the TA Restaurant, a speech given by an influential, long time Irish State Senator. The subject was a controversial Water and Sewer Bond Issue for which the City had requested state funding . When in response to a question about water and sewer bills in Fall River the Senator had stated "You find someone here who can tell me how much this restaurant has to pay each hour for water and sewer and I promise you, I'll get that bill passed". As he smiled to his Assitant as he left the stand, the crowd had pushed the DRAIN MAN up to him and Correia started, as usual "Restaurant in Fall River, $3.23 cents, $3.23, $3.23 water and sewer $3.23 per hour at peak times...." The State Senator exploded..." who are you, a wiseguy?...are you for real?"...DRAIN MAN spoke up, while twitching his head to the side, "Yes, I am, and so is the leaky pipe...leaky pipe, cause for excess drainage, excess drainage..leaky pipe Senator...for real, for real....."

Right then and there the State Senator knew he had a winner on his hands...and talked Correia's parents into allowing him to run for State Representative on a platform of controlling water and sewer rates and improving the water and sewer infrastructure through a huge public works project funded by state bonds, at no cost to Fall River. The State Senator began the local custom of sponsoring various House members in their runs for office, and he spoke at each of DRAIN MAN'S appearances, and the only time the crowd heard Correia's voice was when he would recite the cost of various people's bills out loud ,"Louis Aguiar, 14 Durfee Street, $254, $254,  no cents, no cents"...the crowds went wild in their appluase.The State Senator would then BOOM, "Hey this guy KNOWS about water and sewer, doesn't he?.....He's the perfect man for you and the City of Fall River!!!!"  Even though DRAIN MAN was little more than a flushing one trick pony and had the intelligence capacity of a mutant aphid, the State Senator was shameful in how he campaigned for and with his neophyte, idiot savant candidate. All the while, he taught him little about politics, or appropriate behavior, or even how to read or write. But the kid sure could stick his ear on a toilet drain pipe in a heartbeat. And the voters of Fall River loved him for it. They could relate extremely well with the idiot savant who they voted for in a landslide. A man of the people...a dullard, toilet  snuggling man of the people they took to their bosom. The closest thing to the DRAIN MAN politics would ever again witness was the imbecile Joe The Plumber, who usually was found going in circles IN the toilet. But that's another story for another time.

The years went by, and the State House in Massachusetts was the perfect place for a man of Correia's talents.  He understood little of what he voted on, was loyal to the leadership because they let him stay close to the Speaker's private toilet facility, and could impress each representative whenever the water and sewer improvement state bond issues would be taken up, usually every two years, at election time. His command of rate tables for every nook and cranny of the Commonwealth was truly impressive, and fooled this extended ship of fools into believing he was actually an intelligent being and not some profound freak of nature trapped within his own, noise filled mind. Then again, irony sometimes speaks louder than fact, and it was a fact that most representatives had less displayed cranial ability than the DRAIN MAN. He could at least speak authoritatively on A subject, where  most State Representatives barely could recite their own name and party affiliation with any genuine authority. His mental situation at least made DRAIN MAN independent, no matter how small an independence that was. It was this small amount of indepenence that would have tragic consequences for the head flinching, downcast looking simple man who reflected so many within his home community of Fall River.

Finally, after 30 years, Correia was banned from boarding the daily bus to Boston due to his insistance to lay up for the entire trip with his head stuck on the floor in the Greyhounds toilet facility, listening to the swishing chemicals, especially going around corners or when in stop and go traffic. He had grown , ah, sideways, as well as in outspoken, entiled attitude which frightened people around him. To say he was now a bullying, babbling, bubbling lusting idiot savant being was pretty much accurate. Not very pleasant to deal with, but still popular at home. On the Greyhound, not so much!

He took to slowly reciting the water and sewer charges, with a nasally, high pitched sound of a boy in puberty with a two pack a day smoking habit. People soon found themselves raising handkerchiefs to their noses and mouths in a sort of sympathetic sinus clearing precaution as he tried to slowly bark out his number recitations. The constant congestion sound could make a priest in a hospice feel uncomfortable.  But still, the voting populace in Fall River identified with this idiot savant and man of extremely limited intelectual capacity. DRAIN MAN was like them, he was still THEIR idiot! And so it was no surprise that after 30 years of bus rides and toilet sound fun, DRAIN MAN Correia ran for, and won, the race for Mayor of Fall River!

Most thought this the perfect marriage of man to issue, for the City of Fall River was now in the midst of a federal court judgement to develop a water and sewer system to account for storm water runoff to prevent further pollution of local waterways. This would entail a new rate structure tied to a vast, new sewerage and water infrastructure expansion and improvement program. Who else but the master of water and sewer rates to do this important job, everyone in Fall River thought. Problem was, he could only speak in terms of rates, nothing more. So when he was presented with a budget for municipal operations all he kept repeating was "rates too high, must cut rates, all rates to be cut, cut, cut". His finance and management team, too afraid to approach the now cranky and combative Correia, simply pared every department back to the level DRAIN MAN wished the sewer and water rate be cut, even though they knew the numbers just would not add up. Yes, the idiot savant had shown the Peter Principle to be true. He had finally reached the level of his incompetence, in true Fall River fashion.

But he wasn't completely without some smarts. The first thing he did was bark out orders to have a new bathroom built in his Mayor's office. When his Finance Director blurted out the City had 11 million dollars in Free Cash to spend, he immediately replied " $11 million, running water, bathroom, $11 million bathroom, hurry, hurry, $11 million, that's it, that's it, hurry, hurry". DRAIN MAN would while away in that bathroom for most days of his administration, on his hands and knees, flushing and reflushing the toilet, and running the shower at the same time, saying over and over "free, free, all this is free, all mine and all free and all mine". And later in his administration, he gave speedy approval for the "Mother of All Outhouses and Hot Dog Stands" proposal for the High School Athletic Fields. Idiot savant indeed. At least he knew what he wanted. EVERYTHING! But he still managed to cut every rate in the City. The fact he had no idea what he was doing was of concern to no one, until it was too late......

So...in the final analysis....who were the idiots?...and who was the savant?