Here is the report, updated, appearing in the 12 October 2021 Item, Clinton, Massachusetts:

https://www.telegram.com/story/news/local/the-item/2021/10/08/sterling-town-administrator-paid-leave-after-discord-town-hall/6054826001/

Kellie Hebert, Sterling Town Administrator for ten (10) months, hired a “consultant,” apparently, at Sterling taxpayer expense, about the Municipal (Butterick) Building roof leak(s), ignoring qualified local contractors in the process. It is not known whether Ms. Hebert followed Massachusetts municipal procurement law in making that hire. SEE
https://www.mass.gov/files/documents/2017/10/19/30bmanual.pdf

LAST WEEK’S MUNICIPAL BUILDING WALK-OUT/CLOSE-DOWN

Ms. Hebert’s reported action does not appear to be an adequate explanation as to why Ms. Hebert was escorted out of the Municipal Building by a police officer last week, or as to why other Municipal Building employees–paid by Sterling taxpayers–walked off the job, prompting closure of the Municipal Building for the rest of that day. Apparently those employee walk-offs will get that time off paid at our expense.

UPDATE, 14 OCTOBER 2021

Sources report that Ms. Hebert, on her own, ALSO retained, at $40 per hour, an answering service to answer the telephone for the Recreation Department. How many folks do you know getting $40/hour to pick up a friggin’ telephone and take a few notes??? The Municipal Building is open 40 hours each week. Assuming that that answering service had corresponding hours, that deal, unless canceled, will cost Sterling taxpayers $1600 each week! There are 20+ year Town employees who don’t make $40/hour. Moreover, sources report that several telephones throughout the Municipal Building ring with each incoming call, so other Town employees were capable of simply picking up their respective telephones and taking notes for the Rec. Dept. Evidently, when it comes to spending Sterling taxpayer money, Ms. Hebert is out of control. I don’t know whether she followed Massachusetts procurement law for her answering service deal, either.

The Select Board is obligated to tell Sterling taxpayers the full truth about this latest Town of Sterling Sh*tshow, but don’t hold your breath.

J.G.

“Keeping Sterling Action Committee” is pushing the Sterling D.P.W. hard to locate a food waste composting facility that would take up to 30 tons a day of “regional” food waste–not merely Sterling table scraps– 1000 feet behind the Sterling Police Department and close to Bartlet’s Pond and Wekepeke Brook, South Branch. In the September 2021 Sterling Meetinghouse News, “Keeping Sterling Action Committee” had its open letter, “Food Scraps Composting Initiative,” printed. SEE page 2 of that issue at http://sterlingmeetinghousenews.com/virtual-paper/#

Turns out, BOTH Blaine Bershad, D.P.W. Board member, and Arden Sonnenberg, Select Board member and liaison to the D.P.W. Board, are members of “Keeping Sterling Action Committee.” As a matter of law and ethics they are BOTH, therefore, in a blatant conflict of interest and, as municipal board members, should make full, public disclosure of that fact and recuse themselves from any and all municipal proceedings involving this so-called “Food Scraps Composting Initiative.” SEE GENERALLY: https://www.mass.gov/service-details/summary-of-the-conflict-of-interest-law-for-municipal-employees

J.G.

The following was posted by Rich Defuria on Facebook:

“I have not spoken on this local issue in a while.
But this issue should be on every resident’s radar, because it impacts our quality of life in Sterling: a Regional Food Waste Composting project proposed to be built behind the Sterling Police Station.
I encourage you all to read the ACTUAL report produced by the Sterling DPW — that is, a written proposal (versus the often conflicting [and every-changing] verbal accounts).
The report has a filename of “Sterling DPW Compost Facility Final Report June 23, 2021.pdf”
The title of the report is : “Town of Sterling Department of Public Works Food Waste Composting Facility Final Report June 23, 2021”
So these illustrate two things: (i) this is the DPW’s report and (ii) it says “final” report.
The first line of the first paragraph of the report says : “The Sterling DPW is proposing to develop and operate a food waste composting facility in accordance with a MDEP General Permit (310 CMR 16.04). That permit will allow for up to 105 tons per week, with a maximum of 30 tons per day, of food material.”
It’s right there, in black and white: “develop and operate” For reference, 30 tons is equal to 3 dump trunks filled to the brim (with rotting food [and potentially plastics and other contaminants]).
The second paragraph of the report says : “The proposed Sterling compost facility is intended to serve residential, commercial, institutional, and industrial food waste generators in the region.”
So it does not purport to merely compost the food scraps from our dinner tables (which clearly can be done in our own back yards individually [much more cheaply, too]); rather, it targets big, industrial food waste from the “region.”
Worried yet? You should be.
We have formed a group of citizens, united to oppose this project; we maintain that a commercial composting facility is not a compatible so close to residential neighborhoods, a first responder station, numerous local businesses, the Wekepeke Aquifer, Bartlett Pond, etc.
Email me at SterlingAgainstWasteProject@gmail.com if you want to join our group. And email me for the report if you wish to read it for yourself.
Thank you for reading, and I apologize for the length of this post.”

SO, FOLKS, JOIN “STERLING AGAINST WASTE PROJECT” AND STOP THIS REGIONAL, COMMERCIAL FOOD COMPOSTING OPERATION BEFORE IT STINKS UP NORTH STERLING AND POLLUTES BARTLET’S POND AND WEKEPEKE BROOK.

J.G.

The Sterling Select Board, now acting as the Sterling Earth Removal Board under Sterling’s Developer-Promoted, Crony-Crafted new Earth Removal By-Law, has scheduled a 15 September 2021 Public Hearing on Simpson’s/Sterling Real Estate Development, Inc.’s Application for an Earth Removal Permit to take 18,000 cubic yards of sand or sand and gravel from 68 Heywood Road. SEE https://www.sterling-ma.gov/calendar

HOWEVER, THE STERLING SELECT BOARD HAS ABSOLUTELY NO LEGAL AUTHORITY TO GRANT THAT APPLIED-FOR PERMIT BECAUSE WARRANT ARTICLE 48 PASSED AT THE 2021 STERLING ANNUAL TOWN MEETING.
SEE ARTICLE 48, pp. 44-45– https://www.sterling-ma.gov/sites/g/files/vyhlif1266/f/uploads/2021_atm_final_warrant_june_7_2021_003_0.pdf SEE 2021 Annual Town Meeting Minutes– https://www.sterling-ma.gov/sites/g/files/vyhlif1266/f/uploads/2021_atm_minutes.pdf

By its terms, Article 48 eliminated the former, highly questionable, Sterling Protective (Zoning) By-Law “Variance” provision, Section 6.2.2.2.a.4, that had allowed the Sterling Zoning Board of Appeals to grant ‘earth removal’ ‘use’ “Variances” in areas of the Town Zoned Rural Residential & Farming (RR) and Neighborhood Residential (NR). Article 48 substituted the term “Quarrying or Mining” for the former term “Earth Removal” and now PROHIBITS in areas zoned RR and NR “Quarrying or Mining,” meaning “earth removal for the purpose of extracting soil, loam, sand, gravel, clay, rocks, minerals, or other earth material, including establishments engaged in operating sand and gravel pits and in washing, screening, or preparing sand and gravel for construction or industrial uses, but excluding grading of a lot in preparation for the construction of a structure…for which a building permit…has [already] been issued by the town.”

“Quarrying or Mining” is now permitted ONLY in those areas of Town zoned “Light Industrial (LI).”

SIXTY-EIGHT (68) HEYWOOD ROAD IS ZONED RR– https://www.sterling-ma.gov/sites/g/files/vyhlif1266/f/file/file/part15.pdf –SO THE SELECT BOARD CANNOT, LEGALLY, EVEN ENTERTAIN SIMPSON’S EARTH REMOVAL PERMIT APPLICATION. Simpson was not conducting any earth extraction operations at 68 Heywood Road when Article 48 passed–the Sterling Zoning Board of Appeals having shut his previous extraction operations there down because of abuses–so Simpson cannot claim ‘grandfathering’ either.

CONCLUSION: Sterling’s 2021 Annual Town Meeting voters finally bit Sterling’s biggest SNAKE in the ass. YEAH!!!

J.G.

In my dictionary, next to the definition of “dick around”–
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/dick%20around –are exemplar photographs of Sterling’s incompetent, failed so-called ‘Town Planner,’ the cipher, poseur, and favored Select Board ‘Gofer’ Domenica Tatasciore; the dawdling, doddering, unfocused, aimless, unwieldy, lackadaisical so-called ‘Master Plan Committee;’ and the three navel-gazing, self-important, bumps-on-a-log who oversee all of the aforesaid, Sterling’s Select Board. None of the foregoing would recognize the importance of brevity, succinctness, relevance, focus, goal-orientation, timeliness, deadlines, cost-effectiveness, fiscal restraint, or mission accomplishment if all those concepts reared up simultaneously and bit ’em all on their respective asses.

THE STERLING ‘MASTER PLAN COMMITTEE’ AND “BARRETT PLANNING GROUP LLC”–DICKING AROUND SINCE JUNE 2018 AT STERLING TAXPAYER EXPENSE

Sterling taxpayers have been paying the bills for the straphangers called “Barrett Planning Group LLC” since June 2018, as shown by the first so-called ‘Master Plan Committee’ ‘Agenda’ displayed on the Town’s website– https://www.sterling-ma.gov/sites/g/files/vyhlif1266/f/agendas/master_plan_mtg_6.21.18.pdf
In other words, “Barrett Planning Group LLC,” hired by the Sterling Select Board, have been dicking around at our expense for 38 months with NOTHING of value produced for the Town’s property-owning taxpayers. MEANWHILE, 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 outright dopes constituting Sterling’s Select Board. DO THE STRAPHANGERS AT “BARRETT PLANNING GROUP LLC” HAVE ANY INCENTIVE TO SPEED UP MASTER PLAN PRODUCTION??? ANSWER: OF COURSE NOT, THE MORE THIS PROCESS DRAGS ON THE LONGER THEY CAN MOOCH OFF STERLING
TAXPAYERS.

MAY 2019, NO SURPRISE: BLOVIATING BULLSH*T FROM ‘OUR LADY OF PERPETUAL BULLSH*T,’ ILLEGITIMATE HOLDOVER SELECT BOARD CHAIR MAUREEN CRANSON

The Sterling Planning Board is responsible for producing new Town Master Plans but the self-important, preening poseurs intending to create a massive, verbose, unreadable new ‘Master Plan’ tome as a printed monument to themselves don’t care about that. In May 2019, illegitimate holdover Select Board Chair Maureen Cranson, in one of her usual factually-unsupported bloviating BULLSH*T pronouncements, said this about the Master Plan process: “It was evident the citizens are energized. As selectmen, I [sic] would like to move this forward… While it is in the purview of the Planning Board, I don’t want to lose energy. We owe it to the people who have worked a year or a year and a half to move forward.” https://www.telegram.com/news/20190603/selectmen-move-forward-master-plan-process That was her self-promoting bogus rationale for appointing NINE sub-committee chairs to the ‘Master Plan Committee,’ thereby making it totally unwieldy. “Energy” and “mov[ing] forward”??? WHAT A CROCK OF UNADULTERATED EXORBITANTLY EXPENSIVE SH*T! The Planning Board would have completed a workable new Master Plan by now. Thirty-eight (38) months down the road and these alternative assorted geniuses have produced SQUAT.

THE MANNEQUINS ON THE SO-CALLED ‘MASTER PLAN COMMITTEE’ ARE STILL PUTTING OUT “SURVEYS” AND DISCUSSING COMMITTEE ASSIGNMENTS

Any and all relevant questions to be included in ‘Master Plan’ citizen surveys should have been framed at the outset, three years ago. BUT, the so-called ‘Master Plan Committee’ is now framing a THIRD citizen survey and still discussing “Committee Assignments”– https://www.sterling-ma.gov/sites/g/files/vyhlif1266/f/agendas/2021_08_26_mpc_agenda.pdf Are you friggin’ kidding us??? Are you telling us that “Barrett Planning Group LLC,” hired by the Select Board, has done none of this previously and has no model “surveys” already in their hopper??? The Select Board is SQUARELY responsible for this ongoing, costly circus.

DOMENICA TATASCIORE, FAKE TOWN PLANNER AND THE SELECT BOARD’S $210,000 -AND-COUNTING ‘GOFER’

In October 2018 the Select Board hired Domenica Tatasciore as purported ‘Town Planner’ following the May 2018 Annual Town Meeting vote authorizing the hiring of a Town Planner for the sole, expressed purpose of producing a new Town Master Plan. Her starting salary was $74,000+, her current salary is $79,000+. In thirty-four (34) months she has not produced a new Master Plan. As an abject failure she has been paid more than $210,000 in Sterling taxpayer money, this in addition to the Sterling taxpayer money still being wasted on the four-flushing gravy-train feeders at “Barrett Planning Group LLC.” Meanwhile, the Select Board has used Tatasciore as their ‘Gofer’ for multiple, relatively insignificant tasks–WITHOUT TOWN MEETING AUTHORITY (Ultra Vires)–and even found a manufactured- administrative-bloat-bogus-excuse to pay her even MORE, AGAIN WITHOUT TOWN MEETING APPROVAL. SEE this, scroll down– https://www.telegram.com/story/news/local/the-item/2021/02/19/composting-proposal-sterling-could-reduce-waste-bring-revenue/6792068002/ All of this is, of course, is an absolute outrage but, as you now know, the Select Board, collectively, possesses no standards, no ethics, and, therefore, no shame. WHAT IS A SHAME IS THAT NEITHER KILCOYNE, THE BENT BUFFOON, NOR CRANSON, ‘OUR LADY OF PERPETUAL BULLSH*T,’ HAD OPPONENTS TO THEIR RECENT RE-ELECTIONS. HERE’S TO HOPING FOR SOME REAL, VIABLE ELECTORAL CONTESTS IN TOWN ELECTION CYCLES TO COME.

J.G.