Where’s The Outrage Southbridge?

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Ken O’Brien

Parody post from Photo-'Toons 1.25

Last Friday the Southbridge Evening News carried anarticle titled, “Council planning to fix radio issues at school”.
It opened with the following three paragraphs:
“Almost as soon as the new Torrey Road school openedlast month, staff discovered the building gets no cell phone service.It didn’t take much longer to find that policeradios didn’t work there either.According to Chief Daniel Charette, that wasactually known earlier. Back in November 2011, he started talking with thecontractors about fixing the issue, but the individual involved left thecompany and it fell by the wayside.” 
The O’Zone has been been critical of Chief Charettein prior articles.
But I don’t think that this is really his fault.However, I do have to question why he is willing to be the point man on thismatter and potentially the fall guy.
We have repeatedly gotten reports on the newSouthbridge Middle/High School that universally ended with the phrase “onbudget and ahead of schedule”.
So, let’s deal with that outrage first.
The article goes on to say:
“That may have turned out to be a good thing.Originally, he [Charette] said, they were talking a figure of $77,000 just tosolve reception issues on the campus. Over the last week or so, though, OfficerBrian Haggerty, Fire Chief Mark DiFronzo and Charrette, plus town officials,have been testing a different radio system all over town, since bothdepartments have frequently discovered dead zones while responding to calls.Charette said it’ll cost about $57,000.”
Welcome to the “Spin Zone”. The article expands onwhy “That may have turned out to be a good thing.’
A “good thing”? Is Martha Stewart now runningSouthbridge?
The “on budget” school project is now going to costus $57,000 out of the town that should have been part of that largelystate-financed project. Oh, never mind, we’re saving $20,000 – even though nowit has to be part of the town budget.
Well, moving on to outrage two, the fact that thiswas a “dead zone” was only discovered in 2011.
Okay, so we are supposed to believe that all thosepeople walking the site, working on construction and inspecting progress forthe last ten years or so never made a cell phone call? Do you believe inleprechauns?
Finally, outrage number three.
I have spoken about this with a school committeemember.
This is the first that they have heard about it.
So we opened a school where, if there had been acritical situation, cell phone, police radios and fire department radios mostlikely would not have worked. 
This still may happen.
We could have included the cost to correct this inthe “under budget” cost of the project.
But we didn’t.
We found a way to correct it for $20,000 less – but nowit will come directly out of your hide, taxpayers.
And, of course, it won’t happen overnight, so thereis still the risk that a student may suffer because of the inability to reporta crisis condition in a timely manner. But what’s the risk? After all,according to unconfirmed reports there were only eight fights at SMHS lastFriday.
But, then again, I guess I’m off the mark again.
After all, it’s only business as usual in theBrown-Eye of the Commonwealth.