LGH’s Santagati Center
We attended the inauguration of the new Surgical Center at Lawrence General Hospital which was named after the Santagati Family. Besides the honor and benefit it represents to the Merrimack Valley having that modern facility right here it was an immigrant story that made me cry.
Richard Santagati spoke about his father coming from Italy when he was three years-old. The family lived in that area surrounding the old hospital and he grew up there. Mr. Santagati’s children became professional with lots of success in life but never forgot where they came from. For many years he was president of Merrimack College, belonged to the board of directors of many non-profit organizations contributing his work and funding.
At Lawrence General Hospital, his family has been extremely generous and when the plan to build this addition came a few years ago, he pledged $1.25 million which started the fund raising going.
Mr. Santagati became emotional talking about his father and his satisfaction of being able to do what he has done for so many people. The pride of having his family’s name attached to that building is overwhelming.
And I wonder what that feel like.
Early voting
This advice is for anyone in Massachusetts. There is some confusion with the questions on the ballot, chiefly with #2 and #4 and until you understand them perfectly, it will be best to hold voting as much as possible.
Another reason for me not to vote early is that I have no confidence in the Elections Department in Lawrence. We have had serious problems there through the years and instead of finding competent individuals to train the employees and straighten the department out, Mayor Dan Rivera keeps doing more political favors hiring people who are incompetent and can only contribute more confusion and chaos.
I don’t want to think that my ballot is languishing in somebody’s drawer or on top of a file cabinet for days on end. Later, on Election Day, they are transported to the different polling places where somebody will open the envelope, look at my vote and place it in the machine to be counted. That’s assuming they don’t get lost.
I read an article about two women who were arrested in Florida for doing that task of opening the envelopes and marking their choices before entering the machine. You see? It could happen here, too!
The new library director
I don’t know if the mayor continues to do these things angering so many people as a diversion from some of the other antics. Noticed that people are not talking about the stadium issue any more?
The appointment of Jessica Valentín to run the Lawrence Public Library is a slap in the face of every employee at the Library and city workers who aspire to be recognized for their hard work, education and experience. We should be telling our children in this city that if they want to succeed in life, they just need to get into politics.
Kemal was not the only applicant that met the hiring requirements for the new Library Director from what I understand. There were nine applicants including a long-time library employee, Rosemary McCullough-Ghali who has the required degree already.
While Ms. Valentín has a Masters in Biology, she is lacking the experience necessary to run the library. She was a receptionist at the mayor’s office, just like Theodoro Rosario (an agronomist) when he started out, until Mayor Rivera made him city engineer granting him one year to get the proper license. Over two years later before he left in disgrace, he had not taken a single course. Now, they are giving Ms. Valentín two years to acquire a Masters in Library Science which will be paid for by the city.
What happened to the promise of “only the best qualified people will be working for the city,” as he said many times? I wonder how the morale is at LPL.
I am following very closely the selection of the new director of the Department of Public Works because there are three finalists; two of them have an engineering degree and experience but I can bet that he will choose the high school graduate over them. You’ll see!
Raising the Turkish flag
Last Friday, for the 4th consecutive year, the Turkish flag was raised in front of City Hall. Take a look at Rumbo’s coverage of that event on the front page. Mayor Rivera had one of the receptionists in his office deliver the city’s proclamation to the Turkish Consul. He has been neglecting those duties for quite a while and it is his chief of staff, his radio show host or Kendrys Vasquez, city council president doing that presentation.
Kendrys was in attendance at the flag raising but the “office girl” was chosen. He broke protocol with a representative of a foreign country and was extremely disrespectful to the Turkish community.
Lieutenant Carberry
When the police arrested him and omitted the most serious accusation against him (that of the saw off shotgun) from the report, I thought the fix was in to protect him. After the courts dropped from that charge, I was certain that nothing was going to happen to him. He would collect his pay for a whole year while recuperating from the self-inflicted shot on his leg and in the end go back to work.
But that did not happen. On November 3rd there will be a hearing before Civil Service to fire him. Perhaps the city had the best of intentions trying to protect him but the Civil Service rules are very clear. Anyone involved with drugs or convicted of a crime (he pleaded guilty to the lesser charges) cannot keep a Civil Service job. I am confident that the mayor will find a desk job for him with no questions asked.
Pacific Mills
Never ceases to amaze me how some people manage to stay in the news!
Brady Sullivan, the owner of 300 Canal St. in Lawrence, subcontracted I.P.S. Interior Partition Systems to do the renovations in their building. The carpenters used are from New Hampshire, just like approximately 200 carpenters working on private buildings in the city and they all seem to be Latinos.
Some workers have filed complaints with the Connecticut Department of Labor, Wage and Workplace Standards Division for refusal to pay them. According to the workers, they were told that in order to receive their money, they would have to “show papers.” This led to some confusion since they thought it was in reference to immigration documents. By “papers” the workers are referring to BUSINESS INCORPORATION PAPERS.
The contractor hired them, but now he’s asking for their business papers, treating them like a company so he isn’t responsible for the benefits etc. This is a tactic often used to cheat workers. The offices of I.P.S. Interior Partition Systems are located in Connecticut so the complaints were filed there.
Crime is down!
We hear the shots fired all over the city at night. The hospitals know their volume of work has increased and even in plain daylight, we see crimes being committed but statistics show that crime is down.
We can’t trust the police to tell us the truth and their daily log online is a joke. Seems as if they are running around the city only on noise violations (as if that has decreased!), traffic violations and minor stuff.
One item that made it to the news was the sexual assault on a young girl. There had been two other cases in the city around the Manchester and West streets that receive little attention and some people started wondering if we had a serial rapist in the city. It was then, once his picture was published, that three other women came forward to accuse him of the same.
Two Sundays ago, at six o’clock in the evening, a pizza delivery man witnessed a melee near Lawrence and Saratoga streets. More than a dozen teenagers with all kinds of weapons were fighting and he even saw when one of them put a machete to somebody else’s neck. The place was immediately surrounded by police cars. He continued making his round but stopped by the station later in the evening to find out what had happened and if anyone got hurt. They had no idea as to what he was talking about. Someone else called the police chief’s secretary the next day and no one had heard of that.
When it comes to the shots heard along Mt. Vernon St., I have been told that the police has never received any calls on that.
Unless we face a problem, we’ll never be able to solve it.
