The city council has awarded the mayor with a $12,000 raise in his salary being called a car allowance.
Secretary of State Bill Galvin and Attorney General Maura Healey should investigate this outrage to our common sense.
This $12,000 raise was given as part of the budget cutting exercises at city hall Saturday afternoon.
We understand the apathy that allows such raises to be given to the mayor, who does not need it, when he comes before the council to cut the budget, to bring it in line with income.
What we do not understand is how the mayor can bully and berate his colleagues in government, humiliating them, actually, so they capitulate to his whims.
The mayor has his own automobile. He is also driven around the city by a city employee.
Yet he claims he needs an allowance for an automobile.
Only councilors Fred Capone and Mike McLaughlin applied pressure on this outrageous giveaway.
Councilor Peter Napolitano suggested the mayor consider writing down the mileage he has driven each time he uses his car!
The award of another $12,000 for the mayor to pocket a car allowance is an outrage and almost rises to the level of a criminal act.
At one point during the Saturday budget hearing, the mayor’s cousin Councilor Anthony DiPierro tried to make the case that the $12,000 for an automobile was similar to what the school department provides for the acting superintendent.
DiPierro should read up on such things before he comments on them.
The schools provide the acting superintendent $2,500 a year as an automobile subsidy.
This bit of bad government, of government gone mad, the giving of $12,000 to the mayor to drive around Everett is a giant embarrassment. It is frankly ridiculous and outrageous – more outrageous than ridiculous.
It is more about the mayor’s want and need for money, and of his inability to control his greed.
The car allowance should be stripped from him immediately. Not to do so is a crime bigger than the granting of the allowance.