New Water Commissioner
Do you remember when candidate for Mayor Rivera promised that only the best qualified candidates will be hired to work for the city? That never happened. In his three years in office he has violated that promise many times bringing friends and political acquaintances without the proper education or experience.
I could name the treasurer who lied about his credentials when he only had some college courses but no degree. Lying in your resume to a government office is illegal and punishable by the law if someone in this area would have made an effort to pursue such a case. Mr. Pita would have been the first indictment of this administration. Although he had gone to school with the mayor, he later claimed he didn’t know he had not graduated. Rather than firing him, he was transferred to comptroller. Eventually, the scandal got to him and left on his own.
Should I name the city engineer again? I’m tired of talking about an agronomist (friend of the mayor’s) who was given this job and the city council has not done anything about it.
And what about the political appointments the mayor has made in the Elections Department? Totally unqualified people with no experience in running such a complex office and some of them have not even lasted on the job.
Last week I wrote about the Business and Economic Development Director, Abel Vargas, who used to dabble in real estate and knows nothing about bringing jobs into the city. In three years, he has only received lots of press for creating the food truck park that bring no benefits to the city. The public response has been so poor that they lost interest. And by the way the food truck wasn’t his idea. This was one of many ideas taken from the Sasaki Summer Intern report done for the City on 2010.
Wendy Luzon was hired as a neighborhood planner and according to the job posting dated January 18, 2014 she should have a Master Degree in Urban Planning, Public Administration or other related fields and (2) two years’ experience; a Bachelor’s Degree in Urban Planning, Public Administration plus 4 years of experience. I am yet to see Luzon’s credentials, and often wonder what she does all day besides posting on Facebook things that are irrelevant to her job and being paid with our tax money. I also wonder why she was moved from Community Development to Planning. Perhaps the reason why she was transferred to Planning had to do with HUD not approving her credentials.
Last November, Brian Peña asked the City Council to appropriate the salary of a new supervisory position being created in the Water and Sewer Department. There were three candidates applying for a job advertised only in-house and Daniel Lahiff was selected. Coincidence has it that Brian and Dan were coworkers at Woodard and Curran and he was highly recommended by his friend for this job. For some reason, Water Commissioner Brian Peña and Interim DPW Director Lance Hamill were the only ones to interview Mr. Lahiff.
Recently, Commissioner Peña left his city employment to go after a better job since the mayor refused to give him a raise and Mr. Lahiff took over as “interim” water commissioner with a salary of $85,000.
If someone like me with no experience in hiring practices can do a Google search and find out so many things about an individual, why was the city not aware of who was being hired? Within a few minutes in front of my computer, I found a wealth of information about Daniel Lahiff, Lowell Regional Water Utility (“LRWU”) Executive Director and you can, too. He earned $95,000 in Lowell.
- On March 2012 he was fined $5,000 by the Ethics Commission for having helped himself to a city generator to his home during power outages and using city employees to perform private contracting work such as installing the generator or a wood floor in his residence. He was lucky! School Superintendent Wilfredo Laboy went to jail for similar things.
- On June 6, 2014, The Lowell Sun reported that City Manager Kevin Murphy told Lahiff to either resign from his job or face termination.
- In June of 2014, The Lowell Sun reported about the exorbitant bills issued by the Lowell Regional Water Utility because “Billing numbers were being manually manipulated where there was no reason to do so,” the report said, according to The Lowell Sun on June 30, 2014, “marking an end to his tenure leading a department that for the last few years has faced a series of scandals,” according to The Sun.
And now, he was brought to Lawrence, apparently where things like that is part of everyday business and people will look the other way.
Youth Career & Family Resource Fair
Last Saturday, September 24th I participated in the Youth Career & Family Resource Fair held at Lawrence High School from 10 am to 2 pm. It was sponsored by the Mayor’s Health Task Force as one of the many events they hold throughout the year.
I don’t know what to think of the purpose of these fairs. In some cases, they are part of a normal day’s work of the participating organizations; in others, it becomes an addition to the daily routine. If the public responds, then it was worth the effort but in four hours spent there, only two students came by my table. (I really think their motive was the tray of chocolates.) My comment afterward was that there more adults than young people there but I was not planning to write about it.
The last time I criticized an event of the MHTF, it prompted Vilma Martinez Dominguez to write a very long explanation of her reasons for disagreeing with my assessment of poor attendance at Ciclovía last month. We had to be very careful editing the pictures to show just individuals and not the bare streets and they claimed that “thousands” of people attended. Anyone can look at their pictures on Facebook. It was clear.
The reason for mentioning this is because I received a thank-you note from Elecia Miller and she said, “As one of 43 participating vendors at this event, our only regret was not having throngs of youth there to capitalize on the variety in the room.”
Recently I wrote about this community having “volunteering fatigue” and probably the MHTF board should examine the number of events they hold each year.
