Elections notes
It’s been a few weeks since my last installment of this column so I’ll give you a quick rundown of several items having to do with the recent elections.
Problem with new machines – So we had someone on District B who did not process 27 absentee ballots before the machine was shut off and they had to be counted by hand. Then, the new voting machines had not been programed to print legibly and a technician had to come at midnight to reprogram it.
Meanwhile, there were problems in Haverhill and Methuen with their machines and nobody wrote about that anywhere.
Sandy Elizabeth Almonte – We remember her when she represented District A in the council. She was fierce, dependable, firm and inquisitive; then she had to resign. She tried to come back but has not done things right at all. She failed at gathering her required signatures by only 8 votes. Campaigned daily calling radio programs asking for consideration; even paid for a radio show on Saturdays for a few weeks. Tried running a write-in campaign and in the end received only 32 votes.
My thought about Sandy trying run for District A councilor was that she would only take votes away from Frankie Caraballo keeping María De La Cruz there for another term but she really did not make a difference in the end results. I hope Frankie continues involved in community affairs and politics because we need him there.
Radio programs, in general, lack local news. What they do have is lots of music, religion, politics from the Dominican Republic and listeners asking questions or making crazy or uninformed comments. For example, when talking about the candidates for Greater Lawrence Technical School Committee we often heard them say that these young Latino candidates should help bring back “vocational” training to that school. We must wonder how much they know about the curriculum at GLTS because that’s what they do.
Results – We all know who the winners were with the only change in the council being Celina Reyes, but more about her later. The surprise was at the School Committee level since Districts B, C and F had no candidates on the ballots. It was no surprise at all that Patricia Mariano received 1,115 votes at District E but Donna Bertolino lost to Kassandra Infante by 283 to 416, respectively, on District A.
Now, for the newcomers running on stickers or write-in campaigns, on District B, Martina Cruz had 3 votes while Enrique Matos won with 16 votes. It would have been great having Martina return to the school committee. When she was there years ago, she did her homework and made good decisions.
District C candidate William Green gathered 5 votes but nobody knew he was running. I would have loved to see him be part of a group that doesn’t provide any information about what goes on at Lawrence Public Schools or training to school committee members to be able to take over the school system’s management in the future. William Green would have been asking questions and insisting on getting answers. He lost to Rafaela Pichardo receiving 17 votes.
Joshua Alba was a formal candidate on the ballot for school committee for District D and he won easily with 615 votes.
At District F, Jonathan Guzmán ran a write-in campaign which received 98 votes to Francisco Brea’s 11.
Jonathan was a dynamo in high school and Rumbo covered several of his activities. I knew he would go far in life and now that he is a college graduate, he is showing that he wants to make a mark in the city. This was the best news coming out of the election process.
Let’s imagine if candidate for councilor at-Large Richard Russell and William Green had also been elected to the school committee we would have had a few fighters for our residents instead of what we ended up with in the city council and school committee. Which brings me to Celina Reyes – we’re stuck with her.
Celina was handpicked by Danny and gave her full support not only using his resources but allowing her campaign manager time off from his parking lot duties to attend events and radio interviews with her at any time of the day. It was funny on the radio, whenever she was stuck responding to a question, he would take over.
A few days ago we met in a public gathering and after kissing me on the cheek, thanked me for all the publicity I gave her. Nothing I ever said was positive but Celina is like those who believe that all publicity is good as long as the desired result is achieved. Had she lost, she would have blamed me.
To my question of why she has two Facebook pages with different names Celina explained that her friends in the Dominican Republic know her as Lina Montesino and wouldn’t know her by her new name. I still find it distrustful. Don’t worry, she’s not registered to vote twice.
Columbia Gas Settlement hearing in court
On October 7, there was a hearing at the Essex County Superior Court for the purpose of approving the $143 million settlement from Columbia Gas to benefit the residents and businesses of Lawrence, Andover and North Andover that were affected on September 13, 2018 by the gas explosions.
At this hearing were present the attorneys representing the families and businesses that suffered and continue to be affected. In addition to that group, Mayor Dan Rivera, Senator Barry Finegold, and State Representatives Frank Moran. Christina Minicucci and Marcos Devers were asking for $20M from that total amount. Their reasoning for this request was to compensate residents for public security infrastructure resulting from the recent gas leaks this year.
Needless to say that Judge James F. Lang refused to agree but not without telling them they had no right to that money. You may read the letter to Judge Lang on page 17.
Odds and ends
- Now, tell me one good reason for Dan Rivera to be sending invitations to his holiday party to Gilda Duran in Florida? No, he’s not stupid; he wanted to be mentioned here! Time to update that list.
- Did you know that one of the busses for which we paid $225,000 to MVRTA is no longer running? Bus number 83 has not been running and passengers have not been told the reason.
