The council granted the licenses, which were given by right. But the denouncement of Eastern Minerals by several councilors was ugly, inappropriate and given the circumstances, about as self-serving and wrong as it gets at Everett city hall.
The Mahoneys are among the most philanthropic and generous business owners to move into this community in decades.
Just ask the folks in Chelsea where Eastern Minerals has transformed the Chelsea River waterfront into a public walkway and parkland while at the same time storing their salt on the property.
Eastern Minerals recently purchased for $15 million a 15 acre site near to our border with Chelsea with an outlet into the Mystic River from Boston Sand and Gravel.
Boston Sand and Gravel owned the site for decades. For decades, the company stored four to five story mountains of sand on its property and trucked its in and out of the place bothering no one in this commercial no man’s land in one of Everett’s almost completely industrial triangles.
In 20 years, not a single councilor had a word to say about the sand operation, the trucking of sand, the storage of it, traffic or otherwise.
Nor did Boston Sand and Gravel ever donate a dime to anything going on in this city we would call worthy.
Now comes Eastern Minerals to do the same thing with salt instead of sand and we heard cries of “traffic” problems and of “salt storage as being dangerous” and that “no one knew” or that somehow the city was owed something by Eastern Minerals for coming here beyond them paying their taxes on time and maintaining their property to the letter of the law.
What was worse were the threats and the hyperbolic grandstanding made by some of our leaders.
What an embarrassment.
This is a company that will be a generous contributor to every meaningful effort in this city when they get going.
We apologize to the Mahoney Family for their poor treatment. They didn’t deserve it.