What do you do with somebody that has a hard time telling the truth? At last night’s Exeter candidate’s forum Frank Ferraro lied about so many issues it would take a week or more to try to explain all the things he was supposed to have done. One of the people at the meeting said that Frank had more “I’s” in his self praise and what he has done for the town than you find in an Optometrist’s Office.
Let’s take a look at just a couple. In an attempt to shed his reputation for being divisive and a back stabber Frank was trying to say how well he worked with Bob Aldrich, and Julie Gilman. Bob had endorsed Matt and Nancy Belanger in his face book page. If you go up High St. you will see Quandt signs in Julie’s yard, if you go up Jady Hill you will find a Quandt sign in Dan Chartrand’s yard even though Matt, Dan and Julie are from two different political bases. What this shows is that when it comes time to work in the best interests of the town good selectmen work together for the betterment of the town, to their credit.
While Ferraro tries to take credit for the water and sewer over billing, I was told, that it was actually the town employees, to their credit, who found this and brought it to the attention of the Town Manager and the board voted the rebates back to the taxpayers. This is how it is done when you have good employees and you let them do their jobs.
Matt was initially nervous last night, having got word that Frank and his small group of the lunatic fringe were going to set him up and they tried on the dam issue. Matt kept his cool, showed class, stayed the course and, I believe, leadership on the issue.
Matt was initially on the river study committee and when he realized they just wanted to tear down the dam and didn’t appear to listen to anything else, he left. Now they are asking for everyone’s input; but, if it doesn’t agree with what they want to do (tear down the dam) they attack you with a political fervor that is usually saved for an out of control political campaign.
The fact is if you want to know what will happen if you tear down the dam, then you going to have to tear down the dam. There is no study that can definitively tell us how much water will be left during a bad drought or where we will buy water should our town wells not produce to expectations. I think we are doing this backwards; we should have our water treatment plant online, the wells we are negotiating with the Academy to buy, plugged in, tested and brought online before we ever tear down the dam.
I know we have people saying we will have plenty of water should we tear down the dam, since the Exeter River, is a huge source of our drinking water, these very people in my opinion have strained their credibility and cooler heads need to prevail to protect our citizens.
