Shirley Kressel vs. Boston City Council

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commuter guy

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Shirley is keeping them on their toes over at City Hall:

Hub to pay $10K for meetings flap

The Boston City Council is throwing in the towel and offering to pay a $10,000 fine to settle a lawsuit accusing the panel of holding 10 secret confabs between 2003 and 2005 in violation of the state?s open meeting law.

The City Council said in court documents it will accept an earlier court ruling it met illegally nine times with the Boston Redevelopment Authority to discuss an urban-renewal plan and once to consider Boston University lab workers exposure to rabbit fever.

Council President Maureen Feeney said in a statement the council never intended to ?deliberately circumvent the Open Meeting Law.?

But Shirley Kressel, one of three Boston residents who brought the suit, wants the legal wrangling to go on, and is calling for the court to force the council to obey the open meeting law.

Said Kressel: ?They need more than a slap on the wrist.?

source: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/re...10K_for_meetings_flap/srvc=news&position=also
 
As much as I disagree with Shirley, this is issue two out of two that I agree with her on. The whole open meeting thing with the city council is truly disgusting, especially in light of all the other "dealings" going on.
 
kennedy said:
Fuck off, Kressel.
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Easy there, killer. There's nothing wrong with wanting a public organization to keep their public meetings public.
 
There are times when I am truly surprised that kennedy is a high school kid and then there are times (like this) that it is painfully obvious.
 
Kressel here. In fact, Kressel is always willing to identify herself, stand up and take the heat for what she believes in (and has paid for it with her job). Who is kennedy, the architect-God? Come on, show your face to the lowly masses. And tell us why you want our money spent and our laws made in secret. Tell us if you know what these councilors were caught doing behind closed doors, while they express shock, shock at Chuck Turner's arrest.

ps. Doesn't the site have some sort of requirement for civilized communication? I've been told to fuck off and to go get killed jumping off the turnpike, and all sorts of stuff in between. Is that ok with the site-meisters? I think it might, you know, discourage people with different points of view from joining the discussion. I got whacked -- and I didn't even post the story, didn't even know it was here till someone told me. Hey!
 
kennedy is far from an architect God passing judgment on the lowly masses, merely a lowly high school kid. Pay him no mind.

And this site is pretty open, very little gets censored here. Amazingly, there are very few of these types of attacks. It does get frustrating when it happens though.
 
Kressel is certainly correct about the transparency issue but I`m not totally convinced this^ person is Shirley Kressel. People can assume any persona on the internet. There was a Scott Van Voorhis here once that was a probable fake.
 
I have no reason to believe she is not who she says she is.
Beton has met her in person and (AFAIK) they discussed this site.
She has posted nothing that is inconsistent with what we read of her in the papers.
 
^ Okay, I wasn't aware that someone from this site had actually met her. So I`m sure you are right. I just am not willing to believe anyone who takes the persona of a public figure without some sort of proof.
 
shirley kressel said:
Kressel here. In fact, Kressel is always willing to identify herself, stand up and take the heat for what she believes in (and has paid for it with her job). Who is kennedy, the architect-God? Come on, show your face to the lowly masses. And tell us why you want our money spent and our laws made in secret. Tell us if you know what these councilors were caught doing behind closed doors, while they express shock, shock at Chuck Turner's arrest.

ps. Doesn't the site have some sort of requirement for civilized communication? I've been told to fuck off and to go get killed jumping off the turnpike, and all sorts of stuff in between. Is that ok with the site-meisters? I think it might, you know, discourage people with different points of view from joining the discussion. I got whacked -- and I didn't even post the story, didn't even know it was here till someone told me. Hey!
Click to expand...

Don't worry about the personal attacks, it's the Internet and they happen all the time. I'll have to say I apologize for telling you to jump onto the turnpike, that was before I had a whole understanding if you. However, to the other person I directed that remark, it still stands ;).
 
I can also vouch for the fact that the Shirley on this forum is the true "Shirley Kressel." Although some on the forum may not agree with every position of Shirley, she is a Boston resident who obviously has immersed herself in "the process" of city development and not for her personal gain.

It is my understading that she was a very critical player in the Gaiety Theater preservation effort (Kensington place proposal) and we all know what a disaster that has become to date. Noted by members of this forum to be Boston's largest kitty litter box as well as the Thomas Menino Greenway.

It is my belief we could learn a lot from those who have fought in the trenches in prior Boston development battles.

Lastly, I say good for Shirley and the other plaintiff's who took the time and effort to challenge the City Council on the open meeting issue.
 
Hey Shirley, glad to see you here, but I'm sure your grown up enough to take everything in stride....

I really wonder where the line is here between recreation and something much more serious. I wish it were spelled out.

On one hand, its a very small message board with little to no pull. On the other hand, the creators, the moderator and some well regarded members see it as much more and strive to obtain that. I'm not sure that's a obtainable goal, but I admire the cause.

My thoughts would be a whole lot less moderation (other than not allowing cursing of any type. There's programs that do that no?) and more moderation by members by ridiculing people for ridiculous comments. Let the masses police the masses. An omnipotent moderator who's real qualifications are questionable at best is a monarchy and I personally don't respect a monarchy who chooses to delete or keep comments as they wish.
 
Sometimes I get the feeling that DudeYourBobbyDigital is still posting on this board.
 
suffolk83 said:
On one hand, its a very small message board with little to no pull. On the other hand, the creators, the moderator and some well regarded members see it as much more and strive to obtain that. I'm not sure that's a obtainable goal, but I admire the cause.
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You're not giving anywhere near enough credit to the fact that with each passing day more and more people who have a tangible impact on the city read this board, and that our words don't exist in as much of a vacuum as we once thought. Moreover, the board is realizing that it actually can and does have a place within the civic sphere that we should be taking more seriously (something that IMO can only be a good thing).
 
shirley kressel said:
Who is kennedy, the architect-God? Come on, show your face to the lowly masses. And tell us why you want our money spent and our laws made in secret.
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I apologize for telling you to "fuck off" but I still believe that you've got better things to do than police the City Council, I mean come on-it was for urban redevelopment and that BU Bio-hazard lab. If it were a more serious matter, such as some sort of scandal, I'd commend you Shirley. But unfortunately, you're wasting time and making the city pay even more money so you can get 15 seconds of fame in the newspaper.
 
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15 minutes of fame....

When we (three registered voters) brought this suit, we assumed, per the Open Meeting Law, that it would be settled at a hearing within ten days. We didn't even hire a lawyer, we just wrote up a complaint pro se. The Council has jerked us around for...let's see, almost four years now, with disgraceful and unprofessional legaloid tactics, dragging out a case that has cost the city (and that includes us plaintiffs) about a hundred thousand in legal fees (the $11,000 fine is the least of our costs), and cost us plaintiffs hundreds of dollars each and hundreds of hours of our personal lives, time we had no intention of wasting this way and will not get back. They could have spared the taxpayers, knowing they had no case, but didn't. They did the same in 1987 when the state Attorney General sued them for the same violations and finally signed a consent agreement making them subject to contempt for future violations; yet despite our pleas, neither the Attorney General nor the District Attorney (a former City Councilor), whose job is to enforce this Law, would take on this case or help us with it.

The issues we sued on are very important; if they weren't, the Council wouldn't have been hiding what they were doing -- they knew it was risky. The Council (against public protest) gave up most oversight over the BRA, perpetuating its destructive Urban Renewal Plans and its eminent domain powers, which it uses to take City-owned property without compensation (that bleeds our capital budget of millions of dollars annually); they tried to figure out how to let BU get permitted for a bioterror lab in a densely populated area when it showed it can't be trusted with a life-threatening facility; they hid their self-pay-raising shenanigans with their secret committee voting method, which is so obviously a violation that even though we lost the case (due to their false testimony on the witness stand and a factually confused judge), they changed their method because they knew they got off lucky and might not next time someone hauled them into court for it.

Even as they have now admitted guilt on all charges, they keep violating the law. They hide what they are doing, so we don't even know the scandals. But we've figured out a few more. Maybe you think a personal scandal is what's important to chase politicians for; I think the bigger scandal is to steal from the citizens and betray the public trust.

The last thing any of the three of us were looking for was 15 minutes of fame; I personally had all the fame I could eat already -- I was blacklisted back in 1994 when I tried to save the Pilgrim Theater (another Clarence Blackall theater, demolished ten years before the Gaiety by the "preservation mayor"), and got, as I was told, "too high a political profile" for the design firms in Boston/Cambridge.

It's cost us a lot (and it's still not over), but we couldn't let them get away with this. They seriously hurt the city and the taxpayers. It's impossible for us to expose everything these self-righteous, pontificating "public servants" have done, but they are not as powerless as people think; they have enough power do us a lot of harm, and to serve themselves handsomely.

I still want to know who you are. Why are you hiding? Here you are, a Senior Member, you've written 506 posts -- that's a lot to contribute anonymously; your modesty is admirable.
 
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