{"id":1977,"date":"2011-08-09T16:30:57","date_gmt":"2011-08-09T21:30:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cnht.org\/news\/?p=1977"},"modified":"2018-05-08T12:29:42","modified_gmt":"2018-05-08T17:29:42","slug":"spotted-a-beecher-creature","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cnht.org\/news\/2011\/08\/09\/spotted-a-beecher-creature\/","title":{"rendered":"Spotted: A Beecher Creature"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>by Ed Naile<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Here we go!<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.masslive.com\/news\/index.ssf\/2011\/08\/roof_on_south_hadley_senior_ce.html\">Current South Hadley Mass. Town Administrator, Paul Beecher, has the potential to be intimately involved in the bidding process for a new roof for the town\u2019s senior center.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Oh boy, is this another chance of a lifetime of deal making for the Beecher Creature.<\/p>\n<p>His track record for sealed bids on public projects and payola goes back a ways to Kansas City Mo. in the 90\u2019s, where Beecher signed a $900,000.00 street light deal behind the backs of the city council. He left rather quickly from that scam.<\/p>\n<p>Next he pops up in New Hampshire in Dover as they\u2019re new municipal messiah. (Dover looks for guys like this.)<\/p>\n<p>Beecher signed some sweetheart retirement and benefit packages with his new power base of public employees in Dover and was subsequently caught in a very expensive, citizen initiated, Right to Know case which let the public see what he was doing behind the scenes and backs of the city council. The Beecher initiated $400,000.00 salary and 36 week paid vacation  package for the former police chief finally tipped the scales and Beecher \u201cescaped\u201d to Kingman, Arizona where CNHT tracked him down.<\/p>\n<p>It wasn\u2019t long before contactors and elected officials in that municipality became aware of a rigged open bidding scam and that Beecher spent most of his day on the internet emailing pals and little that seemed constructive.<\/p>\n<p>He was fired from that town.<\/p>\n<p>But now that South Hadley, Ma. has hired Beecher, knowing full well his past, we are on a glide path to local roofing contractors crying foul. In an economy like this contractors will not appreciate bid rigging.<\/p>\n<p>Any Board of Selectmen who went looking for a guy like Beecher are signaling \u201cgo ahead\u201d once he is in place.<\/p>\n<p>Can Beecher pass up a chance to mess with the $750,000.00 roof grant in South Hadley?<\/p>\n<p>I guess we will see.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>by Ed Naile Here we go! Current South Hadley Mass. Town Administrator, Paul Beecher, has the potential to be intimately involved in the bidding process for a new roof for the town\u2019s senior center. Oh boy, is this another chance of a lifetime of deal making for the Beecher Creature. His track record for sealed [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[12,41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1977","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dishonorable","category-where-are-they-now"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cnht.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1977","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cnht.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cnht.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cnht.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cnht.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1977"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.cnht.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1977\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7870,"href":"https:\/\/www.cnht.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1977\/revisions\/7870"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cnht.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1977"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cnht.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1977"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cnht.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1977"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}