Thanks go out to all of you who signed and who helped circulate recall petitions. We turned in over 3,000 signatures for each selectman on Friday. The town has until this Friday to certify the signatures. Some 2,300 per selectman are required, so we are confident that we have more than enough. Despite the harassment of petitioners and canvassers by town officials and their proxies, threats and intimidation tactics, and the usual misinformation campaign, people responded in large numbers to the opportunity to call for a vote.

9 North Road is not the only example of graft, corruption, and incompetence by the town manager and those under recall, but it is the most visible. Below are pictures that show the tangible results of corrupt governance.

A year ago, Center Park was still in existence. The Planning Board, however, had just issued 8 special permits and ignored the preservation restriction on the land to issue a site permit to the “Epsilon, LLC” group owned by Phil Eliopoulos’ father Michael. Phil had recently received a letter from the Ethics Commission stating that “based on what you told us, no further action is required.” What Phil clearly told the Ethics Commission was that the matter of Center Park had not been before the town while he was a selectman. Paul Cohen had paved the way for this claim by Eliopoulos, lying to the Board of Selectmen that “the town was never approached by the previous owner of the land,” enabling Phil to pooh-pooh the ethics violations that we now know were central to the backroom deal that landed the site in the hands of the development consortium.

Below are pictures showing the lightning speed that the Eliopoulos consortium moved with once the site permit was issued. Center Park has been obliterated. The “open space conservation area for the benefit of the grantees [all the residents]” is now an office building and parking lot for the benefit of the Eliopoulos’. The Board of Selectmen continue to actively oppose any formal inquiry.

Yours with best wishes and hope for the future of our town,

Roland Van Liew