It doesn’t look like Christmas
The residents of Lawrence have gone through plenty in recent months and the struggle continues for many but, Christmas is here and it should be a season of hope and happiness. We earned some sort of glee in our daily lives and our city seems to be dead.
Mayor Rivera held a private tree lighting ceremony at City Hall with political friends and city employees only. There was an announcement placed on the mayor’s main source of information: Facebook. That’s all. Nothing on the radio.
It was held indoors because five years ago he cut down the real Christmas tree for political vengeance promising that he would replace it and never did. Back in those days, hundreds of children came to see Santa arriving on a fire truck. Judging by the pictures posted on Facebook, there were not even 100 inside among kids and adults.
Surrounding cities and towns have been holding season-related festivities. Nothing in Lawrence! We don’t even have Christmas lights on the streets.
In Haverhill, they have the annual Christmas Stroll when they close downtown traffic for several blocks on a Friday night. Businesses remain open for shoppers, offering cider and hot chocolate outside, while the real purpose of the celebration is the lighting of the tree. They also had a Santa Parade just like Methuen, Andover and North Andover.
Andover, having suffered as much as Lawrence with the gas explosions, hasn’t stopped living and enjoying the season. For the past few weeks, Town Manager Andrew P. Flanagan has been sending out daily press releases encouraging customers to shop downtown. This week, they have a contest by just showing your purchase receipts as shown on this ad I post. That town manager is truly working for his community!
Mr. Flanagan has been advocating so eagerly for business owners that were shut down and now that they back in operation, he’s still trying to bring customers to them.
In Lawrence, many businesses are still closed and several went out of business altogether yet, no one is speaking for them.
Blue lights
The Lawrence City Council has wasted time and money on many things but I think they are about to take the most stupid measure at a cost of $200,000 of our money: Blue Lights to indicate when we can expect snow.
People have complained that the Winter Parking schedule from December 15 to April 1 is not fair because there might be no snow on the ground. As an alternative, they came up with the brilliant idea of placing blue lights in certain areas. That’s almost like saying, let’s go into Boston to check the color of the Prudential building lights to find out. Same thing!
Radio announcements won’t work because not everybody listens to the radio (besides, they are all in Spanish.) The government channels of LCAT are nonexistent and not everybody has access to Facebook as the communications means the mayor enjoys using.
We don’t have $150,000 for new voting machines which is imperative, but we can waste money in this nonsense.
Richard Russell at council meeting
Last Tuesday, Dick Russell spoke at the city council meeting and, as usual, his comments are worthy of repeating:
First, the citizens elected you were under the impression that you are sitting behind that curved desk to help them. HELP THEM!
Second, running your meetings, both the full council and subcommittee meetings, in a more practical manner would be greatly appreciated. Case in point, calling items from the agenda ‘out of order’ to appease your constituents doesn’t look to good to many veteran council observer like myself when I see city officials regularly waiting until the end of a long boring evening to be heard. Just because they are city employees doesn’t mean that they should have to endure a long wait after a busy day at work.
Third, some of you councilors have to realize that you are not getting paid by the word; so keep your comments short.
Fourth, cellphones should be banned from the council desk. Nothing makes people madder than to see one of you playing with a cellphone while a discussion is going on.
Fifth, I realize, probably much to some of your displeasure, public participation is part of the council agenda. It might be nice if you at least appeared to be paying attention to what the public participants have to say.
If we only had more Russells in this community…
Methadone Mile
I have said it many times; things happen in Lawrence because we lay down and play dead, never complaining about anything. Well, students from an elementary school in Boston embarrassed politicians asking for something to be done around their school because the area is known as “methadone mile”.
Here, we get insulted when anyone says that Lawrence is the drugs distribution center in New England.
From boxer to painter
Please take a look at the interview with José Martínez (Bugzy) about the exhibit at Lawrence Heritage State Park on page 11. I was very impressed with his motivation to become the person he is today that I know he’ll be inspiration to many.
To the untrained eye, my recommendation is trying to have him explain the meaning of his work. It will be an eye-opening. Please contact him at Canal Street Gym, 250 Canal St., Lawrence.
