Legalectric

Guess they should try “open carry” of fishing poles!  See what they do then?!?!

“Rueful city officials have slapped a ban on some political speech…” what IS and IS NOT banned?  Who is deciding?  What are the guidelines?

Seems Delaware City had decided to give the 1st Amendment a good swift kick and quash free speech at Delaware City Days.  WHAT?  What could possibly be such a problem with people saying, “PFB REFINERY: STOP KILLING OUR FISH!”

Jeff Montgomery, The News Journal

Rueful city officials have slapped a ban on some political speech at Saturday’s 34th annual Delaware City Day, claiming protesters hijacked the city’s parade, skies and a few activities last year to target PBF Energy’s nearby refinery.

The ban – enforced through requiring a review before the event of brochures and parade floats – drew accusations of a free speech foul from Delaware Audubon, and a charge that the city was fishing for the refinery’s favor. Audubon now plans a floating protest Saturday afternoon in waters just off the community’s Battery Park.

“It’s a family event,” said City Manager Richard C. Cathcart, a former state lawmaker. “They’re the ones who created the problem last year. In the parade, they were coming down with pictures of the governor in a hangman’s noose.”

The Green Party of Delaware’s parade entry last year included a banner with a likeness of Gov. Jack Markell as a pirate with eye-patch and parrot, alongside the words “Toxic Jack Markell.” A chartered plane also circled the area briefly last year, towing a banner calling on the refinery to “Stop Killing Our Fish,” a reference to fish losses to the plant’s outdated cooling water intake.

Dave Carter, conservation chair for Delaware Audubon, said the city’s effort amounts to an attack on a civil liberty and is inconsistent with the public intent of a $33,000 grant-in-aid that lawmakers approved for the Delaware City Day Committee last month.

“It’s clearly intended to limit and chill free speech at this publicly funded event,” said Carter, who plans to use his own watercraft, possibly with one or more fish-suited crew members, to display a sign objecting to the refinery’s large daily withdrawals from the Delaware River for plant cooling needs.

PBF’s water intake and discharge permit is up for renewal, with environmental groups pressing the state to require investments in towers that would reduce fish loss.

“Is this the appropriate way to use grants-in-aid at a time when people are suffering and people have real needs?” Carter asked, adding he believed the city was protecting aid that the community receives from the refinery.

Carter shared an email exchange in which Cathcart said state aid and sponsorship from the refinery “had absolutely nothing to do with our vendor and parade policy.”

“If you want to protest, go up to the refinery. Don’t come to our battery park, where there are kids and family members going to enjoy themselves,” Cathcart said.

The Sierra Club Delaware chapter, also critical of the refinery, plans to have a table at Delaware City, as it did last year.

As many as 6,000 people are expected at daytime activities in the city, with a nighttime fireworks show expected to draw 6,000. Cathcart said the city’s streets will be closed at 4 p.m. and visitors directed to remote parking and shuttle buses for evening activities.

Delaware City’s fire company manages the parking, with a $5 per car fee supporting cadet programs.

Contact Jeff Montgomery at (302) 463-3344 or jmontgomery@delawareonline.com

Only six dogs on this dog transport, last time we had 12!  Tomorrow we meet a mom Bridget, her three “chipmunk” pups Alvin, Theodore and Simon; chi/feist mix Perez; and Nora.  Nora’s a wiggle-butt “lab mix” (bottom photo) and she’ll probably be the lap dog this trip.

My friends at Xcel are miscalculating my schedule, sending the guys with the boom trucks over on a Friday without a deadline!!!  HA HA HA HA HA HA and not only that,

Yeah, give ’em the raspberries…

Today they’re taking out the poles across the street so they can start on the mother of all retaining walls.  We do now have a distribution line in the front yard.  Where’s that gauss meter?

Did you know that they saw down utility poles?  Odd, I figured they’d take them out and resuse them.  Here they’ve sawed the support pole in half, then took it down and are sawing it up into little chunks.  So small that I’ll bet they haul them over to their garbage burner here in Red Wing, or down to La Crosse where I know they burn railroad ties.  Railroad ties, penta poles, what’s the difference!

We’ve told the city that we LOVE the quiet at night, what a difference, and they were tickled that we thought they’d done something right (guess Alan and I are known around city offices).  There are deer back in da ‘hood again, one strolling down the middle of the dirt street, and somebody’s been eating the day lily buds.  We need to move some of the construction hazard lights closer.

Life goes on with construction… but work?  No way!

Not that I wanted to get back to work.  Thanks, Xcel Energy, for a reason to procrastinate… but if I’ve got a reason, it’s not procrastination, is it!