I’ve been thinking that perhaps I should share some of my experiences with this town that motivate me to get involved. I’ll start today with the first issue in my long list of run-ins with the Democratic majority in this town.
Several years ago, about 9-10 years, my grandmother had to be placed in an assisted living facility in our town. She was very upset at moving there and like all elderly people she was scared that the family was just dumping her off onto someone else. Nothing could be farther from the truth, but at the time she didn’t understand everything we would do to help her live the twilight of her years in peace and comfort.
Anyway, my story starts at the Hamburg Town Golf Course. One day I’m out with friends playing golf and I think to myself, “wow, what a great way to get grandma out of the house and out into the fresh air for a few hours. I’ll just bring her along the next time and she can ride the golf cart with me”. So that’s what I tried to do. Only that’s not what happened.
When we showed up I was told by the staff, no way. She would have to pay greens fees, pay cart fees, have her own bag of clubs and actively participate on the course. I was shocked! I couldn’t believe that they wouldn’t allow her to ride along. Now remember, my grandma was 80 or so at the time and never played golf. She had a hard enough time just walking short distances.
So I started making the phone calls. I wanted to know why one of Hamburg’s senior citizens who paid town taxes her whole life was being refused access to a town park she helped pay for. I was given the run around for several weeks until I got fed up and finally stood in Pat Hoaks office waiting area until I could get an answer. Pat was pissed he couldn’t get rid of me and eventually he called me into his office and told me that the problem was the insurance. Supposedly, unless my grandma paid all the fees and participated she wouldn’t be covered under the insurance. I thought OK, that’s a good reason, Right? …..Wrong!
You see Pat Hoak lied to me. The town golf course as well as all other town facilities are self insured. Their is no insurance company that is writing the rules and Pat just fed me BS to get rid of me. A week or so later I found this out and had enough of these bastards, so I hired a lawyer to get to the bottom of it.
Once the town got a legal letter from my attorney, their tuned changed. I immediately received a phone call from the golf course supervisor, Joe Wenzel (sp), and he was, all of a sudden, easy to deal with. Up to that point my calls to him went un-returned, but now he wanted to talk. Well my response was that he should call my lawyer and that just pissed them all off. HOW DARE I GET A LAWYER TO MAKE THE TOWN ANSWER MY PETITION FOR REDRESS OF GREIVANCES! You know, that pesky last ten words of the first amendment on our United States Constitution.
After all was said and done and after a lot of arguing, guess what, my grandmother was given permission to ride along and all she had to pay was her half of the cart fees, because they were rented from an outside source that the town contracts with. All I had to do was give the Recreation Department 24 hours notice that she would be out there with me.
So in the end I had to get a lawyer to force the town to allow one of its own citizens the right to enjoy a town park that she helped pay for. That’s what I mean by the Democratic Party in Hamburg losing touch with its own citizens.
She came with me about half a dozen times and then became uninterested in it. However it’s the moral of the issue that just burned my ass. This wasn’t the last run-in with this town over the coming years and I’ll keep the list going each night until we get the results of the election. In the mean time, anyone else have some run-ins you would like to share?
Yeah I heer ya man the one time i wanted to take my pet ferret with me to the Fitness center…he just sits right on my shoulders while I do my curls, and military presses. what’s nice about bringing a ferret to the gym is it is a great ice breaker with the ladies. So I brought ronnie (that’s his name) into the Town fitness center and I was just minding my own business when out of nowhere this old lady in spandex pants started screaming at me that I had to get that Rat out of the gym. Now i don’t know if she worked there or not but she obviously didn’t know the difference between a ferret and a rat, I tried to explain it to her but she just started screaming louder…eventually the guy behind the desk had to come up and intervene. I guess I should have asked about the ferret in the first place, bur they never had a problem with it at Gold’s Gym, so i didn’t think much about it.
eventually I made an appointment to speak to that wetzel guy about my ferret problem and he said I would be allowed to bring it to the gym so long as I bought a proper pet carrier and kept him behind the counter..of course this didn’t seem fair to me, he told me i could take it up with the highr ups if I had a problem, so I went over to town hall. While I was in Hoak’s office the nice older lady behind the desk gave me three donuts and a cup of coffee. after about twenty minutes I was called into the supervisor’s office and he told me that we could not have a ferret in the gym….BECAUSE OF INSURANCE REASONS!…now you tell me that the town is self insured!???? wow! when will this lunacy come to an end!? maybe I should see if the new guy likes ferrets, or at least will treat me like a human bean. Thanks for providing this site …I luv it!
I don’t quite know what to make of your comment but thanks for participating.
I would say that weight machines and free weights might do more harm than your little pet. Fitness machines can pose a risk, right ? Hoak used to have a way of fitting his own logic into a situation that he wanted to selectively control. He was better than Dickey Smith though, who would just lie through his smiley teeth. Great news that now they are both out of our hair.