On our front page we reproduce the news of the recall filed against the administration of the current Mayor of Lawrence Daniel Rivera by the Attorney Louis Farrah on Tuesday, September 2, 2015, which was submitted to the City Clerk for verification.
It is noteworthy that each of the mayors of Lawrence from Mary Claire Kennedy, who served as mayor from 1994-1998, has been subjected to a recall petition. This includes Patricia Dowling (1998-2001) and William Lantigua (2010- 2014) with the exception of Michael Sullivan (2001- 2010).
We agree with Mayor Rivera when he says that this recall request is a distraction for the city. It seems that he copied the words of his predecessors at the time, which said the same.
In November 2013, Mary Claire Kennedy told a Boston newspaper that, “the next boss at City Hall has two major advantages over his predecessors – the schools and city finances are both under state control – leaving elected mayor Daniel Rivera free to focus on public safety and creating jobs.”
According to the points detailed by the authors of Rivera’s recall (you can read them on pages 5) rather than take advantage of the “advantages” mentioned by Kennedy and focus on public safety and jobs, he has been involved in retaliation against city employees, not just those employees who were hired by the previous administration, but to others with more than 30 years of service.
The most prominent cases are the Comptroller and the Assistant City Engineer. The comptroller took his case to court and won a favorable ruling, but Mayor Rivera refuses to return him to his post. This stubbornness will cost us all, because it is not advisable to refuse fulfilling the mandate of a judge.
The city engineer’s case is more complex. The Constitution of the City requires the City Engineer to have a degree in Civil Engineering, but the one elected by the mayor has a degree in Agricultural Engineering although he gets paid as if he were.
The last time we checked, Lawrence has not yet recovered from the lack of industries but growing vegetables in the parks will not achieve the desired economic level the city needs.
