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January 18th, 2009 at 12:22 pm
Councilors are not starving for information they are starving for ways to posture/dance and preen on TV as the election season comes early this year. As I said in an earlier comment, it is obvious that the majority of them can not even handle the information they do get in their packets. And, to make a big deal out of the ballfield contract flap over who knew first is the height of maddness, siince the council can not be involved in negotiations at all and only gets to vote on what the arena commission puts in front of them. Best of all, the stuff in the Sun about how councilors want phone calls is just beautiful. Hello - it is 2009 - in the 21st century all of you email and text-message challenged. To imagine for a second that with everything going on now in front of the city manager he ought to call nine people every time he makes a move is just plain stupid and the analogy that one councilor made thta the manager ought to report routinely to the board of directors (the council) is laughable. Micromanage: This is not how CEOs operate - they are hired to manage and manage they do. If councilors have a problem with the direction the city is going in - have the guts to be specific on the issues - don’t whine about phone calls. This sounds a lot like what I did in fifth grade when I wanted to find out if someone liked me. I’d ask a fried to ‘Call her and see if she likes me and then call me back!’ Finally, the Sun should be engaged in some level of self-examination. You do not cover this impt council meeting and then ‘cover’ it in such a convoluted way in the newspaper’s very own ’spin zone’? The city and its leaders elected and otherwise need to be pulling together right now to figure out how to handle foreclosures, continued employment erosion, possible large-scale layoffs in city depts. and the schools. How does complaining about a lack of phone calls take precedence over any one of these issues? Instead of wasting precious time the council ought to show some leadership and perhaps call for some sort of city-wide summit on the state of the regional economy and then try to lead rather than engage in such petty backseat driving!
January 18th, 2009 at 1:39 pm
The SUN editor apparently took over the “column” this week, and used the opportunity to color the facts in a way that suggests that maybe he is a key member of the anti-Lynch crowd. Is it because of problems he has had with FOIA requests, or does he have other motives? It may be time for Kendall Wallace to speak up, as he is always advocating unity of purpose in advancing the interests of the City.
January 18th, 2009 at 2:37 pm
Why is it that everyone including employees at the paper know of Campanini’s bias but nothing is done. I’d say the advertisers should be pressured to stop buying ads for the benefit of the City and the region but I think that must already be happening. Looks like we all underestimated the extent to which the GOB’s would go to take back control.
January 18th, 2009 at 3:13 pm
Wait and Elmer:
Why is upper management at the Sun allow Campy to continue torching Lowell civic life? If they do not stop him, then they are his co-conspirators.
In my opinion, the GOB got back in through the back door. If Eileen and/or George Ramirez had run for re-election, we would have a totally different City Council. I did not see the 2007 election as a referendum for anything. If you recall, all the candidates approved of what the CM was doing. They better start showing this current administration some of that love quickly.
January 18th, 2009 at 5:50 pm
“…If you recall, all the candidates approved of what the CM was doing”…
All the candidates SAID they approved, we know that the Cox crowd ran three and backed three with the intent of getting control again. Kazanzian, Lenzi & McMahon, and A Mercier, R Mercier and Caulfield.
Five are on the council and Rodney has begun to flip flop in their favor.
Shame on voters if they don’t recognize that they were lied to and shame on them even more if they let it happen again!
When the exploits of Juneau the dog gets the ink and the future of the CM and memo to city workers about what they are facing in these economic times don’t get any ink until it’s time for political spin…as I wrote on the Sun’s site at the bottom of the column, they wonder why circulation is dropping!
The problem with merchants boycotting the paper for advertising is that the alternative sources of print all are now also owned by the Sun!
January 18th, 2009 at 5:53 pm
Kendall will not put a stop to anything. Turmoil sells papers.
January 18th, 2009 at 10:52 pm
PC wrote: “Kendall will not put a stop to anything. Turmoil sells papers.”
But is it a newspaper? I recall as a child I remember seeing the LOWELL SUN with it’s proud banner that it had a circulation of 96,000!
Today there is barely a page of actual news.
I propose we call the “paper” the NEWSLETTER! We can read stories about Juneau the dog, and how other columnists children are doing well. But we won’t be able to get actual NEWS!
I propose the folks who write on this board, that have some sort of contact(s). We begin our own “NEWSLETTER” on line! We could certainly charge less than the folks at the museum…
Thoughts?
January 19th, 2009 at 10:21 am
Mimi, I agree that things would be different if Eileen had run again, not so sure the same can be said about Ramirez - in my opinion he is a … pol like Mercier and kazanjian.. and he couldn’t take the heat.. didn’t even last a full term before he was dying to get out of there… (edited by m.)
January 19th, 2009 at 11:19 am
But how will we learn what Chaucer the Cat is up to?
January 19th, 2009 at 12:00 pm
When we want certain candidates to run, even as a block, nothing will change. The whole scenario must change. The man in charge at the paper has his tentacles everywhere. The biggest blow to his power was the death of Paul Sullivan. Sully was going to take over the reins at the paper, Coggins was in place at City Hall, Sonnyboy was head of the Housing Authority, the State House delegation were all set and the City Council was packed. Right after Sully’s health went downhill, Coggins saw the writing on the wall and fled for greener pastures. Sullivan was the ultimate politician. He could’ve pushed the paper’s agenda and succeeded because people liked him. All of a sudden, Kendall had to go to “Plan B”, and we have what we have.
January 19th, 2009 at 5:05 pm
“because people liked him”???? No not all!
January 19th, 2009 at 6:27 pm
City Hall is running better than it ever has: can anyone disagree?
These constant shots at Bernie Lynch are attacks on Lowell itself. They represent an effort to back to the bad old days.
If Rod Blagojevich had gone to Lowell High at the right time, the Sun would be bucking to make him City Manager.
January 19th, 2009 at 6:37 pm
First of all, plenty of us under-40 know what a broken record is, thank you very much:)
Also, I’m confused about the communication complaints. I’m not a Lowellian and have never attended a Council meeting, but I always assumed that a Manager’s report was a standing item on the agenda at each meeting. If it isn’t then it should be. If a Councilor has need to get specific information from the Manager between meetings, why doesn’t he or she take the initiative and call the Manager’s office and ask the question, rather than complain the Manager doesn’t call. I would hope that returning the call of a Councilor would be high priority in the Manager’s office.
January 19th, 2009 at 8:30 pm
Christopher, Great points. On the Agenda it’s called Communications from the City Manager. Generally, its reports from the Manager to Council motions plus other stuff that the Manager thinks is worthy of their attention. In watching last weeks meeting (the one where Lynch was criticized for not communicating) he gave the Council a letter from the state regarding the City’s finances. Funny, it was the same type of letter that the last City Manager didn’t think was important enough to tell trhe Council about. At that time it basically put the City on notice that it was on watch. This time I guess it praised the progress made on the City finances since Lynch came on but still kept us on some type of extra reporting. Of course, only Bill Martin brought it up for discussion. The others didn’t want to talk about a.) something important or b.) something that was good about Lynch.
As for calling the Manager, maybe they don’t know how to dial out. You know, this crazy new technology.