Ridiculous Thoughts

I have been planning to post something up here explaining why the residency restriction Holden is proposing is a bad idea. My friend Cynthia sent a speakout into the local paper that covered it all, so I asked her for permission to reproduce it here.

This proposal was dreamed up as election year pandering by a candidate who has refused to support the school district and the public safety building. The evidence is in. Colorado and Iowa have seen the results and are looking to remove these restrictions from their states.

Let’s keep the debate firmly focused on the safety of our children. It isn’t intuitive and it is hard to believe; but the evidence is overwhelming. This proposal is a danger to our children.

Vote with your minds or vote with your hearts. But don’t vote with your guts—instincts will lead you astray on this one.

As always comments are welcome below.

Steve

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The rush to enact a sex offender residency restriction bylaw here in Holden is misguided, ill-informed, and potentially dangerous for our children.

According to the United States Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics — the authority regarding factual matters of criminality — fully 93% of child and juvenile sexual assaults under age 17 are committed by either a family member or an acquaintance of the victim. Thirty-four percent are committed by family members and 59% are committed by acquaintances. That leaves only seven percent committed by strangers. Almost half of the offenders of victims under age 6, by the way, are family members. “Stranger Danger” is a dangerous myth that creates a false sense of security and denies the fact that 93% of child sexual assaults are committed by family members or acquaintances of the child.

But many of you do think that creating buffers around schools and child-care centers will reduce the number of child sexual assaults. It may save one child, you say. Well, other states have gone down this road and guess what? Colorado, Minnesota, and Iowa as well as the Department of Justice’s Center for Sex Offender Management and the Center for Missing and Exploited Children have come to realize these buffers don’t work. Restricting residency has no positive effect on the incidence of child sexual assault. Indeed, their experience shows such restrictions have the opposite effect; they actually endanger children. As recently as this past December, the Iowa County Prosecuting Attorneys Association recommended Iowa rescind all of its residency restrictions. And these are prosecuting attorneys who have real experience dealing with the consequences of residency restrictions. Post-release, virtually half of their sex offender population feel off the map, becoming either homeless or living somewhere in secret. How is losing track of sex offenders supposed to make our children safer? The notion is absurd.

So let’s say a residency restriction bylaw is enacted anyway. Remember, nearly half of all sexual abusers of children under age six are family members—and your bylaw does not speak at all to the first-time offender. Whether you like it or not, those offenders often go home to their families. Are we going to make them move? Now families are uprooted, many of whom have children who have already by victimized once. Here’s what will happen. Offenders will be homeless or will lie about where they living. That’s the reality. Homeless high-risk sex offenders, lost to follow-up, are a serious danger.

Lastly, I want to talk about responsibility. As elected officials considering a bylaw with far-reaching consequences, you have a professional and ethical responsibility to do your homework. So far, those of you who support this bylaw have demonstrated no evidence that these bylaws protect children. None. Zero. You seem willing to “legislate,” if you will, by the vagaries of your gut. You seem willing to ignore the considered opinions of real experts with real experience managing this offender population. Well, here’s the rub. Your support for a bylaw that is known to create barriers to effective law enforcement, that is known to result in dangerous sex offenders becoming lost to follow-up guarantees you this: you will be held responsible for your decision, which includes the first sexual assault by a sex offender who failed to register because of your bylaw. Perhaps then you will see the merit of rational and reasoned decision making over tough-on-crime rhetoric that “feels” good.

Cynthia Bazinet

I'm giving my Quest for Life presentation to the Science Seminar students at the local high school. I haven't done this one for a little while so I was reviewing my material and I found (again) this great paper, The Great Silence, by David Brin who is one of my favorite authors and political commentators.

The paper provides a thoughtful analysis of the Drake Equation, current thinking about the different parameters and ideas on why the Universe is Silent. It opens with this great line.

Few important subject are so data-poor, so subject to unwarranted and biased extrapolations -- and so caught up mankind's ultimate destiny -- as is this one.

Take a look and enjoy.

Steve

Thanks to all of the citizens of Holden who came out to support the public safety building and the school budget.

While the light turnout was disappointing there was strong support for the school budget which passed unanimously.

The Public Safety Building passed by a huge margin, despite opposition from the selectmen and a vocal minority of attendees.

The Safety Building still has to pass a Proposition 2 1/2 override at the ballot box in order for the project to move forward. Please come out and support this very important project.

Steve

Parents Please Come Out!

The Holden Town Meeting is tonight at 7:00 pm. This is your best opportunity to come out and express your views and vote your mind. Many people underestimate the important of participating in local government. However, this is where decisions about your property taxes occur. It is also where many decisions about how state funds, local aid dollars, are used.

Should they be saved or spent? If they should be spent how? What is the impact to your tax bill and to your life?

While there is no real controversy this year over the school budget, it is important that you parents come out and support it. The people who generally vote against the budget will be out, possibly in force, to oppose the new public safety building. Without support they may be able to defeat the school budget. Additionally a strong showing for the school budget will help us next year as we work towards a budget compromise.

Finally, it is also important that you come out and express your feelings on the Public Safety Building. Yes it is expensive. But, it is a long term investment, it is badly needed, and it will only get more expensive as time goes by. If we bite the bullet an spend the money now the resulting building will be in service longer and serve us better.

If you agree or disagree, comment below!

Steve

Unfortunately, Duncan Leigh had to drop out of the race for School Committee leaving three candidates for three slots - so baring something totally unexpected I guess I'm in.

I will still participate in the various campaign events including the debate on April 20th. I will also be posting some of my views on various school committee issues here on this blog, over the next couple of week.

As always, if you have comments or suggestions for the school committee post them here!

Steve

As any of you with kids at Davis Hill, or Dawson Elementary Schools know, our principals are retiring after this year. I can't speak for Dawson, but I believe most parents from Davis Hill are saddened to see Mrs. Gaskin leave. However, while change is always hard -- it is as much of an opportunity for improvement as it is for things to get worse.

The district has a new view on principals, particularly elementary school principals. These principals work for their community and should be long term participants in that community.

Towards that end, the district also has a new process for interviewing candidates for administrative positions. Right now, I am serving on a committee of eight members, two teachers and two parents from both Dawson and Davis Hill. We are spending two days interviewing 10 candidates from within the district and as far away as Minnesota. This committee will try to select 2-4 candidates to advance on to the next round of interviews on March 30th. These interviews will be conducted by the District Administration, the School Committee and two currently sitting principals. This round will be held at Davis Hill and open to the public.

For several years, many people have been asking for increased transparency and participation in the district. I encourage you to attend. Take advantage of, and support this and it will grow!

Steve

Happy Birthday to My Son, Arthur!

I've had this blog engine (Typo) set up for a couple of weeks now but I've been too busy working on some new initiatives in my life to actually post something. Now, I've had some success and I need to start posting in support of those.

What are the new initiatives? I've decided that I want to get mroe involved in two very different communities. By doing this, I'm hoping to grow myself in some specific ways.

The first community is the Ruby on Rails community. I've been a supporter of open source for a while. I'm one of the leading advocates and "go-to" guys on the subject at the Hanover. But in terms of actual participation, I've always just dabbled around the edges. Rails is so much fun though, that I've really made progress on my own site for the first time in years. I hope to leverage this enthusiasm to become a more involved participant.

My first success at that was being selected as a speaker at RailsConf 2006!. I'm going to be speaking about Domain Specific Languages as Rails Plugins. I'll describe more in a later post; but in short, I'll describe some implementation details and have a discussion about the value of DSL's as a unit of resuse.

The second community I want to get more involved in is my local community. I've announced my intention to run for a three year seat representing the Town of Holden on the Wachusett Regional School Committee. I've collected my signatures and I'll be turing them into the town office. Again, I'll be writing extensively on this in the future, why I'm running and what I would like to accomplish.

It sounds like a lot, but I've got this phobia against being bored!

Steve

Happy St. Patricks Day