“The ride home from the school committee meeting was terrifying” – The mayor’s Blue Suit to Josh Resnek this morning
By JOSH RESNEK
“From the moment the school superintendent said she disagreed with having the mayor as a voting member of the school committee, Carlo kind of lost it. I could feel him sweating and shaking just a bit. He was having difficulty controlling himself,” the Blue Suit told me Tuesday morning.
“And you don’t want to be as close I get to him when he’s like that!” he exclaimed.
He referred to the five-hour meeting the night before, when Priya Tahiliani, put her superintendent’s job on the line by publicly defying the mayor’s wish to serve as a voting member of the SC, something he is working on. He’s rounding up votes on the city council to schedule a Charter change so he can take control of the SC and the 1,000 employees of the School Department.
“He never expected that,” the Blue Suit revealed. “It was like a punch to his stomach followed by a kick to his head. I heard him say he’d never let a woman like Tahiliani control him. ‘I’ll show her a thing or two about how business is conducted around here. No one gets away with insulting my honor in public,’” the mayor said, the Blue Suit told me. “No woman can do that to me. Never,” the mayor added.
The mayor cleared his throat. He started in again.
“No Arab woman is going tell me what I can do – and certainly not someone like her,” he said of the superintendent, who is Indian by birth. “Maybe she can pull that kind of stuff where she comes from. But this is Everett. It’s not Syria or wherever she comes from,” the mayor added, the Blue Suit told me. “Wherever she comes from, she should go back. I’ll get one of my donors to buy her the plane ticket,” the mayor said.
The Blue Suit detailed the aftermath of the meeting.
“The ride home from the high school was high anxiety. If I had a knife, I could have cut it, that’s how dense a feeling of anxiety wafted inside the car. Carlo mumbled to himself. He yelled at two or three different callers on his cell. He did not want to be going home to be beaten up a second time in the same night. Besides, he was hungry.”
“Do you know what he said on the cell walking out of the high school library and getting into the elevator?”
“What did he say?” I asked the Blue Suit.
“I’m starved,’ ” is the first thing he said, remarked the Blue Suit. “I sat there at that meeting for five hours without eating,’ ” the mayor said, the Blue Suit remarked.
To another caller, the mayor’s hate spewed out again in a torrent about the superintendent.”
“ ‘Who does she think she is. I’m the mayor. I’m Carlo DeMaria. I’m Everett. When people think of Everett, they think of me,’ ” he screamed in anger into the cell phone, the Blue Suit recalled.
When he said the same thing to School Committee Chair Abruzzesse an hour before, at the meeting, the chairman looked at the mayor and said to him: “When I think of Everett, I don’t necessarily think about you.”
The Blue Suit got thoughtful.
“You know, when people think of the city of Everett now, they think about Priya Tahiliani and Gerly Adrien.”
“When they think about Carlo, they think about blind power grabs and backroom dealings. One thing about Priya that came through, she knows exactly what she is talking about. She is honest. She is articulate. She is transparent. He’s not going to find her doing anything wrong. She will not be a slave or a piece of governmental chattel the mayor owns. If I were him, I’d watch out with her. She knows what she’s do- ing. She knew exactly what she was doing coming out against the mayor being a voting member of the SC,” the Blue Suit explained to me.
The Blue Suit told me that during the SC meeting, Carlo learned that Encore shut down the hotel and reduced the casino hours. He couldn’t believe it. He went from bad to worse. Carlo is broke. The city is broke. The city’s biggest money earner and “taxpayer” is now closed down. That’s a disaster for the city. It is a disaster for him. His crowning achievement is looking like a very bad investment at a time when the city is struggling for money. Carlo knew it.
The Blue Suit said the drive down Elm Street and the left turn onto Abbott Ave. was perilous. “He was so angry. It was like he was blind.”
“Before Carlo stepped inside his mansion, a neighbor’s voice was heard shouting at him yelled at him.
‘What is the matter with you and your sidekick Demas – what a stumbling fumbling nitwit he is. The super did a dance on you and him. You squirmed like idiots on the TV. Good God. Can’t you do any better than that after twelve years? Are you losing it?” the Blue Suit said he heard the neighbor complain.
“What did Carlo say to that?” I asked.
“He called someone on his cell. I think it was Jerry Navarro.”
“Is there anything to eat you can get me to go? I’m starved.” The Blue Suit thought that was funny.
“What are you going to do about this woman?” Navarro asked Carlo before he entered his Abbott Avenue mansion.
“Please leave me alone. I’m too hungry to discuss this with you,” Carlo replied.
“What am I going to do?’ he repeated back. “I’ll tell you what I’m gonna do.”
“I’m never gonna attend another five-hour meeting without eating something first.”
“I’m gonna make sure first and foremost that pizzas are delivered to the next meeting. I’ll pass out slices to everyone. That should do it. They will all like me because of that. Maybe even the super will like me.”
“She’s never going to like you, Carlo,” Navarro pleaded with him. “She made a fool of you. You think you’ll win her over with a slice of pizza?”
What followed, the Blue Suit said, was like a subatomic explosion with the mayor unleashing a torrent of hate and prejudice about the superintendent. “He called Tahiliani everything insulting and obscene under the sun you can imagine. The mayor is very creative when using obscenities. He said he hated her. He said he was gonna get his hands on the School Department and get rid of her and everyone else of color she’s hired.
“She’s making changes I don’t approve of. I should be doing the hiring and the firing. Everyone in the school department should be making contributions to me,” he said.
‘I’m the mayor. I run things here. Nobody questions me. It’s my city council. It will soon be my SC. There’s nothing Tahiliani can do about it. I’ll teach her how things are done in Everett. She says she’s a numbers person. I’ll give her numbers to
Photo Courtesy of Mass.gov/News figure out that will make her dizzy!”
“Are you serious?” I asked.
“Dead serious,” the Blue Suit replied.
Navarro tried to reason with the mayor.
“Jerry. Leave me alone. It’s been a long day and you’re out of ideas. This stuff is over your head,” the Blue Suit said to him.
He hung up on Jerry. Jerry was pissed. The mayor didn’t care.
“Before he went to bed, Carlo took one last call on his cell. I think I know who it was but I’m not sure.”
“What was it about?” I asked.
“It was about the so-called investigation he’s launched into finding the culprit who erased the tape of the city council hearing where Adrien was harangued and insulted and basically told to leave the council because she’s Black and a woman,” said the Blue Suit.
“He really, really hates Adrien. He hates assertive women. He’s not too hot on the Blacks and browns and or the Spanish speaking of the Brazilians,” the Blue Suit added.
“Anyway, the idea that Carlo is launching an investigation into the erasure or theft of anything gives new meaning to irony.”
“What do you mean?” I asked the Blue Suit.
“If the mayor wants to start a real investigation into how the city council tape disappeared, he should start by investigating himself.”