The Wellness Center
By Josh Resnek
All is not well at the Wellness Center.
Despite the haughty and questionable reactions from city hall officials all pleading that they know nothing of a legal action coming that will involve a payout ultimately by the city to the female survivor of sexual harassment and bullying by leaders of the Center
who have not been disciplined and who still work there… well…it is the easy way out to say, “We don’t know anything about a payout coming. We have nothing before us. This is fake news.”
Fake news, indeed.
It isn’t fake news that a young woman was bullied and sexually harassed by the folks leading the Center for almost two years, who remain working there like nothing happened, obviously having some sort of power over the mayor or they would have been removed instantly and banished from the place forever.
If a full and transparent investigation was ordered by the mayor into the running of the Wellness Center, what do you think would be found?
We can only wonder.
What we all saw at the last city council meeting was two councilors, Mike Marchese and Wayne Matewsky being harangued as though it is they who are the criminals and not the folks who bullied and sexually harassed a young woman there.
Marchese and Matewsky are not liars.
They were told a settlement is not right now at this moment happening.
They were made to look absurd suggesting such a thing.
The mayor was made wild by hearing their public exhortations that all is not well at the Wellness Center.
The young woman has left.
But she and her attorney are working on a proper lawsuit the city will be made to handle for this incident spread over two years.
It is not fake news.
Her torture actually happened.
There is a victim.
She is a survivor.
Not a woman in this city concerned about sexual harassment has raised a voice to support her cause – which is justice. She is seeking justice against a backdrop of public of officials all pleading ignorance about the management of the Wellness Center and trying to tell us that everything is settled and done.
Well it isn’t.
Where are the righteous voices in this instant?
How do such bad actors get to survive as the heads of the Wellness Center while the survivor of their sexual harassment and their bullying is made out to be the bad actor in this scenario?
Public officials rising up to defend the wrong side of an issue have the support of the mayor.
This is how it works at Everett City Hall.
Councilors Marchese and Matewsky are told everything is fine. No one in city government knows what they are talking about.
Really!
This is not a revelation of a deep dark secret. This is how the mayor takes care of business for his friends.
We feel for the young woman, the survivor.
Her life has been turned into a nightmare by this situation which is not soon going away.
Exhortations by city officials who claim they know nothing about this are suspect.
Where I come from we’d call their statements ludicrous, ridiculous, an outrage really.
Yes, the settlement isn’t yet in their hands. Soon enough that will all be changing. Then we’ll see about fake news about the Wellness Center.
Transparent Investigations
When you run a transparent investigation as the School Committee is about to do, and which the mayor has heartily endorsed, a few poetic things happen.
One thing that happens is that the strongest voices for the transparent investigations get investigated themselves.
From a long life doing investigations I have learned that investigations of ourselves can often be the worst nightmare we are made to endure – for if the investigation is truly transparent, well, then folks the mayor will be made to answer.
Remember, the Foresteire investigation now reaching into the hierarchy of the School Department by the very nature of transparency requires that the mayor’s record be looked at regarding his own sexual harassment difficulties in the not too distant past.
It requires that the members of the School Committee be looked into as well.
Steve Wynn, the mayor’s good buddy who he brought to Everett, was made to resign because of sexual harassment charges.
Funny thing how the mayor remains standing and Steve Wynn is gone!
For the mayor to be pleading for anything transparent is to make an attempt at derailing his own life.
We’d suggest the mayor take a back seat to these investigations and hope they do not reach him.
The mayor calling for transparent investigations is like the fox opening the door to the henhouse.
Let’s see just how transparent the mayor wishes the investigation into the former superintendent gets when he realizes for it to be comprehensive and transparent, then he needs to be looked at by an independent party.
There is nothing worse than the truth.
The truth, said Shakespeare, is a terrible weapon of aggression.
The last thing anyone wants out in public is the truth about themselves.
If I were the mayor, I’d be a bit more hesitant to pile on the former superintendent. It might turn out to be a very bad policy decision for the mayor to ask for others to be judged and then for himself to be judged.
As Jesus said, which is recorded in Matthew 7:1-3, “Judge not, that ye be not judged.”
The Casino Investigation
And thinking about investigations that have gone from nothing to nowhere and which tend to make a mockery out of investigations, we are still awaiting the results of the Massachusetts Gaming Commission’s long awaited magnum opus investigation into Steve Wynn’s per dy.
Can you imagine?
Waiting for the results of an investigation that is a bag job all the way from day one?
Yes, I can.
Think about this…why are the State Police and the FBI not investigating former MGC Chair Steve Crosby for his longtime association with Paul Lohnes, one of the original owners of the contaminated land the casino is rising on?
Crosby owed Lohnes (one of the land owners) a substantial amount of money from a business deal gone bad.
The thinking among those who claim to know, is that the FBI has been wasting its time investigating the lesser characters in the land deal when the deal is all about Steve Wynn being given given back $40 million dollars in return for paying the same “gangsters” only $35 million for the property. What did that do, one might well ask themselves. Who designed such a payback for Wynn?
We have it that MLS put that giveback together. It let Crosby off the hook for the money he owed to Lohnes and aided in having Wynn Resorts proved suitable while Caesars was voted unstable and the folks from Revere were blown out of contention. Turns out the guys from Revere were honest.
Wynn, the FBI and the MGC and the State police were something else.
If I were investigating what went down, I’d want to know how the FBI and the State police could let all the big sh go – MLS, former Gov. Weld, Chairman Crosby while placing their bets on the smaller sh in the pond.
How does that happen?
Parker to the Top?
Longtime School Committeeman Frank Parker is exploring the possibility of running for chair of the School Committee.
He is fair minded, decent, honest, intelligent and he is not owned by the mayor or by anyone for that matter.
He lives here. He sleeps here. He can reach into city hall and he can reach deep into the School Department.
Putting someone like Parker in charge of directing the independent investigation into the former superintendent’s difficulties guarantees one thing – an honest process with no stone left unturned, and this would include very likely a close look at everyone on the School Committee as well as serving in the hierarchy of the School Department, as well as the mayor, who serves as an ex- officio member of the SC.
Dr. Easy Ruled Out by Mayor
The mayor has told a local newspaper that Dr. Omar Easy is not being considered to be the next superintendent of schools.
He said it would not be prudent (which means it would be imprudent) to appoint Dr. Easy, who now works in the mayor’s office as one of his highest ranking officials in charge of making government work more smoothly in Everett.
The mayor insists the process needs to be transparent and that others must be considered before making such an appointment.
That’s probably not a bad idea, is it?