THIRTY (30) MONTHS AND COUNTING–WE STILL DON’T HAVE A NEW TOWN OF STERLING MASTER PLAN BUT THE SELECT BOARD HAS A $75,000/YEAR ‘GOFER’ AT STERLING TAXPAYER EXPENSE

During the May 2018 Annual Town Meeting voters approved Warrant Article 27 and the hiring of a Town Planner to prepare a new Town of Sterling Master Plan. That was the Select Board’s sole expressed purpose for such hiring. Note that I moved to limit the new Town Planner to a one (1) year term but my Motion was defeated by gullible persons present constituting a majority. They’re the voters who buy BS promulgated by the manipulators on the Select Board, the Finance Committee, and the Capital Budget Committee, and who stupidly vote to pick their own pockets multiple times during each Annual Town Meeting. Boston Herald columnist Howie Carr calls such herd creatures “sheeple.” They have overrun Massachusetts and now, to the detriment of ALL Sterling taxpayers, they predominate here. The new Town Planner’s salary was set at $73,469 to start, not counting other benefits.

In October 2018 Ms. Domenica Tatasciore was hired as the new Town Planner. In 2019 her salary increased to $74,203.56 (see page 68). The 2020 Sterling Annual Report, as of this writing, has not been posted on the Town’s website.

We’re thirty (30) months down the road and soon to be out $225,000 in Town Planner salary payments since Ms. Tatasciore’s hiring. Have you seen the new Town of Sterling Master Plan yet? Neither have I. Perhaps that’s because the Select Board has Ms. Tatasciore doing things such as ‘liaising’ with various Town boards and committees and taking on roles such as those found here: https://www.sterling-ma.gov/people/domenica-tatasciore

Those aren’t the reasons for which the 2018 Annual Town Meeting voters/taxpayers approved Warrant Article 27. In response to the Select Board’s express statements, they approved the new Town Planner position for the sole purpose of preparing a new Town Master Plan. But the Select Board enjoys having a $75,000/year taxpayer-funded ‘Gofer.’

Have you wondered how long it takes other Massachusetts towns to complete new Town Master Plans? I also. So I did a little checking. The Town of Sturbridge, right here in Worcester County, completed its new Master Plan in a mere fifteen months. The Town of Fairhaven’s Master Plan was completed in a year! That’s called competence, efficiency, and cost-effectiveness, folks, traits discouraged by the poseurs occupying Sterling Select Board and Finance Committee seats.

So what’s up with the Town of Sterling Master Plan, you ask? Well, this: the Master Plan Committee announced an April 15, 2021 public meeting to “help set goals and actions for the Town’s Master Plan.” They are friggin’ joking, right??? EARTH to the MASTER PLAN COMMITTEE–“goals” and “actions” are established at the outset, NOT as after-thoughts thirty (30) months in . This is sheer and utter incompetence on display in the wide open. The so-called ‘Master Plan Committee’ are out in ‘Navel-Gazing Pond’ dog-paddling in circles.

There’s an old saying among unionized workers on Massachusetts so-called ‘public works projects’–“ya can’t kill the job”–meaning you mustn’t get the job done on time, on budget, because unionized jobbers make more money stringing out the work at taxpayer expense. We’ve all seen it in practice, including the Route I-190 bridge repair and road resurfacing projects that Massachusetts DOT announces will take one year but are still ongoing three years later. It is clear that Ms. Tatasciore and the Sterling Select Board are quite familiar and comfortable with this practice. Ms. Tatasciore, again in Howie Carr’s unforgettable terminology, is happily feeding from the Sterling-taxpayer-funded “public mammary gland,” courtesy of the Sterling Select board, with no end in sight.

Categorize all this under fraud, waste, abuse, unconscionable delay, utter incompetence, and the hosing of Sterling property tax payers who, in the words of the late H. L. Mencken, are getting it “good and hard.” But, hey, just watch the “sheeple” during the upcoming 14 June Annual Town Meeting. They never learn. They’ll vote, repeatedly, to give it to themselves–and rest of us who know better–“good and hard.” So vote “NO” when the municipal budget Warrant Article comes up. It is time to terminate this aimless spending nonsense.

J.G.