Board of Health Dust-Up

This week's Berkshire Record reports on the BOH/Karen Waller dust-up at the Egremont Inn. From what I know, the article is fairly accurate. And it's more evidence of how a minor incident can be blown out of proportion by overly sensitive people. (I say minor incident, because no reasonable person could take Karen's alleged threat seriously.) I'll repeat my prior statement: If you work for the BOH and go around telling people they have to spend many tens of thousands of dollars to "fix" a problem with their septic systems that doesn't seem to be a problem at all, you better expect people to think you're just a little tyrannical and, now and then, to blow up at you. If you can't take that, quit. (Or better, lobby for a change in a law that is overkill.)

One thing I find interesting is that the complaint to the Board of Selectmen wasn't made by Sandra Martin, the alleged "victim," nor by the chairman of the Board of Health, but by the Board of Health clerk. Why? What's going on here?

Second Homeowners Selectmen's Meeting

I was out of town last Saturday, when a selectmen's meeting was held primarily to let second homeowners vent. I've heard there was a lot of venting. If you were there, why not post a comment with your viewpoint.

Annual Salaries

Returning to the salary overpayment matter: The best and fairest way to handle the problem of 52 weeks and one day in a year (two days in a leap year) is to determine the number of full pay periods in the upcoming fiscal year, divide the employee's annual salary by that number, and pay accordingly. That will always result in the employee getting exactly the annual salary that was approved at town meeting, and will make it much easier to handle the situation when an employee quits in mid-year and a replacement comes on board without any hiatus. But that's not what the selectmen decided to do. They decided to treat each year as having 52.2 weeks and determine salaries accordingly. That doesn't work as well and is mathematically flawed, but apparently other Massachusetts towns follow that path so we're not alone in our error.

I'm not sure what all this says about the state of math education in Massachusetts, but it's not comforting. Also, I'm ignoring the fiscal year ended 6/30/08. I'm waiting to see if we overpaid people in that year, which would be contrary to what we decided at town meeting.

Fire Truck

Most of you know that our new fire truck was in a very bad accident last Sunday on Creamery Road. Thank goodness there were no fatalities, although there was one badly hurt person. I'm told the town's insurance is applicable, but it's too early to tell what the net cost to the town will be.

Highway Truck

There is an Egremont highway truck parked behind some bushes on the south side of Boice Road. Not to worry. The truck is an old one that was sold recently by the town to a private buyer, and no one has yet removed the town's markings on it.