Multiple sources report that Billerica selectman George Simolaris (a painting contractor by trade) faces arrest, prosecution, and fines because he had the audacity to paint five crosswalks himself after months of inaction from the town.
BILLERICA — A member of the Billerica select board got so frustrated by delays in painting crosswalks in town that he took matters into his own hands and painted them himself.
Now he faces arrest.
George Simolaris, a painter by trade and an advocate for pedestrian safety, used green deck paint on five crosswalks in the town center this weekend.
The Lowell Sun quotes Mr. Simolaris:
“This project was supposed to be done by November, then it was supposed to be done by the opening day of Little League, then Memorial Day, then Fourth of July. It just wasn’t coming to fruition, so I thought as a roadway commissioner I could do this as a temporary solution,” Simolaris said.
His fellow board members are calling for him to resign.
Meanwhile, the town immediately power-washed the streets in question, removing his work. Apparently the town couldn’t find a way to do the crosswalk painting itself for months, yet was able to remove the ad-hoc replacement within hours. The entire episode convinces me that nothing has changed in Billerica in the thirty years since I left, and that I made the right decision to leave.
Some things never change.
of our political leadership that the Billerica selectmen can’t or won’t acknowledge Simolaris’s intent, which was to benefit the town. Painting the crosswalks may have been illegal, but it was certainly not an act of vandalism. The Billerica selectmen should be more concerned that they haven’t been doing their own jobs, which is to ensure that town projects promoting public safety get done.
is that the town found the time and resources to remove the paint, but not paint them in the first place.
Was the “deck paint” that he used a high-friction paint? It has to be, if you’re going to fill in the entire crosswalk. When I rode motorcycles, I had to be very wary of such crosswalks, because some highway departments would use gloss paint, and if I had to make a steering or braking input while on their paint, I could land on my ass. It was much worse in wet weather.
I understand the guy’s frustration, but it’s not his job do paint the street, and my guess is he used the wrong paint.
I saw no suggestion that he used the wrong paint. He is, after all, a painting contractor.
The concern you raise, while legitimate, was not cited by any of the officials involved. Instead, there were complaints of “defacing” public property, concerns about wet paint damaging passing cars, and similar things.
It really does seem as though most of the objections are because his actions embarrassed local town officials, employees, and contractors.
Knowing Billerica, I can’t help but wonder if some private negotiations were thwarted. It wonder if somebody’s brother-in-law thought he had the contract, and somebody else’s son was objecting because THEY wanted it.
… wrong paint or not, Kirth has a point: we really can’t accept vigilante crosswalks because crosswalks are exactly and precisely about public safety. As public demonstrations go, I’m not sure the guy expected his vigilante actions to stand… he is quoted as saying it was temporary.
I agree that the local town officials are (and very well ought to be) ashamed and embarrassed and if it was the guys intent to shame them into action then he did a good thing and he did it well. If his intent was to simply fill in the crosswalk with whatever and decide that was the end of it, I’d have to object to his carelessness as much as to the town’s overall negligence…
He committed no crime. The entire circus is an embarrassment to Billerica.
as I understand it, which is a crime. However, intent should come into play here. At worst, this was an act of civil disobedience. However, according to the Lowell Sun article, he could face 3 years in prison, which is ridiculous.
If I was the sentencing judge in this case, I would fine him for the cost of power-washing the paint, which he’s already agreed to do. Then, I would commend his actions as a public service and suspend the fine.
From the Lowell Sun:
The nature of the alleged damage is not revealed.
…that said motorist is a Billerica resident looking to cause political trouble?
The town painted temp lines last night.
From the story Tom linked to
Of course it happened last night, AFTER this embarrassing mess was plastered all over the news.
In my mind this makes me wonder who had the power to get the temp lines put in on such short notice. And what was their motivation since it wasn’t public safety? And where was this person when it was supposed to be done last November/Memorial Day/4th of July?
I would think that the Billerica selectman who was arrested on a misdemeanor charge of painting crosswalks for a public purpose ranks low on my mandatory resignation scale. We can talk again after the Dracut selectman who is facing seven felony counts of animal cruelty is gone.
If we can have charter schools, why not charter crosswalks?
We could award these charter crosswalks to George Simolaris, and instead of charging him with a crime and penalizing him for the cost of washing away his work, he could get a substantial entitlement off the top of the Billerica DPW budget!
Someone is going to think it’s a good idea…
on WGBH radio today with Jim Braude and Margery Eagan. While I agree with him taking a drastic measure to get action, it sounded like he was a bit of a gadfly in the town. He was the driving force behind a successful citizen movement to reverse approval for a town planned development for this intersection. Then he ran for Board of Selectmen and won. Now, it looks like the powers that be in Billerica have it in for him, and this is just the latest and worst case. In this case, I’ll bet it was because of this that he could never get the town to act on getting the crosswalks repainted.
Simolaris was a bit of a gadfly in town and consequently the powers that be in Billerica “have it in for him.” That would seem to explain why the other selectmen have refused to recognize his intent in painting the crosswalks, and are focusing entirely on making the charge that he violated the law.
The lesson here appears to be not to rock the political boat in Billerica, or the folks in it will look for the first available excuse to throw you overboard.
Conflicts about development have been going on in Billerica for decades. While I was on the fincom in the early 1980s, the ties between local boards and local developers were thick and corrupt.
It sounds to me as though enough voters liked his stance to make his campaign for selectman successful. Maybe that’s “gadfly” to you, but not to me.
I agree that this probably has a lot to do with the whole sorry circus.
“a person who upsets the status quo.” I realize there are less charitable definitions of ther term. It can simply mean someone who annoys others through constant criticism, but I’m not using it in that sense.
I know nothing about the town’s politics, but the Globe article did mention some particularly kind of paint different from that used by the selectman.
A couple of things come to mind:
* Although any individual task within a city might seem easy, when you have several thousand of them backed up, you need to prioritize them. It most likely wasn’t hard to paint those crosswalks, but doing so may have meant that some other task wouldn’t get done when it needed to. I see that around my own house – there are dozens of little things that would take be 30 minutes to do, but there are larger projects that take precedent and there is only so much time in the day.
* There is often a difference between “doing it” and “doing it right”. I have seen amateurs write quick software in an attempt to show up a professional IT department; the quick software usually crumbles pretty quickly.
* There may be union issues. In Springfield, the maintenance workers unions protested when parents tried to voluntarily do work within the schools. It’s easy to see their point – if they are perennially understaffed, why should they be scapegoated for not doing all the work that needs to be done; why should their jobs be viewed as “can potentially replaced by volunteers”? How reliable and professional is volunteer labor – might it cause problems down the line?
It’s really easy to see something like this as a failure of government, and in some ways perhaps it is, but in other ways it likely represents the difference between the appetite for government services and the willingness to pay for them.