HORRIFIC OVERSTEP: Town Council votes to save Earth’s oceans… plastic grocery bags seen as threat to town and planet… [VIDEO]
HYANNIS — If you stopped by or watched last Thursday’s Barnstable Town Council meeting, you would have learned that some strongly consider plastic grocery bags to be one of the more pressing issues facing our local population.
In fact, some believe that by preventing all of us from obtaining these plastic bags, local litterbugs will no longer have the ammo they need to pollute our oceans and kill our wildlife.
There was about an hour of lively testimony and discussion on whether or not these bags have already fallen into irresponsible hands in the past, thus putting us, wildlife, and the entire planet in jeopardy.
A group of supporters of the bag ban demanded we take immediate action on the town level…
A vote was taken, and 7 councilors voted in favor of the ban, while 6 were opposed to the new law.
The bag ban passed and it now will be strictly illegal for all stores within the Town of Barnstable to provide their customers with plastic “single use” shopping bags.
The following video highlights some of the points made for and against the ban. It also shows town councilors as they voted for or against the new law.
HN NOTES:
HN finds it disturbing that at this particular time in our history, all four Hyannis councilors found it important to vote in favor of making a new law banning us from freely deciding whether or not we as individuals see fit to use plastic shopping bags. HN considers this to be a tremendous overstep of their elected duty to the residents of our town. There are clearly many far more important and current issues impacting the residents of Hyannis. Also, it’s a disgrace that we don’t devote more time to the important issues when we have only a set limited number of possible Barnstable Town Council meetings. Lives directly depend on how we handle the more imminently serious issues we now find thrust upon everyone…
Here are just some of those more important local issues:
– High crime
– An understaffed police patrol force
– Police radios that do not consisently function effectively, placing our officers in danger
– A homeless population of about 400 souls, with about 360 of those homeless camping in the woods that surround the downtown area, close to schools and children. The woods are littered with debris, human feces, and urine. There are uncapped needles, that pose a serious health risk by spreading disease as individuals inadvertantly step on or come in contact with them…
– We have serious problems with joblessness and poverty. Young children and families are relying on the government for food stamps, etc.
– Our Hyannis Fire Department is overextended constantly responding to emergency calls involving the homeless. The calls range from brush fires to medical emergencies. On any given day, it is not unusual for there to be no available Hyannis ambulances, quite often because they are engaged or “committed” to a stricken member of the ever growing homeless population… (Why keep building service agencies, and inviting more and more homeless, when we cannot take care of the ones that are already here?)
– Our tourist industry is dwindling due to our level of crime, homelessness, and community decay…
– I hear everyday someone say they are glad they left Hyannis… or that they are glad they are about to move away from Hyannis…
– The council is not spending enough time talking about inviting businesses with decent entry level job opportunities, so Hyannis can once again become the logical choice for young working families.
– We could do a far better job presenting our town as “business friendly…” (Oversteping the intended of scope of our leadership, along with overregulating existing and potential businesses, are not wise priorities of a government trying to bring more business into a community.)
-We have a huge drug problem. HN has witnessed way too much death related to our heroin epidemic. Our young are photographed and documented in life or death struggles related to addiction every single day. (Roughly 95% of what I shoot is never shown) In short, we’ve seen an astounding number of overdoses for a population our size.
-And then there is the question of whether or not it’s in our best interests to continue inviting service seekers from other towns and parts of Massachusetts because we are the only ones building more and more social service agencies in the region. For example, no other regional or Cape towns have homeless shelters. It’s extremely unfair that the residents and businesses of Hyannis are the only ones who have been offering such services for decades… The fact that the rest of Cape Cod expects us to solely shoulder this burden is clearly abusive.
-It is not the responsibility of Hyannis residents and businesses to shoulder the problems that come with turning our village into a giant outpatient ward for the entire region.
-Women and children are lining up in mile long bread lines (Wait! Strike that… it’s not quite that bad… yet…)
-This list, unfortunately, goes on and on…
The point is, this town has far more important and challenging issues that need to be dealt with immediately. All of our leadership should be charged with finding solutions before the winter takes hold…
Global issues and legislation, although considered noble by some, debatable by others, are not, and should not be the job of any competant town government facing the aforementioned litany of emergency issues. Lives depend on doing the right thing first for the humans within our town boundaries… then perhaps we can overstep those boundaries and attempt to tackle the overall health of our oceans, like a collective Don Quixote battling the blizzard of windmill driven plastic bags…
We deserve more responsive and effective government. We need to carefully scrutinize individuals in government, as well as whether or not our system accurately represents the real needs of our citizens. (For example, the above group of town councilors are currently in the process of choosing and hiring our next town manager. It’s a powerful and important position. I currently do not feel comfortable with that…)
We can and will make Hyannis the cleanest, safest, and most prosperous little seaside city on the East Coast. But first we need to “keep it real.”
Thank you for following Hyannis News. Please be safe out there this weekend and stay tuned!
9/6/2015
Robert Bastille,
P.S. – Today’s HyTown Vignette is brought to you by Jackson Browne… [Press play… NOTE: Special bonus vignette music below, just in case you’re not thrilled about the first video…]
PPS — BONUS — In an effort to be more diplomatic, HN is offering up a rare second serving of HyTown Vignette music… by Rush! [If you don’t enjoy blasting the roof off your house with this one, then there just might be something seriously wrong with you! Especially if the first video wasn’t your cup of tea… jk 😉 ]
