The Somerville News is now online at www.thesomervillenews.com – check us out. If you have something you want to leave anonymously for the Newstalk column and you want us to know about it—you can call and leave a message at 617-666-4010 x.3—feel free to leave us a message and you don’t have to leave your name. We are now up to 130-plus places of distribution across the city, with a mailing list of over 500 and an email list of over 150. We have more than 20 contributing writers, a full time editorial staff and a full time advertising staff. With distribution of about 10,000 papers every 1st and 3rd Wednesday of the month, it’s easy to see just how fast we are growing. We are well on our way to reaching the weekly publication goal for 2005. We have a small following on Friday mornings in the news office for our “Contributors Meeting,” where public officials and people of interest come to speak to the staff and those wanting to listen. We are part of this community and proud of where we live and work. Get in touch with us and let us know what you’d like to see in The Somerville News.

Now on to the insanity –
New schools in city—mucho money
Public buildings renovated in the city—even more mucho money
Dirty floors and no toilet paper in the public toilets—priceless

With all the new buildings and the many improvements in the existing city buildings—the one aspect that seems to be constantly overlooked is the maintenance of the buildings. Who do the janitors of the different building report to? Why isn’t there a stricter performance policy for all the janitors in every building across the city—regardless of whether it’s a school building, a housing department building or a regular city department building? There needs to be across the board accountability. We hear that they’ll all be reporting to the DPW Commissioner—Stan Koty—if he has his way. We think it’s a good idea—move out the dead wood and make that department more productive. Who else can you complain about when the building is out of toilet paper?

A few weeks ago we wrote about local political activist Herb Vargas and his intention to run against long time incumbent Alderman—Tom Taylor. Now it’s a few weeks later and we have heard two other names being thrown around in the same race—Mike Sullivan (new comer to local politics and across the street neighbor of Vargas) and John Roderick (ran and lost as an Independent against State Representative Pat Jehlen). We don’t care if 50 people get in that race—they will all have a tough time against Tom—he has done an outstanding job for years and is ready for a fight to keep the seat

The Home Depot wants you to believe that they want to be part of our community. This while they ignore city ordinances and snub their noses at our fire department when ordered to close down for safety issues. The mere fact that they were willing to wait until the fire department threatened to pull the fire alarm to clear the building before they would even listen to our local officials sends a clear message—they just want your money and don’t give a damn about how they get it. Everyone who lives or works here is subject to the same laws, rules and regulations—we hope the city fines Home Depot and makes them follow the same rules the rest of us have to.

The recent public hearing with the Board of Health was again lacking all three board members—the overflowing crowd of supporters for repeal of the smoking the ban looked on as the Chamber of Commerce President Steve Mackey pointed out very clearly and concisely that our Board of Health is nothing more than a puppet for “The Cambridge Health Alliance” with their own Dr. Osler as Chairman. It appears as though Dr. Osler sent a letter long before the Somerville Board of Health even had its first public hearing on this matter effectively saying that he promised to deliver the vote to enact the smoking ban. If this is true, then Dr. Osler should be removed immediately from the Board of Health and anyone else not from Somerville should also be removed. The only good news recently from the Board is that the Director of the Board of Health resigned (we wonder if it was voluntary or not) and we hear he will be tormenting the businesses of Gloucester next. Good riddance—next up Dr. Osler.

Now for some more politics—we hear many names being bandied about in the different races across the city. Long time resident and local businessman Ross Blouin of Curtis Street may run in Ward 7 against Bob Trane. Now that Kevin Tarpley is back in town, we hear he might want his seat back in Ward 2 and may run against Maryanne Heuston. A strong rumor out there is that Bob Antonelli (former Register of Probate who had an infamous run-in with a judge) is seriously considering a run against popular Senator Charlie Shannon. Another strong rumor which we have mentioned before was the possibility of Ward 5 Alderman Sean O’Donovan running against State Representative Pat Jehlen—now there’s a race we would love to see. We will keep our ears to the ground and give updates as we get them.

Not to ring the bells of the administration AGAIN—but what can you do if they’re actually delivering on promises made during the campaign? Why has our local politics over the years conditioned us to buy the promise to get us in bed for our vote, but we expect to be disappointed the next morning? If they were doing a bad job, we would report it—but we find no fault to date. It’s nice to be able to count on our local leaders to actually mean what they say and do what they say they’re going to do. Try and deal with it, people.

We hate to admit that we read the “farm team” publication—but have you seen the trashy two page spread on “Speak Out”? The same morons call that line week after week and use it as a soap box to keep hammering away at people who don’t deserve it. If those people actually wrote letters and signed their names and stood up and out front for something or someone, they might be able to make changes, not cause us to laugh at their narrow-mindedness. The farm team even repeated a comment a few times—were we the only ones who caught that? That’s not what local news should be about—the media in general likes to paint a very black and dim outlook on things. We try to report and inform in a positive and productive community manner—we hope you like what we offer and keep coming back to read us.