What A Difference!

I just spoke with a woman in the City Clerk's office who epitomizes what a thoughtful, caring, public employee should be. I wish I'd remembered to get her name but nonetheless she is to be commended. She was pleasant, helpful, and actually seemed to care about helping me!

Imagine that!

The Concord Police Dispatcher who hung up on me early this morning should take notes from this wonderful woman as to how you deal with a citizen with a problem.
(As I said in my previous post, the officer I spoke with when I called back was a professional, took the time to hear me out and explained the situation)

In calling the City Clerk's office for the phone number of my City Councilman she also helped me with other suggestions, such as who to speak to in the General Services Dept.. She emphasized that my Councilman and the great people over at General Services would want to know about my concerns.

I always try to look at both sides of issues, and I know that people have good and bad days, but in jobs where you deal with the public (and Police Dispatch is NOT an easy job by any measure) you have to have people who maintain their professionalism at all times.

I do have to wonder though, what kind of leadership the police department has lately. In the 20 years I've lived here I can't recall so many negative incidents involving the department. I realize that they're short-staffed, and that could contribute in some ways to this behavior. I have maintain hope that the leaders in the department are working to reverse this trend of unprofessional behavior.

We want to be proud and supportive of our police force, not embarrassed or fearful. Police and Fire men and women have incredibly dangerous and critical jobs to do. Anyone who opts for those professions is to be commended and supported, but they have a responsibility to remember who they're working for, and to maintain the highest standards possible. In my experience that has been the case most of the time, but this latest experience has left me concerned.

To conclude, this woman I spoke with today in the City Clerk's office restored my faith that there are good, caring, professional people working for the city of Concord. That level of excellence is what all departments should strive for.

What Has Happened To Concord's Police Department?

This is hard for me to understand. Especially with all the negative press they've had lately. But unfortunately this morning at around 1:50 AM another representative of the Concord Police department has given them a black eye when dealing with the public. About fifteen minutes before that someone woke up everyone in the building who lives on the side facing the new Concord Commons building when someone from the city crew that was clearing snow used a snow blower to clear the alleyway between the buildings! If that wasn't bad enough, after they were done they continued with shoveling (that's what they should have done with the small amount of snow in the alley in the first place), but the person doing it kept banging his shovel on the wall of the building to knock the snow off. I finally opened my window and yelled at him that there were people trying to sleep up here, to which he yelled something belligerent! At that point I decided to call the police to make a noise complaint.

I called their non-emergency line, a woman answered the call and I proceeded to explain what the problem was. She immediately stated "there's nothing we're going to do about that"....
I started to say "but I thought there were noise laws...". The next thing I knew she had hung up on me. I just sat there, still holding the phone to my ear for close to a minute, trying to contemplate what had just happened. Just a few minutes before I was sleeping soundly, and now I was literally shaking with disbelief. I sat there for another minute or so and called the police back. I wasn't sure what I was going to say, but I couldn't, and wouldn't stand for that kind of rude behavior from people who work for the public!

When the phone was answered it was by someone who identified himself as the shift supervisor. I explained what had just happened, along with my original complaint. This time I got a courteous person who took the time to listen to my complaint, and even though he also said there was nothing they could do, he explained that it was because because the snow removal crews weren't subject to the same noise laws that everyone else is.
He apologized for the behavior of the previous person and listened patiently as I continued to go on that I was able to understand the need to clear the streets at night, but that the job could have been done by shoveling alone instead of a snowblower, and also that the person doing it should have been more thoughtful towards the residents and definitely not belligerent like he was when told he was waking people up.


In all my dealings with the Concord Police over the years 99% of them have been professional and courteous. Every one of them was polite and helpful (except for that one rookie who treated me like a criminal after my late father's car had been towed away and I was distraught). That 99% seem like genuinely nice people. I have the utmost respect for them and the dangerous job they do, and the last thing they need is another example of one of them being rude to the people who pay their salary. What this woman who answered my call did was take a bad situation and compounded it by being curt and rude.

I'll be speaking to our local and state representatives about this latest episode and we'll find out what they have to say about it.

And one last thought.... The episode I just read about in the police log regarding a man who had just been released from prison after 30 years and was homeless was troubling. Sure he had been told to leave the building and was technically "trespassing" , but instead of arresting him, the human thing to do would have been to find him shelter for the night and steer him towards a public assistance program. Instead they sent him back into the system. How cold and heartless can you get? That's not the kind of society I want to belong to, and it's not the kind of society I believe we should strive for. Shame on the officer who made the decision to arrest him instead of giving him the help he so obviously needed.

What's up with Concord and it's city workers?

It's 1 AM here at the Endicott and just now someone started up a snowblower outside!
Now I'm all for cleaning up the sidewalks after a storm, but in the five years I've lived here this is a first.
Aren't there noise ordinances in Concord anymore? What are they thinking?

The snow cleanup that normally goes on isn't bad (and has to be done at night) but this is exceptionally loud and undoubtedly woke some people up!

I have to say the crews do an excellent job clearing the snow that piles up after storms, but whoever OKed the use of a snow blower next to a residential building at 1 AM needs to be re-educated.
(It wasn't long ago that I called Jeff Hoadley the Director of Public Properties and left a message/complaint about a city worker running a leaf blower in the alley between our building and the new building at around 7 AM.)

I also have to say that overall the condition of the streets and highways (and other 'Public Properties') of Concord is embarrassing. Weeds growing up untouched, trash strewn along the sides of streets, and most recently trash left untouched around the dumpster beside the brand new parking garage and in the freshly landscaped sitting area down at the corner of Storrs Street and Pleasant Street extension.

On most days (before the snow came) if you walked by the dumpster behind the Lighting Place you'd see broken beer bottles, food and trash from the restaurant, and other trash scattered around from the stairs by the dumpster halfway out to the street. I have dozens of photos I've taken of the trash left scattered around. It remained there unless I picked it up (which I did every time I saw it) or people from the bar/restaurant cleaned it up.

I assume that much of the mess is caused when the trash truck empties the dumpster, and god forbid the driver from getting off his butt to clean up anything that falls out in the process! And not once have I seen any city workers cleaning the area or picking up trash scattered around the public seating area. In the mornings they have someone check and empty the trash bag in the trash receptacle, but in the process they walk right by and ignore any trash in the nicely landscaped area around the benches.

Once when there was part of a sandwich roll and it's contents smeared around at the bottom of the stairs (directly in the middle) next to the dumpster, I asked the server inside the restaurant [politely], then later one of the owners if they could have someone go clean it up. After both of them arguing with me saying "How do you know it came from us? It could have been from anyone, it could be from someone living in the Endicott..." she eventually said that they would take care of it. (The only reason I didn't take care of it myself and avoid the nastiness was that it was a gooey mess that required a hose or other cleaning supplies).

Does it really matter how the mess got there? Shouldn't we all take some pride in our block and keep it as clean as possible? People walking that way shouldn't have to jump over food and avoid broken beer bottles!
I certainly try to do my part, but shouldn't the city take the same pride in keeping the public areas clean and looking good? Who's responsible for that area between the Lighting Place and the new parking garage where the dumpster is? Why has it been ignored and collecting broken beer bottles, cigarette butts, and other trash?

I haven't spoken to Mr. Hoadley or others in person yet but I plan to at some point. Until then I can only guess as to the reasons the city looks so unkempt and some of it's workers seem to lack common decency and sense at times. Maybe part of it's money, maybe some of it's being able to find and keep good thoughtful workers.
I just know that when I walk down many city streets seeing the same litter sitting there day after day and see the same weeds growing higher and higher along the highways, and especially when I see the city spend millions of dollars on a new parking garage and landscaping, then see it not being cared for, I'm disheartened.

Welcome

Welcome to the first post of The Endicott Dispatch. The name refers to the building where I live which is a century old former hotel in downtown Concord New Hampshire.

I want to cover local topics ranging from what's happening inside and around the Endicott, to issues concerning the city of Concord and the state of New Hampshire.

I welcome comments as long as they're polite and relevant. Do to the scourge of 'comment SPAM' I have to use the challenge option to weed out automatic SPAM bots to the extent possible.

I also will be using "Jiglu" (at least initially) to help with 'tagging'. If you have any issues with it please let me know. And since I live solely on a single Social Security Disability payment each month I'm going to explore Google AdSense and possibly a PayPal [link] to help pay for things like my medications (and coffee, which currently is my substitute for the Ritalin/Concerta I can't afford because the drug company Novartis wants to pawn me off onto Medicare Part-D [which I can't afford). *See my blog post that includes more detail about the situation on this page.

I hope to produce an informative and entertaining blog that people will enjoy and support.
My thinking at this early stage is that some of the posts will be similar to a 'Letter to the Editor', and in my case that would be the local Concord Monitor newspaper.

This is my second 'real' blog. The other is called "Inside Tom's Brain" and is also hosted by Blogspot-Google. To this point it has been primarily political and media commentary with some personal issues posted every once in a great while. I, like I imagine many people, have started and basically abandoned several blogs over the years. You've seen it I'm sure, every large web portal wants you to start a blog on their site. Microsoft's "Live Spaces", the Opera browser site, your ISP offers a free web site, and the list goes on.

OK I admit it, I'm weak. It seemed like a good idea at the time, right? But especially for people like me with serious ADD, the last thing you need are more things you need to attend to. The internet is distracting enough. All I have to do is start reading the news or my daily email and I'm off on a tangent that continues to split further and further from what I'd originally intended (or needed) to do. So even for those without ADD I bet this sounds familiar. If the standards of all these sites allowed it and applications like Windows Live Writer could post to all of these disparate sites I'd be able to write the post once and if I wanted to then distribute that one post to all my blogs.

I must say though, that I haven't done an exhaustive search for applications of this type, and for all I know someone has developed just such an application. As far as the ones I've seen, some can distribute what I write to the major blog sites but not all.

So there it is, the traditional first post of a new blog, and as my mind has drifted and my attention span has been tested (I have the TV on also [with the sound off], and I stopped to write a post about Mika Brzezinski and MSNBC's "Morning Joe" for Inside Tom's Brain just now..) I think I should stop before I lose any more focus.

Thank you all for being here and please come back soon!