While waiting for Hannibal Lecter to be named the next head of the Food and Drug Administration, I return my attention to Newburyport in hopes of having my lifelong faith in democracy and belief in reality restored.
First item I see is that the City Council might consider a $22,250 pay raise for the mayor, with an added increase of $2,100 for annual expenses.
I say let him have it. With that much dough, Sean Reardon can reimburse Newburyport for most of what he has cost it.
Start with the $10K settlement for ripping down flyers placed by Citizens for Responsible Education on the library’s community bulletin board.
Must admit I’d have enjoyed doing that myself, but I’m as decrepit as the 2021 opponent Reardon implied was too old—stuck with the outdated notion that you counter speech you don’t like with speech of your own.
Now add another $12K for an investigation of the public library’s treatment of its volunteers and the former head of its archival center.
Any competent executive would have inquired in-house, and an instigator or three would have been revealed. The matter would have been resolved with due process for both sides. Nothing would have gone public.
Reardon? He publicly dismissed the vols, in effect declaring, “guilty as soon as charged.”
By any honest measure, this was a coverup from the start. But perhaps our mayor was acting with all good intentions, hoping only to protect anyone on the payroll, naively assuming they were all blameless.
After the recent national election, I envy Reardon’s innocence. The glaring fact is that the accusations were beyond wild—and made against elderly people well-known as mild.
Hence, while making all volunteers appear guilty, Reardon inadvertently made all the librarians appear suspicious.
Finally, we—I’m among the petition’s signers who demanded one —have an investigation.
City Council President Ed Cameron sat on it for months. He also single-handedly picked the investigator, free of public comment, perhaps emulating the mayor for any chance the job comes open.
Meanwhile, the mayor’s chief-of-staff, cited repeatedly by the defamed volunteers in pursuit of the investigation, resigned to take a job in Western Massachusetts.
But let’s not think for a moment that the resignation of a City Hall official, immediately followed by the long-delayed start of an investigation, and then the hastened choice of an investigator is anything but coincidence.
Recently, on the Local Pulse radio show, Reardon expressed doubt that anything significant would be revealed—echoing Cameron’s preemptive cop-out that investigation was “too strong a word.”
In his innocence, perhaps Reardon meant that the findings won’t cost the city anything.
No one expects that the volunteers will gain any monetary consolation, but given that the head of the archival center was forced out of a job, there’s still a chance of a settlement.
Moreover, considering the ages of all involved, Newburyport may yet get whacked by an age discrimination suit.
Still, those prices are no more knowable than the loss that looms if the council approves the mayor’s proposed waiver—partial but generous—of a developer’s water and sewer betterment fee to turn Kmart into what one local wag has dubbed “Reardonville.”
So, let’s stick with the blunders already paid: $10K + $12K = $22K.
With the $22,250, Reardon can pay off his municipal incompetence in as little time as it has taken him to run up the tab—and have enough left over for a bowl of chowder and a beer at Sea Level Oyster Bar.
Plus, he can campaign for re-election by boasting of the reimbursement in his campaign—as well as claim that he must be re-elected so he can continue making payments as gleefully as he keeps blundering.
And if young turks such as Matt Gaetz and Tulsi Gabbard are rejected in D.C., they’ll fit right here in City Hall.
But not Hannibal Lecter. He’s too old.
Jack Garvey lives in Newbury. He can be reached at hammlynn@gmail.com, or at buskersdelight.home.blog