I heard a rather shocking pronouncement from Town Council Chairman John Farrell at the 12/18/23 public meeting. “Don’t believe everything you read in the paper,” Farrell says, “because it’s all one-sided.”
I did not attend this session of the council, as my children are Elementary aged, and we enjoyed the showing of the Polar Express with the North School Community. Rather, I listened at home, and boy am I glad I did, as I almost fell out of my chair when I heard that statement.
It is ironic that he chose the term “one-sided” as that is actually the most appropriate way to describe the manipulated information flow that proceeds from the Town Council and many of our malfeasant elected and appointed officials.
“One-sided” would be citizens emailing the Town Manager and Town Council and not getting a response from their elected officials to the majority of inquiries and communications they send off.
We want to thank Jonathan Esposito for this Contribution – Please direct yours to steve@GraniteGrok.com.
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“One-sided” would be a Town Manager and Town Council that consistently have failed to produce information and documents upon simple citizen request, forcing citizen’s to file right-to-know requests to compel the town to release information that should be readily available to the public, but apparently have to be redacted to cover Town wrongdoing.
“One sided” would be giving a citizen 3-5 minutes at public comment to speak, and then Councilman Jim Butler spending the next 20 minutes personally attacking that citizen for asking too many questions. Ironically enough, “one-sided” is exactly what Councilman Butler promised to be when he said he would like to control the narrative during a July Public Meeting of the Town Council.
“One-sided” would be Town Manager Malaguti’s baseless sexual harassment complaint against former Town Councilwoman Deb Paul, which a NH judge described as “frivolous” no less than a half dozen times in an opinion stretching over 15 pages.
“One-sided” would be Council Chairman John Farrell unlawfully refusing to produce that document for former Councilwoman Paul, thereby costing the taxpayer thousands of dollars in an attempt to cover up the Town Manager’s malfeasance.
“One-sided” would be the Town Manager attempting to use an internal investigation to dissuade the State of New Hampshire from finding that Town Hall employees engaged in illegal notary activities.
“One-sided” would be the voters rejecting an appointed treasurer year after year and having all 5 of our current Council Members reject the will of the people by advancing it to a warrant anyway because members of Town Hall have (highly questionable) concerns.
Let’s expand beyond the council, shall we?
“One-sided” is a Planning Board that does not want public comment unless the law prescribes it, Supervisors of the Checklist who don’t respond to citizens, and a Treasurer who cannot articulate why they should no longer be elected because “elections are mean.”
This March, vote for new Councilors so that we can start believing what we hear from the Town Council again.
