When an expensive gift by Catholic Memorial High School of three professional style basketball nets and stanchions apparently hijacked with one of them ending up in the mayor’s driveway and two more in front of a friend’s home, we are left to wonder aloud, again and again.
What is going on?
Does it matter that the mayor appears to have taken a gift for himself and for his friend?
Does anyone care?
Do the folks at Catholic Memorial care?
We are led to understand they do care.
Were the nets and stanchions given to the mayor and his friend or were they donated by Catholic Memorial to the city. It is one or the other but not both.
The mayor insists privately that the Leader Herald is attempting to smear him, that “everything is legal.”
But is it legal for the mayor to accept such a gift when it was intended for the city?
Of course not.
Who but the Leader Herald will hold the mayor responsible for such an embarrassing bit of public mischief?
No one.
One would imagine State Ethics Commission would care and we have it from a handful of people that they have reached out to the Ethics Commission.
One such person claims he reached out to the FBI in Chelsea, to the agent that heads up the task force with responsibility for Everett.
There are those who tell us that the mayor cannot be touched and will not be touched because he is under the sway of the FBI, and that information the FBI receives from him is more valuable than his possible theft of three basketball nets and stanchions given to the city that are worth about $30,000.
It certainly seems that way at times like these.
Maybe signing that proffer with the US Attorney’s office was a good idea after all, as his lawyer told the city council some months back.
Maybe signing that proffer guaranteed him safe passage and protection from prosecution of all kinds with a pass given to him by the Ethic’s Commission.
We shall see.
Until he answers the residents here, we will press the issue. It deserves being pressed.
No public official should be allowed to get away with such a scam.