A Letter to the City Solicitor 30 Days in Advance: RE - OPEN MEETING LAW

 

Kimberly M. Scanlon

City Solicitor

Records Access Officer

City of Medford

City Hall

85 George P. Hassett Drive

Medford, MA 02155

781-393-2470

kscanlon@medford-ma.gov

Dear Solicitor Scanlon and Honorable Mayor,

This is a very good discussion, especially the portion of your letter that I have attached (Exhibit 1)

I may get my response to you earlier than the 30 days allowed so that we can potentially have

a discussion regarding this.

At the risk of sounding redundant, I quote State Rep Donato when MCC TV3 censored the Rep

and Tony Giglio.  Rep Donato stated "This is free speech. It's the most protected right" (I'm thinking

because it was an election cycle Paul Donato was clarifying how essential political speech is.)

Let's be honest here, when you state "Council President's limiting your ability to speak to the council."

Yes, four examples.  I appreciate the response to my Public Record's Request and will study it further.

The point is that when Council President Richard F. Caraviello silences Joe Viglione, I believe he is

out of bounds and for these reasons:

1)Due to Caraviello's loss to me in criminal court 1/31/17, it is a huge CONFLICT OF INTEREST as the malice in

Mr. Caraviello's heart aimed at me, and the hard work I've put in doing Caraviello's job (my forcing Mayor McGlynn's

hand to remove TV3; my obtaining the L'Italien Report, my obtaining the Council Vice President Adam Knight police

report with Knight allegedly terrorizing Mystic Ave - put my honest efforts and hard work against the birthday wishes

the entire city council uses - not to enrich the lives of those who have birthdays - but - in reality - those councilors

are campaigning by abandoning city business to seek votes.

You know it, I know it, the city knows it.

2)Along with the animus and hostility the unprofessional Caraviello exacts on me and the community,

we noticed on June 1, 2021 embattled Vice President Knight cat-calling the Director of Public Health

and President Caraviello ignoring rules 17 and 43, I believe, of the very city council DENYING speech

while ALLOWING someone under police investigation (VP Knight) to cause a ruckus at a council

meeting.

The double standards are as absurd as they are bizarre.

3)My pertinent issue of a city council vice president smashing a bank door (How many bank doors have you

smashed in your life, Madame City Solicitor - I'm certain it is the same amount as I have: ZERO) and

allegedly fleeing at a high rate of speed.  During an election cycle we take the Donato Axiom THE FIRST AMENDMENT TO THE U.S. CONSTITUTION IS THE MOST PROTECTED RIGHT DURING AN ELECTION CYCLE.  POLITICAL SPEECH.

As your predecessor Mark E. Rumley noted to me "You do this for the community.  No one would put this kind of time in for themselves" (paraphrased.)   Indeed, while I AM performing city business (obtaining Marian Ryan's Disclosure/Brady list showing Medford has more Brady-listed police officers than ANY other municipality in Middlesex County!) - while I clean up the mess these individuals make, the mockery of a school committee neglecting pens, pencils and books to waste $15,000.00 or so on renaming a school and ignoring the school supplies the students need.

This is logic that you, Mayor Lungo-Koehn and I can all agree on.

I submit that the city council is mocking the citizenry as much as Paul Ruseau and the school committee.

If Mr. Caraviello could speak half as precisely and clearly as this journalist does, instead of mumbling and failing to take a diction course (as Knight fails to do,) disrespecting the taxpayers revenues, the city business would flow more smoothly.  I won't put it in my response but will state here that when Knight and Caraviello fail to take an elocution class (I am as serious as a judge; this is not a joke,) they mangle the English language and - at times - are unintelligible, rendering the meeting minutes flawed.

Mr. Knight speaks as if he's a 33 RPM vinyl recording playing at 45 RPM, and that criticism I have leveled for the past seven years.   Citizens mock Mr. Knight ridiculing his failure to speak the native tongue with any clarity, brio, care or concern.

You want to talk about the city business the residents offer vs. the weekly obituary-for-votes malarkey

that Council Vice President Adam Knight offers, bring it on.  It's a damn disgrace.

So for a vicious council president to throw hard work by any petitioner, be it myself, 90+ years young

Dr. Storella, a Jean Martin or a Jean Nuzzo or a Bob Penta, the altering of meeting minutes via flawed

"point of information" or, even worse, Knight blurting out catcalls to the Director of Public Health on

June 1, WHILE KNIGHT IS UNDER POLICE INVESTIGATION, renders your position offered to me

tonight ludicrous, insulting and anti-free speech.

Why the Lungo-Koehn Administration doesn't press charges on elected officials desecrating the oath

of office is the question, isn't it?

Basically, the petitioners in Medford are at a disadvantage with incessant juvenile behavior from Knight, a Michael Marks and a former solicitor Mark E. Rumley using city time to shoot spitballs at each other as if they never left tenth grade, spitting on the two hundred thousand dollars taxpayers lose because Medford councilors vote for their own pay raise while Wakefield has a volunteer group of selectmen.

I've been noting this for the better part of 20 years.  The result?  A former Council President Maiocco

gets so angry with a citizen (then resident) telling the truth he threatens to hit me with a dirty metal pipe, ex police chief Leo A. Sacco Jr. writes me that what Maiocco did was "inappropriate" but that he is not going to press charges (probably because he's too busy keeping his MBTA cop son from taking a

breathalyzer or field sobriety test, but I digress, ) so I have to expose Maiocco in my newsletter.

Maiocco never ran again, did he, after I wrote about the metal pipe incident?  And his huge problems

at his day job at Wells Fargo, a 1.7 million dollar lawsuit from his good friend Dingolo and his wife?

So when the city council misbehaves and you say "While the council strives to engage the community and obtain public comment and input to the greatest extent possible (these three OML complaints disagree with you, Solicitor Scanlon, and I have prevailed over your positions in the past! - JV,) those interests must be balanced with the need to effectively and efficiently conduct the Council's business, and therefor the Chair has discretion..."

Solicitor Scanlon, I know you pretty well after all these years. I cannot believe you actually wrote that

with a straight face.  This council?  The former city lawyer shooting spitballs and Michael Marks and

Marks shoots them right back?  Former Councilor Paul Camuso flipping out because I noted he was

a "buffoon," and he attacks me in the parking lot blasting his horn at me in the dark, pointing his finger

at me as if in a threat, and ending up in two police reports, if memory serves.

Really Solicitor Scanlon?   At two hundred thousand dollars a year Isaac Bears - before he took the

oath - showed up in Alden Chambers  pretty much in his pajamas.  That's why I erase "honorable"

city council from the petitions.  This is NOT an Honorable City Council

Thus, in a perfect world, Solicitor Scanlon, you would be a thousand percent right.

However, this is the malicious city council of Medford with Fred Dello Russo Jr. gleefully

slamming doors when a former councilor had the podium, Adam Knight rustling paper

when Jean Martin gave the history of Medford and Native Americans and slavery,

Knight harassing me non-stop while I'm discussing the deficient access channel,

and what you have is the citizenry being responsible and a city council power hungry,

money hungry, with birthday wishes and death notices their main "city business," not

fixing the infrastructure.

So I agree with you.  In a sane city without unintelligent people who figured out how to

get elected, but who do not have the skills to govern, we could adhere to the Open Meeting

Law.  But in Medford where I exposed the Vice Chair of the School Committee as a convicted

felon, all bets are off.

Look at the hard work I do and how insulting these individuals are!  

All due respect to Mayor Lungo-Koehn, a breath of fresh air next to the McGlynn/Muccini-Burke cabal,

but show me what Breanna has done as mayor compared to the volunteer work that I provide!

Breanna rages against Chief Buckley as a councilor, talks a good game, but why did Joe Viglione

have to fight you and your office, Solicitor Scanlon, AND prevail over you to get the information

out; information that you did not want me to have, that serves the public and - can you believe this,

it went back to #1 today (The L'Italien Report) 19 months after it went up to #1 in November of 2019.

As we approach two million page views, the very document you, Solicitor Scanlon, denied me is

the most popular 64 pages my popular magazine has ever published.

That will be Exhibit 2.

As this is A response but not THE response, I've already made my point:

---Malicious Council President limits speech with impunity; how ironic since he limits his own speech

every day by molesting the English language...and that's not a joke either; it is a sad statement of fact.

---Adam Knight smashes bank doors the way he murders the English language, on a daily basis

And these are the "elected officials," the arbiters of taste?   Your response really set me off tonight,

Solicitor Scanlon.

Forget the technicalities and the red tape:

1)The City Clerk concocted fiction and removed my petition in early May INTENTIONALLY so that

Richard F. Caraviello could fraudulently claim the paper was out of order.  They made it that way.

2)Caraviello lied to the police and I believe committed perjury in court on 1/31/17 when under oath

he was asked if he ever moonlighted on the council, he said "no" to judge and jury, yet I'm the

witness he walked up to and blurted out that he was picking up a ride for his private company,

RC Limos, and he couldn't take the vote on the council.  He walked out of the council, then he tells a judge, under oath, he never moonlighted on the council?   If Caraviello picked up ONE PHONE CALL on City Council time, and that call was for RC Limos, then Caraviello is a perjurer and Mayor Lungo-Koehn should investigate and press charges.

In a perfect world elected officials would respect the civil rights of all petitioners, no matter if they are homosexual, white, African American, Asian etc. However, I have a photograph of Rick Caraviello with the gay-basher Vice President of Medford Community Cablevision, Inc. and Mr. Caraviello is continuing the gay bashing by attempting to humiliate me and, at least four times now, not allowing this journalist's speech (which we have evidence helps the community) so that he can allow Adam Knight to break the rules and inspect the Director of Public Health.  Is THAT the "effective and efficient" way to conduct the Council's business?  And equally important, are you going to let those very bad individuals use you to say those untruths when I have provided the evidence that the city clerk and some councilors perpetrated a fraud to deny this journalist the opportunity to alert the taxpayers/voters to the cover-up of the council vice president's actions, now under investigation by the Medford Police Dept. 

So when the city council misbehaves and you say "While the council strives to engage the community

and obtain public comment and input to the greatest extent possible (these three OML complaints disagree with you, Solicitor Scanlon, and I have prevailed over your positions in the past! - JV,) those interests must be balanced with the need to effectively and efficiently conduct the Council's business, and therefor the Chair has discretion..."