Thursday, September 4, 2008

Appauling Situation Calls for Action Now !

Seems nothing changes in our town, more of the same old, same old, stick it to the taxpayers. The heck with rules and regulations! We received an email this morning from Budget Committee member, Bob Davis, who attended last night's Board of Selectman's meeting and came away disgusted after he learned the following:

As we all know this past weekend races were held at the Winchester Speedpark Motocross Track; as evident by the noise, increased traffic and all the campers parked along the roadway entrance into the track and along the river at the back of the track. What you don't know according to Bob's email was that our town Fire Chief, Barry Kellom, took a fire truck out of service to re-fill the water tanks on campers parked at the speedway. According to Bob, the selectman were told that Gary Puffer, our Water Superintendent, had opened the gates over the weekend at the town's pumping station and filled the truck with un-metered water, which was then used to fill an unknown number of campers at the track. Who authorized this? It surely wasn't the selectman who seemed to be caught by surprise at the news. Would this not be considered theft of service by both of these men? Who paid for the water and the gas for the truck and do both of these men expect to be paid overtime for working this weekend? Does the town have some kind of secret contract with the owner's of this track to supply town water to patrons camping at the track over the long Labor Day weekend? Besides the obvious, what would have happened had there been a fire and this truck was needed? Just how much longer would it have taken to respond if it had to be driven to the water plant and refilled, before heading out to the fire? Another thing Bob pointed out, was what happened to the grey water and sewage in the tanks of these campers.No one seemed to have an answer. As an owner of a camper himself, Bob knows you must empty the used water before refilling with fresh. As water is used, it either goes into the grey water holding tank or your sewage tank. Was this waste water dumped on the ground or worse, into the river? This area is in our town aquifer and there are protected wetlands and the town's wells only feet from where these campers were parked. Unless Gary Puffer and Barry Kellom can explain their activities this weekend and where the water went, then one must assume they allowed without question dumping of gray water into our aquifer and wet lands at the Winchester Speedpark. This whole situation stinks! Everyone should be calling the town hall and demanding their resignations. We can not afford to continuously put up with this kind of conduct.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

I THINK BARRY WAS TRYING TO MAKE A LITTLE MONEY FOR THE FIRE CO PUFFER FORGOT HIS PROTECTION GOT VOTED OUT LAST SPRING IS IT TIME TO LET PUFFER GO A 2ND TIME?

Anonymous said...

I think its time to go to one dept head for water and sewer ITS a good way to save a lot of money and if he needs a litte help from time to time get it from hwy its time to run the town like a business not a country club

Anonymous said...

They'll just sweep this under the rug just like they do every time someone in their inner circle gets caught pulling crap. It has happened time and time again and it's always the same. Just look at their record and the John Stetsor fiasco. Bet they never got access to his emails to see what kind of deals he cooked up and how much town money he blew.

Anonymous said...

Wednesday Sept 10 at the selectmen meeting I was corrected by Selectperson Roberta Fraser about the unauthorized use of the town fire truck and taking un-metered water. Roberta assured me Fire Chief Barry Kellom came into the town hall and paid for the water and fuel. I shouldn’t have made such a false statement about the chief on winchesterinformer.com before I got the facts. Roberta stated the chief used very little water and paid us $4.80 for the water and $20.00 for the fuel used in the fire truck. If the chief used so little amount of water he should have carry the water in pails instead of taking a fire truck out of service and using town services to help such a unpopular with neighboring home owners with their intrusive noise maker all Labor Day Weekend, the racetracks and Gary Puffer had nothing to do with the opening of the gates at the pumping station and allowing the using un-meter water from the town well.. My source said, the gates were left open and Gary Puffer’s truck just happens to be seen at the restaurant down the street at the same time. I had found Roberta Fraser to the most honest person and I hope her action was just to protect the town image and not the actions of the Fire Chief. It does leave unanswered questions.

the Winchester Informer said...

So,according to the Selectmen and Roberta, it was ok to take a truck out of service and provide a service to visitors at the Speedway. It was also ok for Mr. Puffer to allow Mr Kellom to put unmetered water in the town truck; but exactly how many gallons of water was it and why wasn't it metered for the sake of keeping an accurate record? Just how much water does $4.80 get you? Seems a little far fetched to believe that this was done to deliver so little an amount. Also doesn't make much sense to spend $20.00 on fuel to make the town $4.80 now does it? I'm wondering just how many times this has been done in the past and if so, how much money has the town been making doing this? I find no record of it searching the Town Budget for the past few years. This is like taking a tablespoon of cod liver oil; really hard to swallow.

Anonymous said...

well lets see it used to be if you called the fire dept. they would fill a truck and practice fighting a fire while filling our pool with pound water when they where done we would donate money to the fire dept. so they would have some funds to buy equipment with .this was to help them and us as so taxes would not have to go up to much. but now they don't get the things they need.i would like to know why if we donated money to the fire dept. why they would stop this practice? but giving away water for fr4ee is only coasting us more and who is get the better deal? was there a deposit in to the bank for this water? this water i am talking about is the water given at the race track that iwould like to know how much money this race track is making for the town????????? I think its time to clean out the city office and find people that will work in favor of the towns folk. we need to get the ones out that are only looking out for them self

cope homan said...

we need to get the town goverment back to seving us

Anonymous said...

As budget committee member I will be asking the board why the fire dept under chief Barry Kellom is $4, 121.27 over budget. Also where are the Scott Packs we gave money for.