1,352,183@7:59 am
1,352,144 @ 12:47 am May 31, 2019
1,352,144 @ 12:47 am May 31, 2019
Medford Transcript
RE: Medford article pitch
Dear Medford Transcript
Enclosed is an article for your consideration.
Joe Viglione
CITY HALL DOORS, ALDEN CHAMBERS BENCHES
WHERE ARE CITY RESOURCES GOING?
by Joe Viglione
Has anyone noticed new doors on Medford City Hall at 85 George P. Hassett Drive?
Over a year ago I brought this matter to the attention of city hall at a meeting in Alden Chambers.
I also taped the meeting on Facebook Live.
Now that there are new doors, where oh where are the vintage doors that served Medford citizens for decades? That is the Sixty-Four Thousand Dollar ($64,000.00) question, isn't it?
After a public records request garnered a snippy response from city hall - " Property Owned by Medford residents is private property, therefore Medford City Hall would not have records on what private residents remove" an appeal to the office of the Secretary of State got the Medford city law office a stern demand to hand over the documents, in a timely manner.
Well, we got those documents that city hall engaged in subterfuge to try to keep from us.
On April 30, 2019 city hall noted in a letter that the doors are "being repaired" in a section titled
RESPONSE TO REQUEST #4: See the attached Contract No. 17-0017 and its accompanying documents. Please note that Contract No. 17-0017 is titled "Medford City Hall, Council Chambers Interior Repairs Project." Under the same contract, repairs to the Medford City Hall doors are included. Simply put, the doors are being repaired, they were not melted or sold. Therefore, there are no documents that relate to the melting or sale of the doors."
Shouldn't citizens know why there are new doors and, if the vintage doors are being repaired, what will happen to them, and how can the citizens find out where all city property is stored?
The law office declaring " Medford City Hall would not have records on what private residents remove" is both ridiculous and insulting.
With that same records request this writer asked for documents regarding curbstones from Ring Road as well as documents on the missing benches from Alden Chambers dating as far back as 2001.
On February 6, 2001 Robert A. Maiocco, on the council, requested the whereabouts of the benches from Alden Chambers ...noting their value. On that council was Stephanie Muccini-Burke, the current mayor, as vice president. Two days later Mayor Michael J. McGlynn offered a bizarre paragraph deflecting the issue, not responding to the resolution. McGlynn gave an excuse as to why he felt cheap uncomfortable seats would better serve the citizenry than the expensive safer seating. McGlynn gave no mention of how these seats would serve the citizens better elsewhere, and eighteen years later, with Muccini-Burke as mayor, we still have no answers.
Do you see a pattern here over the better part of two decades?
The Medford Transcript noted discrepancies in the public access monies (to the tune of around $38,000.00) that City Solicitor Mark E. Rumley promised to investigate. When TV3 failed to respond within the ten days Rumley gave them an additional ten days, then stopped investigating the very board that he was once a part of.
Why didn't Mayor Burke hire outside counsel that had never participated on that board? Why did city hall drop the investigation?
One of the major TV stations in Boston donated an expensive soundboard to TV3. If you read the contract closely, all equipment at the perpetually dissolving Medford Community Cablevision, Inc. was co-owned by the city. This soundboard was, in my professional opinion, worth at least twenty-five thousand dollars. At least. When I approached a latter-day board member, the proprietor of Medford Electronics, of all things, he just shrugged his shoulders noting that there's always government waste.
?????
See a pattern, Medford? Your taxes go up, cable rates go up, the Boston Globe references missing copper at the Medford Housing Authority, the Medford Transcript notes that there are discrepancies in the TV3 accounting, manhole covers allegedly go missing at the DPW, a former mayor in 2001 can't fully explain where vintage, expensive benches walked off to, and you can bet your bottom dollar that if this writer didn't file a public records request regarding the city hall doors, they would be M.I.A. too.
Where do these resources go? Why are citizens not informed of property they have paid for and where that property allegedly walks off to?
When the city law office makes a mockery of the request and blames the citizens in a condescending dubious response to a legal request, one wonders where the local press is. The absence of the local news media is a question not for another day but for right now.
" Medford City Hall would not have records on what private residents remove" - the law office making up some Trumpian fiction and passing it off as a response to a public records request which, of course, it wasn't.
We have limited information from city hall, and we have no benches and no city hall doors that we can see.
This administration just wants us to be sheep and accept that things disappear. We are supposed to shut up and take it.
Oh, and in South Africa, a mayor is under arrest. How refreshing.
The Durban Solid Waste (DSW) department was strategically targeted by these individuals to further their political and personal interests by appointing the “contractors [who] were not on the city's database and had no infrastructure, staff or skills in waste management and were essentially given money for work that was not done" according to the evidence presented in court.
One has to ask the question, with so many items unaccounted for, with city hall telling me that they can't find any more documents on the missing benches (and the current mayor was on the council that asked about the benches, and then actually worked for Michael J. McGlynn herself!) Get real, something is not kosher at Medford City Hall.
The Medford Transcript needs to start reporting and stop acting as the publicity arm of 85 George P. Hassett Drive. This is a story of GREAT public interest. This is a story that needs to reach the widest audience possible.
Joe Viglione
