Evictions at 105 State Street are a Clear Violation of the City Charter

Imagine yourself a resident at 105 State Street on Jan. 31. That’s when you and the other tenants of the 14-unit brick Federalist building wake up to find a notice from your landlord:

The building in which you live… is going to be closed and the expected closing date is April 1, 2025. The entire building will be shut down and reconfigured by a developer. All tenancy-at-will agreements will end on 3/31/25.

Scrambling for new digs, you are too distracted to look into legalities, but a neighbor questions Director of Planning and Development Andy Port via email on Feb. 9.

At issue: Article Eight, Sec. 5-253 of the City Charter covering condominium conversions and calling for a notice “of not less than two years” for tenants.  Advantage Property Management (APM) gave you just two months.

Your eviction is so sudden and your time to move so stunted, that the handling—or, rather, the non-handling—of this in City Hall would have either demoralized or infuriated you.

Mayor Sean Reardon and North both know of the eviction no later than Feb. 10. Despite a calendar clicking quickly toward an April Fool’s deadline, not until Feb. 21 does Port respond to the resident, sending this:

I have done what I can to this point by sharing relevant/helpful info with the Mayor/Administration and the City’s legal counsel…

The email is timestamped 11:19 am. At 12:02 pm, responding to a request for clarification, Port adds:

 I was not suggesting that the Mayor or other officials can/would choose not to enforce a City Ordinance…

Despite that, three full weeks of the two months have passed, and still no effort on your behalf from City Hall to look into an apparent violation of the City Charter.

You note the contradiction: The city’s long quest for affordable housing has been prominent in the news, especially reports of City Hall promoting the possibility of 30 new such units at the Brown School. All while letting yours and 13 others slip away in a relative instant.

Not until March 5—more than halfway into your ordeal—does the mayor send an email to Port, to the neighbor, and to Madeline Nash, co-chair of Newburyport’s Affordable Housing Trust:

Thanks for sending this along. We sent a letter to the owner this week requesting more information regarding the sale and also referencing the ordinance.

Reardon is thanking Port for sending information that Port, according to his own email, had sent 23 days earlier. Moreover, on just that week of March 5, City Hall “sent a letter to the owner” with no more than 26 days remaining until your deadline to find a new home.

Considering the ordinance’s cut and dry stipulation of two years, just what “legal counsel” or “more information” is needed?

Answer: None.

It was all pretext for delay.  By mid-March, you and the others have made other arrangements, sacrificial goats to Reardon’s apparent desire to avoid conflict with one of the city’s more prominent property owners—which, by definition, is a moneyed interest in city politics.

On March 11, you are either embittered or bemused by a story with a banner headline on the Daily News’ front page:

City solicitor reappointed by Reardon

You might start wondering why the paper never reported the inattention to your deadline called for by the City Charter when you learn how Reardon pounced on another deadline established by the same charter. Just minutes after the City Council voted 6-3 against retaining North as City Solicitor, Reardon said not so fast.

Perhaps the mayor should have said “not so slow.” He submitted his bid for North’s reappointment on Jan.13. That opened a 45-day window for the council to act, with Feb. 27 as their deadline. Inexplicably, Council President Ed Cameron, Reardon’s staunch ally and one of the three North supporters, waited until March 10 to hold the vote.

While wide awake to consequences of missing your own deadline at 105 State, you shake your head at the luck of Rip Van Cameron: Failure to do his job put him on the winning side of a vote he lost.

If you’ve been following the controversy just a few doors down across the street at the public library, the echoes of Cameron’s glacially-paced handling of an investigation called for by a council vote back in July must be deafening.

And if you were able to kick back and relax in your recliner rather than frantically preparing to move, you might wax whimsical over the contradictions of headlines, deadlines, and riddles. For Reardon, time might as well be just another city ordinance: There when convenient, nonexistent when not.

Jack Garvey
Newbury resident

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