Satisfied yet?

Last night the Executive Director of the Massachusetts School Building Authority, as well as the members of the town's School Building Committee and the expert designers who are working on the high school project answered EVERY SINGLE question and concern that opponents of the project have used as a basis for their support of a NO vote. The Gold/Moran claim that we could do a cheaper renovation of the so-called 1971 wing and still get MSBA funding was unequivocally rejected by all of the experts, despite repeated efforts by Mr. Moran, Mr. Wojcik, and Mr. Nolet to pry their preferred answers out of the speakers.

So what now? With every single objection debunked now by every qualified authority at both the state and local level, what will Mr. Gold/Moran say next? [I only ask about Mr. Gold and Moran because the other prominent opponents have already exhausted their credibility on this matter.] Will they continue to pretend that they know more about every element of this project than the full range of experts who have spent the last two & a half years vetting the proposal on the table? Will they simply choose to ignore the opinions of the experts, who have also made clear that a Yes vote would be the most economical option for Longmeadow's taxpayers, and vaguely claim to believe the project is simply too expensive to take on right now, despite the fact that it will only increase in cost going forward?

Or, will Mr. Gold/Moran put their money where their mouth is and support this project because every one of their concerns has been clarified and every hesitation they expressed about the project has been shown to be unjustified?

If Gold/Moran chose to see this rationally and change their position to support the YES vote, I will salute their integrity and willingness to do the right thing even when doing so is embarrassing and possibly politically damaging.

"Politics ain't bean bag" and I do not apologize for holding public officials accountable as frankly and directly as I can for their views, lack of views, and positions. Nothing I have said or written has been unreasonable or unsupported. The real insult to civil debate has come from the opponents of the High School who have refused to participate in a single debate about the issue, preferring instead to employ unrebuttable (and frequently unhinged) rhetoric in LTEs, and other one-way communications techniques. Indeed, the one venue where the opponents faced immediate rebutted was Mr. Moran's LongmeadowBuzz web site where the effectiveness of these rebubttals apparently pushed Mr. Moran to take an action that may have doomed his laudable goal of providing the town with a forum for open debate and dialogue. Mr. Moran's censorship of my analysis of Mr. Gold's candidacy and his opposition to the high school project on LongmeadowBuzz was the ultimate in uncivil behavior in a democratic community.

It's time for Mr. Gold to admit he has been wrong about the high school and for Mr. Moran to either allow his LongmeadowBuzz forum to be an open forum or to remove the site altogether.