Those Other Sidney Warriors

It’s looking to me as if King Bob has taken to being very careful.

Presumably, even he gets tired of looking like an idiot all the time. I won’t suggest that he has gotten to be a touch on the paranoid side, although I suppose I wouldn’t say he didn’t have reason.

At the moment, it’s also looking as if another storm is quietly brewing. It’s a storm that I’m betting Mr. McCarthy hopes we are not paying attention to, so that he can do what he’s doing and get it done before we notice.

Bob wants gas drilling in Sidney.

In the interests of having his way, he is packing the Planning Board with a bunch of his plants — who get righteously indignant if you suggest to them that you view them that way.

But it’s hard to take somebody seriously as an independent thinker when he comes into town board meetings and reads Tea Party style propaganda about the evils of government regulation and the benefits of poisoned public water supplies unfettered gas drilling.

He is also of the opinion that it is incumbent on gas drilling opponents to prove to him that it’s not safe rather than believing that it is incumbent upon the gas drilling companies to prove that it is safe. I forget the gentleman’s name (anybody who knows who I’m talking about, please come in here and help me out) but he is the new chairman of the Planning Board.

Mr. McCarthy is reputed to own enough land to make it unlikely that he has no financial interest in the matter. But of course, this guy who ran on openness and transparency is about as ethically challenged as they get. Evidently, he and his boys are going to (try to) handle this so quietly that those pesky citizens/voters of the town will get this one dumped on them before they get a chance to even say WTF?

I have been told that McCarthy believes that everyone in Sidney is in favor of gas drilling. I suppose it’s possible that he is stupid enough to genuinely believe that … although I’ll admit that I wouldn’t have thought anybody could be that stupid.

I’ll be very interested to see if he actually gets away with this or if some of our citizens get alarmed enough to get noisy about it.

Stay tuned.

Happy New Year!

Now that 2011 is well underway, it’s time to introduce the main topic of conversation for the year: local elections.

This year, there will be four major town offices up for grabs in November. There will be two seats on the Town Board (currently occupied by John Schaeffer and Paul Hamilton), plus Town Clerk (currently, Lisa French) and Superintendent of Highways (currently, Jamie Roberts).

I’ll just mention here that nobody intends to oppose Jaime Roberts. Everybody loves him and he does a very good job.

If we can find a candidate for Town Clerk, that would be spiffy (and, just so you know, Town Clerk is a full time job with a full time salary). But the most important thing for us to do is to run a couple of strong candidates for the Town Board.

It’s important because, until 2013, the only way we have available to de-fang Bob McCarthy is to take away his majority on the Board. We won’t be able to stop him from continuing to be an embarrassment at the county level but we can at least stop him from destroying the town.

So, in the interests of the preservation of the Town of Sidney from further stupidity, malfeasance, and general foot-in-mouth disease, let me know if there are any Democrats here in town who you think would make really good candidates for local office. That includes you, by the way; if you’re thinking about running for office, by all means, please get in touch.

Let’s stop letting Sidney Republicans win by default, m-kay?