After watching this April 26 meeting – we wondered why Leora Mallach was so giddy about a grant that nobody – even the mayor seemed to know much about. So we filed a FOIA request. We learned that Leora was so excited about it because she had her hand in the pot – taking part and expressing support in the application itself.
The application for this grant was started by Friends of Saxonville member, Ron Chick – a private citizen – without the Mayors’s advance knowledge. Chick, in his initial letter to the Mayor expressed a plan to reach out to individuals and NGO’s to write letters of support for the grant – with or without mayoral support, stating “A brief support letter from the Mayor’s Office will be helpful“. From his emails – we also learn that he was reaching out to the Framingham Conservation division, and was hoping that they would sponsor his application, but hadn’t asked them. He stated, “Given the short timeline I’m working to complete most of the application prior to asking them if they are able to sponsor it“.
Essentially we learned that a private citizen did a lot of the legwork on a grant, and reached out to the governemnt to bring them on board… and we won this non-monetary, assistance only, ZERO dollar grant.
Why will this cost us money? If this plan goes through – the city has to purchase the right of way of many CSX track beds for multi millions of dollars, including the full south side (CP) rail yard on Hollis Street. We won’t even talk about the cost to convert rails to paths and to remediate assumed pollution in the area.
OUR REQUEST:
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BEFORE SCROLLING DOWN TO THE DOCUMENTS…
…PLEASE READ THIS IMPORTANT MESSAGE
Former City Councilor Margareth Shepard is running to be the 6th Middlesex District Massachusetts State Rep – representing all of South Framingham. There will be an election on September 6th to whittle down a field of three candidates to just one.
THE PEOPLE BEHIND FU ASK
THAT YOUÂ DO NOT VOTE FOR HER.
She is being overwhelmingly promoted and FINANCIALLY SUPPORTED by people who DO NOT live in the district that she would represent. Supporters include people like Mike Hugo, Beth Greeley, Cesar Stewart-Morales, Adam Steiner, Yvonne Spicer, Norma Schulman, Brian Sullivan… and the list goes on.
START PLANNING YOUR VOTE NOW
HELP SOUTH SIDE BY ELIMINATING SHEPARD FROM THE RACE
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why is everyone all so fired up about these darn trails? Only a very small number of people use them. People may ‘say’ they would use them, but they don’t. And no matter if they get 100% funding, they will still take up city time (and money) to get done and keep going. Now I am not saying it is a bad idea, but it seems like there are so many other problems going on in the city these days that take priority. I know it is a ‘feel good- aren’t we great’ type of thing, but it seems that before the city takes on such projects, we should probably have the rest of our house in order, and have a surplus of funds to handle what we know it will eventually cost.