by Jim Bouton
Chip and I were upset, too. And confused. The Boutons and Elitzers write plenty of checks to charities. So why not this one? Were we angry at Potts for having put us in this spot? Were we feeling unappreciated? Was it resentment over being rolled? And what else could you call it? It was clear that the use of the ballpark was dependent upon a donation. Whatever the reason, we went blindly ahead.
Bouton:
Can we do something at the September 11 event [a fund-raising clambake for Dave Southard]? Can we help with that?
Marchesi:
You two guys sitting out there all you’re thinking about is the almighty dollar…. We’re not asking for all the money, just so much a ticket, that’s all.
Elitzer:
At a dollar a ticket, that could work out to $5,000. And you’re saying that as a start-up enterprise that is not [profitable], that we should give the Southard family $5,000…. You’re basically saying that Jim Bouton and Chip Elitzer should write a check.
Marchesi:
No. I’m saying you should run a benefit. I’m not saying to write a check.
Elitzer:
It comes to exactly the same thing…. And I do feel a little bit put upon. I’m sure that Dave Southard is a fine gentleman and he is very deserving… [but] we have a money losing operation at this point.
Marchesi:
The contract said that you were going to spend $1.5 million fixing the field… [it] had nothing to do with the Hillies or anyone else going in there and playing a game and making money or losing money. So you’re using that money that you made to fix up the park.
There was a long pause while Chip tried to grasp the notion that it was somehow unfair of us to use the object of our affection as a further means of its enhancement.
Elitzer:
Let me put it this way. Jim and I are personally out of pocket about $160,000 so far.
Marchesi:
That’s nowhere near the $1.5 million.
Elitzer:
This is before the financing is closed…. Jim and I are not taking anything out until 2006 at the earliest…. Asking [us] to make what amounts to a personal contribution of thousands of dollars… will scare our investors if they think that we can be leaned on.
Marchesi:
Well… then I’m going to vote against this date and I hope the other parks commissioners vote against it.
This drew a response from commissioner Garivaltis, who had appeared distressed throughout the discussion.
Garivaltis:
Here we go again… we have a new business that has brought, in a very short period of time, extraordinary good publicity to Pittsfield and has put on an extraordinarily good show. As a Hillies volunteer I had a ringside seat, but that was second fiddle compared to what I saw when I went home and saw the tape on TV, because that showed Pontoosuc and Onota Lake, it showed the mountains, it showed the announcer saying that, “This is a community that has taken a hit when GE left town, but as you can see tonight, flashing the crowd and the smiling kids and the ballplayers and what you are seeing tonight, this is a community that is now on the rebound”…. It takes new businesses like WPI to do this and look what we’re doing. Who would move into here and create jobs for us if they were treated this way by any public body in the City of Pittsfield? It wouldn’t happen. They deserve a lot more respect than they’ve had here tonight.
Marchesi:
I think you’re out of order!
Garivaltis:
I have the floor.
Marchesi:
You’re part of the organization!
Garivaltis:
I didn’t interrupt anybody. But as a new business that has done the extraordinarily good things that they have done and probably will continue to do for Pittsfield, I welcome them to the community and will give them all the support they need.
Marchesi:
I just want to say one more thing to what Charlie says about community smiling and cheering. I think that what we’re saying here tonight is that we’ve got an individual that we care about and we would like to see something done for him, so that’s the kind of community I also live in.
It was about this time that young Sam Elitzer, as part of his ongoing civics education, whispered in my ear. “It’s obvious they’re going to vote against you,” he said, “so you better do something.” So Chip and I did what we probably should have done in the first place.
Elitzer:
We’ve been talking… and we have a better answer for you. We would be willing to contribute a dollar of every ticket sold… [but] I want it to be clearly understood that we are doing this because we are listening to you and it would be devastating to us, in terms of presentations that we still need to make to our investors, for this to be taken as a precedent or to be considered as an expense item.
Bouton:
Or as a necessary thing to get [future] approvals.
Filpi:
We won’t be coming back to you again… we’re not going to tie your hands on any issues…. You can call me any time you want and things will get done. I’m not here to put you out of business.
Marchesi:
And I’m sorry if I come on too strong, I’m too close to the kid. Charlie, I’m sorry I jumped on you but you are a part of the organization and that’s why I jumped on you, but I’m sorry.
At that moment, in the spirit of forgiveness, and with an eye toward reconciliation, Chip Elitzer set a new Guinness Book record for magnanimity.
Elitzer:
For the record, I want to give credit to Dave Potts who first sensitized us to this issue.
Personally, I would have said something else, but Chip is a better man than I am. And a better man than Potts, who left the room without so much as a nod in our direction.
In retrospect, I don’t believe the commissioners understood what they were doing. For one simple reason: This was Pittsfield, where the rule is that you’re entitled to a piece of the action. If you don’t get your piece, like the Girardi beer distributor, you call City Hall.
It’s a credit to Mayor Ruberto that he apologized to Chip and me when he heard what happened with the commissioners. Of course, we said that no apology was necessary—and so did Ever-Scrib at the Eagle, which may be the only time we ever agreed on anything.
But Jonathan Levine had it right. His opening line in a Gazette editorial—BLACKMAIL—summed it all up:
Members of the parks commission moonlighted as extortionists this week—and it was ugly.
CHAPTER 22
“The Attorney General fucked us”
By the next morning, Chip and I had put the commissioners behind us. We had other things to do. Like meet at a coffee shop in Pittsfield with Tim Craw, regional representative for the New England Council of Carpenters, Local 108.
Craw is a brawny guy with a pot belly, a kewpie-doll mouth, and bulging eyes. He looks like a cross between a child’s bathtub frog and a linebacker from a small college. He has stab wound scars on his arms and chest, which he volunteered to show us. Craw explained that getting stabbed was part of his job when he worked undercover for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency.
Craw said he filed the Bid Protest because he saw that we had hired Allegrone Construction, a non-union shop, as our contractor. We explained that we hadn’t hired a contractor yet and that Allegrone was only providing pre-construction services. In any case, we said we weren’t against unions; that I myself belonged to four unions, and that I had walked picket lines, sat in on labor negotiations, and testified at arbitration hearings.
“This is a union town,” I said. “We expect that most of the work will be done by union labor.”
“We just can’t live with the Public Bid Laws,” said Chip. “They’re too rigid and too cumbersome. Look at the ‘Big Dig’ in Boston: $12 billion over budget—five times the estimate! And it’s five years late, and it’s still not finished. The local school renovation: millions over budget. All under the Bid Laws. Governments can overspend because they can ta
x. We can’t. No investor will accept being treated as a public entity.”
“We need to break ground this fall,” I said. “Otherwise we have to wait until spring, and we won’t be able to do everything we want by Opening Day.”
Craw said that the union Bid Protest was “a matter of principle” and that he would get back to us.
I had one more question. “Since we signed that license in March, can I ask why you waited four months to come forward?”
“We just heard about it,” said Craw.
From there, Chip and I went to Carr Hardware, looking to have them sponsor our September 4 game and also become investors in WPI. With the Pittsfield business community basically sitting on its hands, we needed a big local investor to lead the way.
The owners, Bart Raser and his father Marshall, are big baseball fans. They liked our plans for Wahconah Park and were happy to be sponsors, but they didn’t have the time or the money to invest.
“Our big concern right now,” said Marshall, “is figuring out how we’re going to replace our warehouse.”
“What happened to it?” asked Chip.
“We had to give it up because the Colonial Theatre needed the space,” said Marshall, referring to the renovation and expansion of the long dormant, century-old landmark in downtown Pittsfield.
“How can they do that?” I asked.
“Don’t ask,” said Marshall, pressing his hand to his forehead and rolling his eyes. “The pressures are unbelievable. We had no choice.”
The pressures.
The Colonial Theatre restoration, decades in the works, is Pittsfield’s largest welfare recipient. Of the estimated $9 million raised to date by the Colonial Theatre Association (a quasi-public-private venture that some say, unfairly booted out the grassroots Friends of the Colonial), 70% is public money, including: $2.5 million from the Massachusetts Historical Commission; $400,000 from the “Save America’s Treasures” program; and a requested $1,000,000 from the same GE settlement fund that gave $250,000 to EV Worldwide for buses that never got built.
Add that to the easements and free parking on city-owned land, the use of eminent domain to oust adjacent property owners, and the removal of commercial property from the tax roles—“all approved without due diligence or public explanation,” wrote Jonathan Levine, “or a visible business plan”—and you have a project that is clearly blessed from above.
The Colonial Theatre Association board includes Mr. and Mrs. Jimmy Ruberto, the major private donor is Berkshire Bank, and the attorney is Mike MacDonald of Cain Hibbard Myers & You-Know-Who. Think of the CTA as a Civic Authority for a theater instead of a stadium. Except there was no referendum on the Colonial Theatre Association.
As with the new stadium, the Colonial Theatre was pitched as some kind of economic engine. “Think about this not as a charitable gift but as an investment,” said board president Howell Palmer. What kind of investment? Forget the fact that theaters like this need to be subsidized. The Colonial Theatre would draw 100,000 fewer people annually than Wahconah Park. And we were offering stock!
“Can you imagine if people got to vote on where to invest the $1 million of GE money?” I said. “The Colonial or Wahconah Park?”
“Wahconah in a landslide,” said Chip. “Nobody’s going to come all the way from Arizona to visit a theater.”
The Colonial Theatre Association is lucky it doesn’t need the Parks Commission. Those champagne press conferences and $50 tickets would be “a little too upscale” for the commissioners. Unless of course they were pressured. Then they could be persuaded that Romeo & Juliet was “a blue collar event.”
Speaking of blue collar events, at a July 21 meeting at Wahconah Park, Tim Craw explained how we could satisfy the carpenters.
“We’ll withdraw the Bid Protest,” he said, “if you get Allegrone to become a union shop.”
So much for “a matter of principle.”
Craw also proposed a solution regarding guaranteed work.
“We’ll make everything go away,” said Craw, “if a certain percentage of the job goes to union contractors.”
“We can’t be bound by guarantees,” I said.
“Our focus is local,” said Chip. “We’d choose a non-union contractor from Pittsfield over a union guy from Springfield or Albany.”
Craw has his principles, we have ours.
“This will probably be at least a 70% union job, anyway,” I said, “given that Pittsfield is a union town.”
“But understand, we have deadlines,” said Chip. “This needs to be resolved soon, or the project is at risk.”
Chip handed Craw a copy of our Working Backwards Timeline:
OCT 1
Drop-dead date for starting construction.
SEPT 17
Close financing. Two weeks notice to contractors.
SEPT 3
Prospectus declared “effective” by SEC. Two weeks notice to investors to close.
AUG 6
Final prospectus filed with SEC to begin four-week review period.
JUL 28
Completion of construction budget.
Craw looked at our timeline.
“I’ll talk it over with my people,” he said. Then he hopped into his truck and drove off.
Meanwhile, we were ahead of schedule on the field. Suddenly, we had two leagues interested in us. In addition to the Atlantic League, which Frank Boulton had said we could join if they began a short season division in 2005, we now had a feeler from the Northeast League. The day after the vintage game, Miles Wolff was quoted as saying that the league “would consider” moving its traveling team to Pittsfield in 2005. How impressed was Wolff with our vintage game? “An expansion team is also a possibility,” he said.
If we build it, they will come.
Ahem.
On July 31, a lovely day at Bushnell Park in downtown Hartford, the Pittsfield Hillies blasted three home runs and beat the Senators 9–5. This was perfect, because it evened the series at one game apiece, thereby setting up The Deciding Game at Wahconah Park on Labor Day weekend.
The most interesting part of the game, however, was the attendance. In spite of the free admission, the turnout was estimated at thirty-five to forty fans, not counting the eight from Pittsfield that included Dave and Grace Potts.
Earlier that week Potts had tried to undermine us with the Hillies by showing them a Senators poster, pointing out the free admission. The idea being that we were taking advantage of our players by selling tickets. The lack of attendance at the Hartford game was a good marketing lesson for Potts: Free ain’t worth much.
In spite of Potts’ behavior, Chip actually walked over to say hello to Dave and Grace during the game. All I could manage was a wave across the field. And I was really just waving at Grace.
On the morning of August 2, Chip and I and City Solicitor Chris Speranzo drove to Boston to attend a Bid Protest hearing at the office of the Massachusetts Attorney General Thomas F. Reilly. Speranzo—thirty-two, friendly and smart—would be a unanimous choice for Mr. Congeniality at a Pillsbury Doughboy look-alike contest. Conveying more niceness than strength, he seems like a guy who still has dinner every Sunday at his mother’s house.
“The union is just using the bid laws to get their foot in the door,” I said during the ride.
We tried to speculate why the Attorney General didn’t just tell the union to take a hike, since the Public Bid Laws were designed to protect taxpayers and don’t even mention the word union.
“Reilly might run for Governor,” said Speranzo, “in which case he won’t want to do anything that looks anti-union.”
“So he’s just going to give them a hearing,” I said, looking for an encouraging interpretation.
“That’s the sense I got,” said Speranzo.
Basically speaking, the Public Bid Laws were designed to prevent a mayor from hiring his brother-in-law to build the new courthouse. To make it fair for all contractors, under the law, architects must draft what a
re called biddable specs, which are detailed to the last nail. These are accompanied by equally detailed invoices from the architect.
Biddable specs are followed by a group walk through, which gives all the contractors the same view of the scope of work. Any alteration to the scope of work, before a contractor has been selected, requires new biddable specs and a new walk through. Also, new invoices.
Alterations after a contractor has been selected are called change orders. These are accompanied by a shaking of the contractor’s head and the uttering of one or more of the following phrases: “Oh boy, I don’t know. We probably can, but it won’t be easy. Too bad you didn’t think of it earlier, ’cuz now it’s gonna cost ya. Whew!”
The Public Bid Laws, under the guise of protecting the taxpayers, often end up costing them far more than a project otherwise would. Why is this allowed to continue? You need to ask the politicians, architects, contractors, and unions, who seem to like these laws for some reason.
The hearing was conducted by Assistant Attorney General Joseph E. Ruccio III. Sitting across the table, next to the union lawyer, was Tim Craw, whom we had not heard from since we showed him our timeline and told him that our project was at risk.
During the three-hour hearing, our lawyer (hired and paid by Chip and me) made the argument that a private company using private money was not subject to the Public Bid Laws. The union lawyer argued that while Chip and I were no doubt honorable, our license contained “language” that, if allowed to stand, could be used by future “bad actors” to circumvent the Bid Laws.
How could that happen? You’ll enjoy this.