Michael Glowacki's Process

Last night at the Board of Selectmen’s meeting we got an opportunity to hear former Selectman, Mike Glowacki, address the board on the subject of Article 60, the Nantucket Sewer Act. His comments were typical, classic Glowacki. A rambling cascade of politics, fear, innuendo and whining. The upshot of which was this: for Glowacki, creating a policy for sewering or not sewering parts of Nantucket is getting uncomfortably close to being an accomplished mission.

And that bothers him.

Just so we all remember, I’ll cover a bit of recent history that shows that the process of developing a cohesive and legal sewer policy is something that Glowacki has opposed through his actions and inactions for years. For his nearly three years on the Board he failed to produce a policy that states who can hook into the sewers, when and for what reason, nor had he developed a meaningful or equitable plan to pay for sewers. Back in June and July, after Michael Kopko came to the board and began to get the sewer gears in motion, Glowacki vehemently opposed the formation of a sewer advisory committee by claiming that the work had already been done — which is kind of like a child claiming that he did his homework, but the dog ate it. Where’s the policy, if the work has been done? He also stated, back in July, that special interests are trying to use the sewers to control growth. The board voted 3-2 to form the sewer advisory committee anyway. Two weeks later, Glowacki opposed the appointment process citing “the Rector rule,” a non-binding resolution of a former town meeting that asks that two weeks pass between a call for appointees and their actual appointment in order to allow for ample public vetting of the appointees. Clearly, the Rector Rule needed to be shelved in the interest of giving the Sewer Dwarves time to do the best job possible. But the best job is not something for which Glowacki has ever advocated.

The sewer advisory committee eventually went forward and after five months of demanding meetings, a few of which I attended (and I never saw Mr. Glowacki there), they developed a number of recommendations that were brought to the Board of Selectmen, which adopted some, discarded others on the advice of town counsel, and prepared warrant articles for Town meeting on several.

The hearing last night was on Article 60, the Nantucket Sewer Act, which is a home rule petition that seeks to codify many of the policies outlined in the Sewer Advisory Committee in addition to allowing the town to establish a board of sewer commissioners and a process by which people can be added to the system. And Mr. Glowacki criticized the board for bringing it forward late in the process and for allowing only a week for public inspection of the article’s text (The original text has been on YACKon.com for ten days as of this writing). He also implied, in a round-about and somewhat agitated way that this was once gain the work of special interests attempting to push this through and use the sewers to control growth.

Typical Glowacki. Without addressing a single word in the home rule petition, without offering any constructive suggestions, without doing a lick of work or attending the weeks of sewer advisory committee meetings, he falls back on the only thing he knows. The process. The process is all wrong. The process is corrupted by special interests. The process is too short. The process is unnecessary because the work has already been done. Process, process, process.

Mike Glowacki is like the kid on the playground who has no fun unless he’s telling others how to follow the playground rules. He’s not there to do anything, he’s there to discuss how things are done, and in the process of discussing the process, nothing gets done. Which has been, it appears, Glowacki’s goal all along.

In his two and a half years on the BOS he succeeded at not developing a sewer policy. Let’s hope his efforts fall short at town meeting and the island finally wins.