EXTRA...

"Homeless hotels" auctioned to local non-profit for $3 million

TODAY's quote: “I hope it is a platform to revitalize our town. It will be a real new, nice facility”
- Brian Braginton-Smith.

Two troubled Yarmouth "homeless hotels" auctioned to local non-profit

$3 million paid for Cavalier motel and West Yarmouth Lodgings

 Yahoo contributor recommends
             the Cavalier Motel
"No complaints...motel was recommended by celly in Barnstable House of Correction and proved to be a be great place start to rebuild my life. Location was awesome.
      Given my license being suspended hotel's proximity to local bus line was great and allowed me to be close to court house, DTA and Social Security office.
      My DSS worker commented how clean and child friendly motel was, which helped with my supervised visits with my children. Many of my neighbors were sympathetic to my plight in life.
      I would recommend this motel to anyone.Route 28 in Yarmouth is about to experience a significant change as Brian Braginton-Smith, a longtime Yarmouth resident who has been active in town issues according to this week's Register, bid $1.75 million for the Cavalier Motel in South Yarmouth and $1.2 million for the West Yarmouth Lodgings at the belated auction of the two trouble properties.

Braginton-Smith of Village Center Group, LLC., which will operate the properties, is chairman of the Yarmouth Board of Health and will serve as project manager. His group has an option to purchase the property from Harry B. Miller, who was fined and found in contempt of court in a town lawsuit for providing illegal long-term housing in two of his motels.

Mr. Miller is said to be hiding in Jamaica.

As recently as November the Cavalier motel still had 21 people living in it, with seven refusing to leave, according to Marvin Munroe, the motel's manager. Eight of the people remaining are either disabled or elderly, he said.

Scene of many police raids and violence

Two arrested, one wanted in separate domestic violence incidents, L to R: Maureen A. Rivieccio, Steven Michael Grover, Sidney D. Paulson. YPD booking photos.

A story we ran in October 4 said that Yarmouth police officers responded to three separate and violent domestic attacks at motels in town over the weekend. 

Just after 9 p.m. on Friday, officers responded to a reported domestic disturbance in a room at the Cavalier Motel on Route 28 in South Yarmouth. Upon arrival, the officers determined that drinking had fueled an argument leading to physical aggression. Maureen A. Rivieccio was determined to be the aggressor and was placed under arrested and charged with domestic violence assault and battery and transported to the Yarmouth Police Department.

See that report here. Read this week's Register story on the auction here.

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Falmouth DPW director on town hydrant sales; Blue Meany video

TODAY's quote: “It was a common practice there and, actually, everywhere.”
- Raymond Jack said about letting employees sell town scrap metal for personal funds

Falmouth Public Works director let employees sell old equipment, keep money

 Blue Meany Octopus Hyannis video

Maxine Wolfset's video of last week's "Blue Meany" invasion of Hyannis by Occupy Cape Cod protestors.
It promotes a protest at the State House in Boston at noon on February 28.Before he became the Public Works Director in Falmouth in 1994, Raymond Jack held a similar post in Woodbury, NJ where he was accused of allowing his employees to sell old fire hydrants and keep the money.

Mr. Jack said the practice was common there and then because employees earned only $5.50 and hour.

The Falmouth Enterprise reported all this after Marc P. Finneran of Trotting Park Road sent them an article from the Philadelphia Inquirer published on June 25, 1992, outlining the accusations against Mr. Jack.

The Inquirer story siad that the "Woodbury NJ City Police are investigating allegations that Superintendent Raymond Jack permitted an employee to falsify time sheets and allowed money from the sale of city property to go to employees. The City Council voted 8-1 on Tuesday to suspend Jack, without pay, with the intention to dismiss him. Jack said that he would request a hearing before the Council next Tuesday."

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Groundhog Day hurricane remembered

A February surprise for Cape Cod and the entire East Coast

A "Freak Storm" three months after the close of Hurricane Season

Pressure map of Groundhog Day tropical storm as an extra-tropical storm off of the Eastern Seaboard.

Radar track of the Groundhog Day hurricane.The only hurricane to make landfall on the continental United States during the month of February occurred today on Groundhog Day when on the night of February 2 1952, an unnamed tropical storm moved northeast across South Florida and what was left of the storm raced up the eastern seaboard crossing Cape Cod late on February 4.

After leaving Florida, the storm continued rapidly northeastward, strengthening to peak winds of 50 mph. On February 4 it completed the transition into an extratropical cyclone off the coast of North Carolina.

Around that time, gale force winds extended 100 miles to the east of the center.  Later that day, it passed over Cape Cod, and early on February 5 it moved into eastern Maine.

The Hurricane Research Division assessed the storm as losing its identity shortly thereafter, over New Brunswick. However, a map produced by the U.S. Weather Bureau indicated the storm continued northward into the Gulf of Saint Lawrence and later crossed eastern Quebec and Labrador. By February 6, it reached the ocean again, deepening to a minimum pressure of 988 mbar. At that point, the Weather Bureau track ended, and as such the ultimate fate of the storm is unknown.

The storm was described as a "freak", forming about three months after the end of the hurricane season. The chief forecaster at Miami U.S. Weather Bureau, Grady Norton, remarked that he was unsure how the cyclone developed. Source: Wikipedia.

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Mellon's $28M Cape home; Guv bets Centerville chicken pies on Super Bowl

Did you ever wonder what a $28 million dollar Cape Cod home would look like?

   Here's Bunny Mellon's in Oyster Harbors, the gated island community for the super-rich with its 7,000-square-foot main house, beach house, greenhouses, tennis court and dock, with 1,000 square feet of shoreline on Nantucket Sound and the Seapuit River. Source Jack Cotton.  See more in a previous Xtra here.

Governor Patrick bets Cape Cod chicken pies on Pats

Two Democrat Governors shut out one Republican

Check out those Chicken Pot Pies.Sure, you can bet your New York brother-in-law five bucks on the Super Bowl this Sunday, but Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick is betting New York Governor Andrew Cuomo those Oprah-loved chicken pot pies from the Centerville Pie Company.

He'll also throw in some chips from a suburban-Boston company and clam chowder from the Boston-based Legal Sea Foods chain.

The Buffalo News reports that Cuomo is betting 46 dozen bagels from Ess-a-Bagel in Manhattan, 46 cheesecakes from Junior’s in Brooklyn and 46 cases of Greek yogurt from upstate New York.

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie tried to muscle in on the wager claiming the New York Giants are in his state because that's where their stadium is, but the two Democrats turned him down.

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Most Cape towns make "Most Liquor Licenses" list

13 Cape towns in Top 75 list with most liquor licenses per resident

Only Bourne, Mashpee and Sandwich not on list with Wareham the "driest"

By Walter Brooks

It's a lot easier to get a bottle of booze in Brewster than in Boston. That's because Brewster has a liquor license ratio of one license for every 501 man, woman and child in that bucolic seaside town.

Brewster is on a list of the 75 Massachusetts town with the most liquor license per resident, and only three Cape town escape the list.

Is tourism to blame, or to thank

Apologists claims it's because Cape Cod is a major vacation destination, so we must have more restaurants - with liquor available - to accommodate this major part of our economy.

In fact, most research suggests tourism (euphemistically now renamed the hospitality industry) accounts for well over half of all the dollars spent on Cape Cod each year, and it is spent in a four-month period. Tourism also employs huge numbers of our residents, and half the restaurants here would be out of business in a heartbeat without the credit cards being flashed by our the 5-8 million visitors every summer.

What towns are "driest"?

The just-off Cape town of Wareham is at the "driest" of  the 75 towns with the most liquor licenses with one for every 556 residents while Provincetown has a liquor license for every 54 residents, and is the "wettest."

That works with the vacation area explanation - who vacations ion Wareham?

Wellfleet is the "third wettest" with a license for every 103 residents and two Martha's Vineyard towns, Oak Bluffs and Edgartown, are next wettest with 128 and 130 residents per license.

Plymouth is among the "driest" with 535, and Fair Haven is drier with 556 per capita.

Of the fifteen towns on the Cape, only Bourne, Mashpee and Sandwich are not in the top 75 towns listing per capita liquor licenses.

Cape Cod is a sandspit held together by liquor stores

The list goes on with almost every Cape Cod town in the top 75 statewide. Here's the breakdown showing number of residents per license across the Cape and on The Islands and the South Shore starting with the "driest" to the "wettest", but "dry" ain't too dry when you are among the 75 wettest in Massachusetts which has more than 350 towns:

• Wareham - 556
• Fair Haven 556
• Cohasset - 552
• Mattapoisett - 536
• Plymouth - 535
• West Bridgewater - 513
• Brewster - 501
• Eastham - 495
• Foxborough - 479
• Harwich - 442
• Falmouth - 437
• Yarmouth - 428
• Barnstable - 417
• Tisbury - 345
• Dennis - 291
• Chatham - 258
• Orleans - 233
• Truro - 213
• Aquinnah - 177
• Nantucket - 144
• Edgartown - 130
• Oak Bluffs - 128
• Wellfleet - 105
• Provincetown - 57

And you all thought Wareham was such a wicked place - phooey.

Move to The Vineyard and get blitzed easier.

Boston TV Channel 5 WCVB makes it fun to see whether your town is on the list of the "Top 75 Massachusetts Towns with the Most Liquor Licenses per Resident" here.

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Kennedy home given to Boston charity

TODAY's quote: "I hope for an America where neither "fundamentalist" nor "humanist" will be a dirty word, but a fair description of the different ways in which people of good will look at life and into their own souls." - Ted Kennedy, Oct. 3, 1983.

Ted Kennedy's home donated to Kennedy Institute

The late senator promised his mother it would be given to charity

The flag at half-mast has been an all too familiar sight at the Kennedy home in Hyannisport. File photo.Half the media on earth today is reporting that "The Compound was sold." The details are a little different.

The late U.S. Senator Ted Kennedy's home in Hyannisport overlooking Nantucket Sound has been given to the institute in his name, fulfilling wishes outlined in his will.

The rest of what is commonly known as "the Kennedy Compound" belongs to other family members.

The Boston-based Kennedy Institute issued a statement yesterday about the transaction. The statement said that Ted had promised his mother Rose that the Hyannisport home would be preserved for charitable use.

The institute said the house would host seminars and educational programs and eventually would be opened to the general public, so Cape Cod will still remain the host for famous folks and world leaders which is certainly good for our tourism businesses.

The 12-bedroom, 9,000-square-foot house hosted the family’s famous touch football games, the wedding of Patrick Kennedy and the wedding reception for Ted Kennedy’s niece Caroline Kennedy. It was the summer White House for President John F. Kennedy and was the place the family gathered after he was assassinated in 1963.

Read the detailed report in today's Boston Globe.

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Sticker shock school budget for Harwich

TODAY's quote: "If you think education is expensive, try ignorance." - Derek Bok.

Draft school budget gives Harwich sticker shock

Biggest extra cost in FY 13, $1,185,813, for 8 new special education students

   The Ashland High School in Massachusetts will be the style for the new Monomoy High School.

Carolyn Cragin, the new Monomoy School District Superintendent, showed her draft budget for the new district last week, and it had a couple of shocks for Harwich voters.  Because the two towns' elementary school are a part of the district budget for 2013, the incensed potential is shared by both towns. After the new high school is open in September 2014, the two towns will again control their own elementary schools and their budgets.

The Cape Cod Chronicle reports that while rough projections last year called for Harwich taxpayers to be spending about $400,000 more on education in the first year of the region, the draft budget this week hints that the extra cost could be as much as $2.4 million. 

Three-quarters of that extra expense would be to cover the cost of eight new special education students. Because of a reporting error, an item about the Monomoy Regional School District budget proposal for fiscal 2013 included an incorrect estimate of increased special education costs. The costs are expected to be $1,185,813 higher than predicted.

Special Education cost to increase 63 percent in one year

The Special Education goes from $1,872,796 in the FY 12, to $3,058,609 in FY  13, which is $1,185,813, and represents an increase of 63.3 percent.  Local districts have no control over the Special Education costs as they are mandated by the state.

Click here to read the FY13 budget presentation.

Ashland High School style chosen for new regional school

Monomoy regional school officials also revealed this week that they have chosen the Ashland High School as the design model for the new Monomoy Regional High School scheduled to open in September of 2014.

In a unanimous vote Thursday evening, the building committee expressed its support for the design, which features a bright, open layout and "neighborhoods" of classrooms, public spaces and administration rooms off a central hallway.

The predictable objections will probably be that the design is not "Cape Coddy" enough.

To see all the Xtras, click here, and to write a Letter to the Editor, write to info@capecodtoday.com or click here.

Only seven percent reply to D-Y school survey

TODAY's quote: “Most respondents indicated they left the district in pursuit of more effective teachers and school administrators... for more academic opportunities and college preparation."
- Carol Woodbury, D-Y Superintendent.

Only seven percent of D-Y School Choice parents answer why they left district

Superintendent Dr. Carol Woodbury.Dennis-Yarmouth Regional School District Superintendent Carol Woodbury wants to make her system the best on the Cape. She wants not only to  stop the outflow of students using School Choice to attend out of town schools, but she also wants to start attracting students outside of Dennis and Yarmouth to chose D-Y instead.

In her efforts to get the information necessary to do that, and save tons of money for her two towns in the process,  she is more than a little stymied by the lack of help from the taxpayers in her own district who won't take the time to fill out the questionnaire she mailed to them last October asking why they left.

The Register reports that only 32 of 485 parents who sent their children to out-of-district schools responded to a survey that Superintendent Carol Woodbury sent in October. Most of those responding to the survey chose Harwich schools.

Since it cost the Dennis-Yarmouth School District over $2 million to pay other districts to educate its students this year, one would think the 485 parents receiving Dr. Woodbury's questionnaire would have eagerly taken a few minute to save their own tax dollars, but they didn't.

Schools are a business. Failing businesses which can fly to pieces with horrifying speed.dThis district along with Mashpee and Sandwich has a year - maybe two - to learn how to market themselves because a school district today with School Choice is, in fact, a business. 

And in business, once it’s in free-fall, a failing business can fly to pieces with horrifying speed.

To see a chart below showing the profit and loss through School Choice for all the districts on Cape Cod, and to read the previous story on this problem click here.

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Yarmouth doesn't want more old ladies

TODAY's quote: “The committee felt they had answered what they were asked to do and they feel it is appropriate to the setting." - Colleen McLaughlin, Yarmouth King’s Highway Committee.

Yarmouth doesn't like windmills OR old ladies

Folks who chose to live along Route 6A tend to regard their area as not only precious, but historic, and they object to modern nuisances like wind turbines, although they apparently are oblivious to the thousands of telephone and electricity poles littering their view.

Now four, possibly even five, elderly Yarmouth women with physical or developmental disabilities want to live as a group in a one-story frame house which looks much like most Cape Cod houses with a farmer’s porch.

A typical such home by Group7 Design, is on the right.

According to this week's Register, the design firm even removed the garage and reduced the size to make it look more "Cape Coddy."

Neighbors complain that the house is still a little larger than those in the 'hood, and the 'hood is Route 6A, a.k.a. "Old King's Highway", and they think it "looks like a doctor's office."

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Big price tag for Sandwich's new public safety facility; Mashpee helps family after fire destroys home; Rabies victim ID'ed

TODAY's quote: “Actually, I was surprised that the number wasn’t higher."
- Sandwich Capital Committee Chairman John W. Juros.

New Sandwich Fire/Police facility will cost each taxpayer $4,940

The Falmouth Enterprise reports that the preliminary plans were unveiled for the new $26M public safety facility in South Sandwich. As currently proposed, the facility would cost the average taxpayer roughly $247 a year for 20 years, a total of $4,940.

Mashpee move to help family whose home was destroyed by fire last weekend

There was nothing left after firemen doused the flames.

The Mashpee Enterprise reports that Mashpee Fire Chief George W. Baker Jr. said the fire at the two-story colonial style home owned by single-mother Christine Mackie who has three children was caused by careless disposal of cooking debris, and is considered accidental.

Chief Baker said there is physical evidence that a plastic microwaveable container was placed in an oven by one of the children, caught fire, and was disposed of in a trash can in the garage.

An online site is collecting donations to help the family.

As of this morning 144 people have pledged over $14,500, see and donate here.

Marstons Mill man who died of rabies is identified

Fox-TV reports that Kevin Galvin was the  63-year-old Marstons Mills man who contracted rabies in December died this week.

Galvin’s death is the first fatal rabies case contracted in Massachusetts since 1935.

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