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Funny how the repair of State Street began the week before Labor Day.
For at least three years, which is to say the length of Mayor Sean Reardon’s tenure, State Street has reminded me of the ragged roads I once drove on western reservations when I was writing grant applications for the United Tribes of North Dakota.
Nostalgia is nice, but my Nissan’s shock absorbers, tires, and steering alignment all have a different opinion. And so do yours.
We like to say that “time is of the essence,” but in Newburyport the essence is timing: Why now? Well, what else happens around Labor Day? Ah, the start of school! But that happens every year, so why action now and not 2024, ‘23, or ‘22?
Are we now seeing an effort to pave over years of neglect disguised as a two-month campaign ploy?
Coincidence? Consider: Earlier this same election year, on June 12, following two full years of trying to sweep the library controversy under his already speed-bumped rug, and a few months following a damning independent report that he emphatically insisted was skewed and misinformed, Mayor Reardon turned on a dime and finally apologized to the volunteers who were defamed and the nationally esteemed archivist who was railroaded into retirement.
His public letter was an astonishing attempt to hustle sincerity into a simple, cost-free apology he had refused to make since the summer of 2023. What happened? What was that dime?
Well, on June 9, The Daily News appeared with a headline that read: “[City Councillor Jim] McCauley running for mayor.”
Whether such a clumsy and transparent attempt to eliminate a campaign issue will work remains to be seen. However, while the case of the library has receded in the public mind, new sink holes have opened up on Reardon’s my-way-or-highway approach to city governance that apologies, no matter how syrupy, cannot fill.
A few months ago, the City Clerk and every member of her staff, as well as her predecessor of 18 years, testified to the City Council that they endured a toxic work environment. One fought back tears while telling us that she felt she had “a target on my back.”
That testimony may have been summed up by Lise Reid, the former Parks Commissioner ousted by Reardon at the start of his term. According to the lawsuit she filed last month, she seeks damages not just for discriminatory and retaliatory termination, but also for:
…intentional infliction of emotional distress, intentional interference with contractual/advantageous relations, breach of contract, and breach of the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing.
With a similar lawsuit firmly supported by the findings of an independent investigator possibly coming from the former library archivist, Reardon’s donors may wonder if they are contributing to a campaign fund or a defense fund.
Others may recall the $10,000 fine he incurred for ripping down fliers from the library wall, or the $12,000 it cost the city to conduct the investigation of the library to uncover what he tried to keep hidden.
Clearly, this is a man who takes very bad legal advice. So bad, in fact, that the City Council voted to rid Newburyport of Karis North, Reardon’s chosen city attorney. Ah, but Council President Rip Van Cameron, one of the few votes in her favor, slept passed a deadline that allowed Reardon to reappoint her for another year in spite of the vote.
More recently, the Council voted to rid the city of the equally disastrous Donna Drelick, Head of Human Resources. Again, Reardon found a budgetary trick to keep her in City Hall for the same reason he keeps Karis North–to tell him what he wants to hear and disregard the 11 representatives of the public wards and at large.
A damning letter from former mayor Donna Holaday to the City Council (which is now public record) ties all of the above together. After calling City Hall’s handling of the library controversy a “debacle,” she cites “the way HR and the mayor have treated” former City Clerk, Richard Jones, and his successor, Kathleen Sullivan, before waxing rhetorical:
So how many more lawsuits will we have to face? Why are all the Department Heads leaving? D[epartment of] P[ublic] S[ervices], Finance, Clerk, Water, Police, Fire, Health ……Why is morale so poor? Isn’t that the role of HR?
Of course it is, but it’s all under the direction of the mayor. Head-nodders such as Drelick and North may tune the engine and fuel the tank, and a City Council president who invokes phrases such as “within our purview” and “in our lane” more than he considers checks and balances may serve Mayor My-Way-Or-the-Highway as a set of super-duty shock absorbers. But the rough road that is his record as mayor is as beyond being paved as the Dakota Badlands.
That’s why he’s paving State Street in these two months before the election. It’s a campaign strategy that plays to what he seems to regard as his foremost skill:
Smiling for photo-ops.
Jack Garvey
Newbury resident
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