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InCity Voices

City Councilor Mike Gaffney Plays Roulette with Public Safety

By Gordon Davis

Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) is an engineering college here in Worcester. It is known worldwide for its engineering programs and graduates.

WPI has an urban campus (Institute Road) with public streets. Like many cities in the USA, the drivers in Worcester drive aggressively and arrogantly. Some drivers just go too fast for our streets.

In Worcester there is about one incident a week where a motorist strikes a pedestrian. Half of the incidents are hit and runs. Some result in the pedestrian’s death.

Last week a driver struck an older person on Shrewsbury Street. A long-time resident of Worcester said in a letter to the local newspaper that she was afraid to cross the streets of Worcester as some drivers go “50, 60 or 70” miles per hour.

My wife and I were almost struck by a speeding car as we entered the cross walk at the Marine Corp. League.

crosswalk signal
Crosswalk signal. photo: Gordon Davis

The cross walk signal was blinking bright yellow. It seemed that the motorist sped up!

It is my opinion that when a motorist strikes a pedestrian, he should receive an automatic $500 fine – regardless of fault. This would help remind motorists they MUST, in all cases, yield to pedestrians – or stop for pedestrians in some situations.

This issue of pedestrians and public safety is a serious one. People are dying. It should not be a political football. The crosswalk signals being requested by WPI should be built. These are public streets for which the City and the Worcester City Council are responsible.

Is money a higher priority than public safety and our lives?  

Worcester City Councilor Michael T. Gaffney, like many others, seems to think so. We have a situation where Councilor Gaffney will delay or not expedite a public safety issue that has come before the Worcester City Council because he wants WPI to pay for all the crosswalk signals.

Some people seem to believe that pedestrians have no rights – except to get out of the way of a speeding vehicle!
 
I was told that a few folks were angry that I criticized the Majority Leader of the Massachusetts State Senate, Harriet Chandler, for her proposed bill to fine pedestrians who jaywalked. They were especially irked by my suggestion that motorists be automatically fined for striking pedestrians.

A pedestrian, when struck by a car, does not harm the motorist. The pedestrian never gets up and runs away from the scene of the accident.

Councilor Gaffney has previously made statements contrary to public safety. At a mayoral debate he stated that when a motorist strikes a pedestrian, the motorist suffers emotional anguish. He said nothing about the pedestrian’s pain and suffering!

So, as stated above, we have a situation where Councilor Gaffney will delay or not expedite a public safety issue because he wants WPI to pay for it. WPI already makes payment to the City of Worcester in lieu of taxes (PILOT). If Gaffney believes that WPI should pay more in PILOT to the City of Worcester then that can be negotiated. However, to hold as hostage or leverage an issue of public safety such as cross walk signals makes no sense and is playing roulette with our lives.  

A reasonable person could conclude that Gaffney is using this issue to further his rumored career move to the State Senate. If so, shame on him for endangering the lives of Worcester residents and the public.

A reasonable person would install the cross walk signals now and negotiate a possible increase of WPI’s payment in lieu of taxes later.

Unfortunately, I do not know of many people who think Councilor Gaffney is a reasonable person.

InCity Letters, InCity Voices

WPI students fight Exxon Mobil CEO’s planned commencement address

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Worcester- There’s a storm brewing on the campus of Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) over the invitation by the administration to ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson to deliver this year’s commencement speech on May 14.

According to WPI’s Students for a Just and Stable Future (SJSF), ExxonMobil, the world’s largest private oil company and a major funder of climate deniers, has given over $1.3 million to the school. The invitation appears to have more to do with future funding aspirations than aspirational future vision.

After a decision by WPI’s President Dennis Berkey to prevent protesting students from receiving diplomas drew negative media attention, Berkey withdrew the threat and agreed to endorse an alternate commencement speech by Richard Heinberg, Senior Fellow of the Post Carbon Institute. Invited by SJSF, Heinberg will deliver from the main stage directly following Tillerson’s address.

“Richard Heinberg’s work is a powerful symbol of our wishes for WPI: a university which, in line with its budding green image, chooses to honor someone with leadership and vision, rather than a baron of the past, a force of the status quo.” – SJSF Leadership

However, the fact remains that the CEO of the world’s most profitable company, one that has destroyed entire ecosystems around the globe, will be addressing the next generation of parents, thinkers and leaders.

Protesters, whose ranks will be swelled by organizations including 350.org and a number of Boston/Worcester area allies, have vowed to oppose Tillerson’s speech directly.

Green Island Grrrl, Rosalie's Blog, Uncategorized

Terry Toombs – aka “The Boob” – update

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By Rosalie Tirella

How very interesting … .

I got an email from a woman who has known Terry Toombs – aka The Boob – for 13 or so years. She apparently house-sits for Terry when The Boob and her clan go on their 3-week-long vacations (which happens every four months or so!). The woman read my Toomes blog posting and ICTimes story and told me I hit the nail on the head when it came to the Toomes clan of 132 Institute Rd, Worcester.

She agreed: The Toombs milk the system. This woman told me Terry and clan “raid food pantries.” She said her man boys may act dumb but are intelligent enough to get on their comupter and book discount airplane flights. The woman said the Toombs are heading out for their 12-day vaca soon – in January! She said she wanted to say: WHO’S HANDICAPPED?? when one of Terry’s sons was making airplane reservations and asked for 2 handicapped seats. (why not?! more room/less money!)

The woman, who said the Toombs have 8 cats, and a flea problem (last summer) said the naked-boob-bearing Terry sounds right on, too.

Two words for Terry Theresa Toombs and clan: MEANS TESTING.

MEANS TESTING!

MEANS TESTING! A STRATEGY TO CURTAIL welfare fraud that Mass gunbernatorial candidate Charlie Baker recommended the State of Mass institute before this state and our fair cities and towns go belly up! I am a Democrat and would never ever take shelter or food or clothing away from a poor single mother and her infant/children. But the Toombs clan is something different. Something insidious eating away at the fabric of … Worcester, society.

Means testing should be something any social service agency/food pantry should do before it gives any sort of benefits/food/etc to folks who say they need the help.

For example: If you want food stamps, how do you live – what is the lifestyle that makes you unable to pay for food? Why should Terry Toombs and her family go all over Worcester county “raiding food pantries” and then use the money they shoud have spent on groceries to buy airplane tickets for their vacations? How insane is that?

Something is very very wrong here. The Toombs are the perfect example of a floundering USA. America has lost its bearings. Where once the USA had a killer work ethic – I know: my immigrant grandparents and my mom worked themselves to the bone – we now have the Toombs – the culture of entitlement. Fat, lazy, computer literate enough to Google “food pantries” and “free” and then jump into their van to retrieve their goodies.

When I was growing up, my mother told me what her mother from Poland told her: When you get your pay check this is how you spend yor money (in order of importance): rent, gas/heating bill, electric bill, food, telephone. Extra money went for clothing, shoes, etc. The last thing my mother would blow her teeny paycheck on was a family vacation. She just didn’t have the dough – and we kids had to adjust. We never ever went on a real vacation. My mother couldn’t afford a week in Florida or Cape Cod. She couldn’t spend dough on lake cabins, etc. But during the summer my sisters and I did go the Girls Club on Winthrop Street (fun!), attended Worcester’s Summer’s World play productions in the parks (also fun!), went to the lilbrary and enjoyed their movies and visited our Aunt Rose and Uncle Mark in the nicer part of town. They had a big back yard and a little house. Much nicer than our third-floor flat in Green Island. When we vistied my aunt and uncle, my mom (a single mom for the most part) relaxed with my aunt and uncle over a cup of coffee and donuts. My sisters and I played basketball with our cousins – or board games like Monopoly. A blast! We also had cook outs and icecream parties. And sometimes we all went – my Uncle Mark driving – to Natasket or Hampton beach for the day.

It was great fun – and appropriate. We were poor. We tried our best to have a good time during school vacations. More important: we always had lots of food (that my mom paid for with her hard earned dough) in the house, a roof over our heads, warmth, electricity, telephone service and boots for the winter months. Which we paid for ourselves. We kids – through my mom’s excellent example – had pride in ourselves, our minds, each other. My mom was God to us. My mother was fiercely proud of herself, too.

I will always love her for this.

Even though we were poor, my mom expected me to get all As in school (which I did – al honors classes and 3 AP courses – up until college!). And she expected me and my two sisters to go to college. This is when – through my aunt – we got assistance from the state and the federal government. Besides college applications, we filled out Pell grant applications, student loan appleications, scholarship applications, etc BECAUSE MY MOTHER WAS POOR AND WE COULD NOT AFFORD COLLEGE and we got help from the govt. Perfectly appropriate.

My mom earned every iota of respect we gave her. We feared her. She was old school. She was not our huggy, lovey-dovey gal pal – she was our mother. Sarah Palin would probably call her a Mama Grizzly.

So opposite from the pigs who are the Toombs! Their raids of food pantries! Terry The Boob and her pathetic husband and kids bring shame to themselves and what it means to be an American. For all of us.

Green Island Grrrl, Rosalie's Blog, Uncategorized

Theresa “Terry” Toombs of 132 Institute Rd. – aka “The Boob”

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By Rosalie Tirella

How weird can Worcester get?

This weird: The guy I go out with says that all summer long, whenever Terry Toombs of 132 Institute Rd, saw him (walking his dog, etc), she made it a point to stand in front of her dining room picture window – a huge one – and fold laundry infront of it – topless. With all the lights on! Totally naked from the waist up! Naked, naked, naked!

“Gross!” I said.

“Weird,” said my guy.

Weighing about 300 pounds, looking unkempt and dirty, Topless Terry (now aka The Boob) has no chance of sleeping with my guy. “I would fuck one of the sons first!” he has said.

Yet Terry loves to leer at him.

So in front of the picture window she goes – folding laundry for him, getting her sick kick out of this behavior, having her secret dirty fun. How vulgar. How shameless. Married and with two grown sons living in the same house.

I pity the poor WPI student who may get a look at Worcester’s Boob as he or she is walking in front of the Toomes’ residence to one of the student apartments on upper Institute Rd. How sad. The WPI kids, maybe their first time away from home, get a full dose of Worcester low-life-ness. Another reason to leave Worceter forever, the night of graduation, they probably tell themselves. I can picture their vacation conversations with pals. Maybe their friends go to Columbia or NYU. When they get together over school break, the Columbia kids regale their WPI friends with stories of the Big Apple. Not to worry! Our WPI students can come back with tales of The Big Boob – Terry Toombs of 132 Institute Rd. (She really should be living on Caro Street)

How weird that The Boob and her husband and two man-children would land in Worcester’s chi chi West Side. Nothing about them is a fit for the land of doctors, teachers and business owners. For instance, The Boob has the dirtiest mouth this side of Park Ave – the filthiest mouth the West Side of Worcester has ever heard! “Get in this house, you fuckin’ cocksucker!” my guy has heard her scream to her little old wizened husband. “You cocksucker!” she screams – I have heard this term of endearment, too. The Boob is loud and coarse sounding. When my guy mimics her, he sounds just like one of the Monty Python guys in drag. Sometimes I’ll ask him to do his impression of The Boob. We both giggle when he hams it up! Once my guy said: You know, if you put together all of the their best body parts together, you culdn’t make one half-good-looking human.

But there’s more. Not only does he and neighborhors have to listen to “cocksucker this and cocksucker that” all the time – as soon as the Toombs pile out of their van and hit the pavement in front of their home. (Yes, let’s have our domestic tranquility shattered courtesy of Terry Toome! The Boob!) They also have to deal with people who dump crap in their back yard and on the sidewalk in front of their house. This past summer (probably in her glory), The Boob literaly took apart a sofa in her driveway. Too cheap to have it hauled away – she and a pal sat in the summer heat pulling old batting out of pillows, etc, leaving the coils and frame sitting there.

When the Toombs first moved in my guy and I nicknamed them the Clampetts – after the 1960s TV show, The Beverly Hillbillies. They seemed to swim in ignorance and revel in their stupidity. The Clampetts would take a part their sofa in the middle of their neighborhood. In fact we have been calling the Toomes the Clampetts for so long, my guy sometimes doesn’t even remember their last name – or first. Yet The Boob feels she has the right to get close …

The boob.

But here is the hitch: The Boob, who used to be a legal secretary (thank you Worcester legal community), must be farily shrewd because she and her clan pay their mortgage without hardly lifting a finger. In fact this crowd – including the sons who must be in their mid thirties had NO job amongst them all. ZERO job – zero work ethic. The Toombs play the system – a system that landed them in a nice house (which they are quickly turning into a dump) in the West Side! The four of them combined get their welfare, SSI, retirement and other entitlement checks to pay their mortgage. Meals on Wheels, free homemaker services, free PCA services, free house repairs by Lowes, free handicapped ramp (which they don’t use but hang their laundry on to dry) by the Worcester Fire Department firefighter – volunteer carpenters. They have asked my guy to do stuff for them – plow them out for free, free jumps to their car battery. They are the laziest people I have ever seen. And yet no one has called them on this – FRAUD. No one has seen The Boob rip out tree stumps out of her backyard one summer and then have community volunteers rake and landscape their entire backyard the NEXT summer, while the Boob and her family did nothing. Just sat in their house. I witnessed this a few summers ago. (They have lived on 132 Institute Rd. for about 3 1/2 years)

I mean how much TV can you watch? How long can you play computer games?

Yet this bullshit, courtesy of the taxpayer, has enabled the Toombs to pool all their entitlement checks to pay the mortgage and other notes on their house and take month long vacations in Texas or Florida. And to bear their boobs!

But do they thank the community that enables them? Do they even pick up the crap in their yard? No Terry Toomes – in her mid-fifties – bares her breasts. The Toombs eat their free meals on wheels (I thought the meals were for the house-bound elderly), collect their disability checks and, in general, degrade themselves, and the West Side neighborhood they lucked into – courtesy of some great Worcester lawyers – pals. One being Mark Maynard! They run, walk, haul things around, take sofas apart. How are they qualified for free homemaking? Free meals?

The West Side of Worcester thanks you, Mr. Maynard. You managed to get friends of friends into a pretty exclusive neighborhood only to have them turn it into their personal pigsty.