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Friday, August 1, 2003

Face it. Finding a way to get your needs heard in town affairs and finding a way to get some action on them can be exasperating.Last week I lifted the curtain on a way that can help you find your way. This week I want to go a little further on how to help yourself.. Before you shout "aw, hell," and quit. Like a know-it-all lemming. Bluntly, this piece is fully anti-lemming.

Lemmings are those fat little rodents living peacefully in the placid marshes. Until. Suddenly they find they're dissatisfied and en masse they scramble onward until blindly they follow the leader over the edge and are drowned. Drowned lemmings have never been known to change conditions. Our lemmings find the system is totally "wrong," and they scramble. Raving and ranting "out there" they get nothing done.

Getting informed on what's up and keeping informed - with others - is the answer for you. Your first step is a home computer. You call for this website,

http://frambors.syslang.net and sign up for the list that will give you entry to a number of lists of interest to you. The lists contain persons interested in keeping up on what's happening in Danforth Farms or Conservation, for example.

You've read of the Rogue Developer [Chris Kotsiopoulos] who has slipped through protests from Carter Drive resident in Red Grange's broken field style for months. Once again he faces court next Tuesday on charges that he is defying another agreement with town officials. The heat is on largely because e-mail reminders from neighbors showed officials that they have not forgotten the trouble he's caused.

Again and again those who signed up with http://frambors.syslang.net kept track of the Rogue Developer's actions. For two years now this website set by Steve Orr of Wayside Inn Road filled in the gaps separating plans and follow ups. It's so easy to forget. It's good to know when the next meeting of the Planning Board, the Conservation Commission, the Board of Selectmen et al will be held, where, and what issues are up front.

This simple way of keeping informed, I'm suggesting is the way to know where to look, for what reasons that can direct you to know "how things stand." And what you can do about it. Unlike persons who stand up at meetings to ask questions about the fate of their interests, the "questioners" are speaking their minds. And [dig this] this growing method of speaking up, keeping up the heat - is getting through to officials like Town Manager George King and the decision-making boards. They read. They "hear."

This information-gathering and suggestion-making is not a case of "gotcha!" You're not out to prove somebody "wrong." It works more as a means of making sure that officials know what people are "saying." It can work to get more done on a theme expressed here : keep officials and public in touch; it's how much can be accomplished. Let the drowned lemmings rave and rant, they've given up the right to lead.

Keeping in touch? If you're wondering how the dirt-cheep $6,500 payment of Ashland's use of a portion of Framingham sewers went on for 40 years, without being noticed - think of keeping informed. Easy come, easy go in the Framingham marsh. Until someone, with exact figures, spoke up. It pays to keep informed. And speak up - with facts.

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You can reach Bob Moore at or at

. [Let it ring; he's slow.]