In the News
🗑 🏆 Worst opinion of the week: my goat Bob Chiaradio is always top of mind, especially when he shows up once a month to yell at the School Committee about their already-decided Title IX policy, mainly to farm clips for Rumble.
This week’s spectacle was especially detached from reality: the school committee discussed ways to support families affected by the loss of food assistance, and this fed-coded clown still bravely made his way to the podium to complain about high school sports incidents that didn’t even happen. Seems like a student at Moses Brown looked a little too butch for the local Nazis liking and they threw a tantrum about it.
Imagine if they put this indefatigable energy and persistence into something that actually improved the material wellbeing of our students and their families.
Town Council (November 3)
full automated luxury utilities - just kidding it’s AI
Good on the town council for asking really interesting and probing questions in response to this presentation: an app that uses AI to bid on energy prices. This salesman really got up in front of God and everyone and said, “The art of buying energy futures.” Brother, good on you for getting that clanker bag, but nobody wants this. Everything is gambling; everything is computer.
some government, mostly drama
More yelling about CRMC/rights-of-way, this time because previous meeting minutes did not accurately report that the town manager’s statements were more speculation than declarations of fact
Councilor Van Dover, in a rare moment of clarity, basically told Dylan LaPietra to stfu when he was interrupting her. Good for you, sis!
Councilor Healy is appointed to the housing committee (and makes a good point about removing the word “permanent” from the title)
Approved rezoning for the Bee Man’s property
School Committee (November 5)
a defense of Dr. Garceau
At the last school committee meeting, in response to being threatened online, Superintendent Garceau clarified the district’s student discipline policies and how suspensions are tracked by the state. If a school made a habit of suspending a particular demographic, it would show up in the data; he used the example of kids on IEPs. It would make things easier to suspend all students considered disruptive, but doing so is totally contrary to the schools’ mission.
The IEP bit got clipped out of context online — where else — in a Facebook group, and since Dr. Garceau is the local conservatives’ #1 op, there was an audience primed for outrage. He delivered some prepared remarks (worth watching!). The school committee unanimously condemned the out-of-context clip-chimping. We all knew what he meant.
Bring the great firewall to Westerly, please. We have to protect our people from their own hallucinations.
actual government stuff
Presentation on the World Language Program
Presentation about the school bus fleet status
New finance committee will be working on policy updates
Discussion of clarifying parameters for receiving class gift donations
Lori Wycall requested revisiting the Title IX policy, though there seems to be little appetite for this
Boards and Committees
Economic Development Commission (November 4)
Planning Board Special Meeting with the Architectural Review Board and Economic Development Commission (November 4)
Happy Veterans Day! Support the troops by sending me one dollar.
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