Watch your language, María!
I listened to Santiago Matías show last week when he praised District A Councilor Maria De La Cruz. He spoke of her as a true friend, someone dedicated to her community who has done a great service; he also said that she is not a good city councilor and she should get out of that race.
If she understood or appreciated his message or not, there are many ways to confront a person and air the differences. Mrs. De La Cruz chose to go on another radio program to respond. That would have been correct if she limited herself to speak of her achievements in the City Council; instead, Councilor De La Cruz went on a rampage of personal attacks that included members of Matías’ family here and in the Dominican Republic.
She had related on the air her experiences as a school teacher and the respectable side of her career but in her response to Mr. Matías, her vocabulary turned to the most vulgar phraseology and behavior on radio. That included challenging Matías to duke it out in the park. Obviously, she forgot that she was on Facebook where people could see her reaction and recorded for future views.
Mosquitos in Lawrence?
Last week I posted a sign on Facebook saying “The Departments of Public Health of Andover and Methuen increased awareness as to the dangers of EEE. Fortunately for us in Lawrence, mosquitos must be afraid of the mayor and stay away from here.”
Can you see my sarcasm? The residents of Lawrence have received no notices of prevention against the hazards of EEE. While other cities are spraying, I was pleased to see Inspectional Services personnel Michael Armano and Pat Ruiz passing out information in English and Spanish during the Feast this weekend.
Estela’s land on Oak St.
As you can see in the photo, the lot owned by Councilor Reyes and her cohorts is a mess with trash and overgrown shrubs – again.
That’s not only a heaven for drug addicts but for breeding mosquitos. Good excuse for DPW to clean it up this time. If it were anyone else, the land’s owners would be forced to clear it. It’s all who you know!
Lawrence Community Access Television
I said that the LCAT issue would not be brought up again by me because I was tired of fighting for something people in this city were not interested in but since this argument with their board of directors has become public, I will include portions of it here.
I’m sure you everybody knows that for the past 15 years I’ve been writing about LCAT and not in a positive way. Now that I found out that Ginny Alexander has left, I decided to approach the board members directly, only to find there are just three of them.
It saddens me greatly seeing how an organization that could have been the greatest informational tool in this city has turned into a private enterprise for Jim Ross. From the very beginning, he took control of the programming and would not allow any information to be brought to our residents. You may not know or remember that I used to do two shows, Up With Lawrence in English and El Mundo que nos Rodea in Spanish discussing local issues only.
I had my own crew with Richard Aybar at the controls and two camera operators. We did remotes sometimes including election night coverage from City Hall with winners and losers. My life was made miserable and we could not continue doing it. Since then, elections come and go and residents are lost not knowing who the candidates are in an apparent effort to keep this community ignorant.
Through the years I’ve been saying that prior to renewing a cable contract, LCAT must perform an ascertainment with members of the community. The only one I remember was at the Senior Center a few years ago with about 15 elderly residents from his neighborhood association.
The same happens with the Annual Meeting every year. He is supposed to advertise it in a local newspaper and it must be open to the public. It has never been that way until last year’s when some people showed up uninvited. But they were only allowed to a tour through the studio and a minimal PowerPoint presentation. The Annual Meeting itself was held in private.
Also, I was told that when time came to vote for board president, none of you nominated him and his wife (who is not a board member) did it. The sad part is that none of you is aware that as the Board of Directors, you are his bosses, you have the power to discipline him for his wrongdoings and even fire him. Just look at Haverhill, Methuen, Andover, North Andover, etc. how they operate and the variety of programs they have available.
This is not a private club. Don’t you feel any responsibility for the monthly payments all cable subscribers pay without any expectation of producing local shows? Have any of you wondered why we never get an accounting of where our funding goes because we are certainly not getting our money’s worth. If you get financial statements from Jim, why don’t you share them? Or is it that you are all part of the sting?
I strongly believe that this should be in the hands of a Lawrencian just like the board should be made up by our residents. Of course, the problem is that no one wants to be part of an organization that has a poor reputation and produces nothing.
Mr. Ross brags about how hard he works for the channel videotaping and editing material. His job is making sure the studio runs as expected, training volunteers to go out doing that type of work.
But he’s too busy micromanaging everybody else, controlling the content of what goes out to the public, depriving this community of what they are paying for.
