By Steven Pinto
Everett has lost its respectable leaders.
With the defeat in last year’s mayoral race, Everett lost its last honest councilor.
Now there is no one to pick apart the seemingly made-up parliamentary procedure the council operates with.
We pay all our leaders. They do nothing for us. They do only for themselves. They do what they are told to do by the mayor.
There are several exceptions but the mayor owns the council.
We have new buildings rising.
But our leaders are crumbling.
Respect, common sense and decency is lost among our elected officials.
This is to be scene in the council’s blank reaction to Councilor Anthony DiPierro’s revealed us of racist memes and messages with colleagues and friends.
The administration has crumbled.
It continues to be led by a bigot and corrupt mayor, Carlo DeMaria.
The council has crumbled.
But then, the council hasn’t stood for anything but what the mayor wants for longer than a decade.
The council is afraid to act and make decisions of their own.
Their attention to parliamentary procedures are long gone.
And they don’t seem to care.
The school committee has been corrupted by the mayor.
It is barely able to function independently.
He packed the committee and now he hasn’t appeared before the committee for five consecutive meetings.
In fact every board or committee the mayor has touched is now decaying and crumbling.
He even pulled the rug out from under the library board of trustees.
Nothing and no one can escape his egotistical clutches. No city employee, agency, council, board or committee can make decisions on their own.
They don’t even dare to try. It’s been so long I think they forgot how.
But that’s what happens when the mayor’s penchant for threats and retaliation come to color city government. Our elected public officials and board members are pretend people playing pretend games organized and carried out for the mayor.
They may be fooling some people but I think the party is over.
Everett city hall wreaks from years of decay.
I’d like to say it’s all Carlo’s doing.
Most of it, I am afraid, is Carlo’s doing. But there are many others at fault as well.
And they know who they are.
In the end, and the end is coming, Carlo is going to fall.
The city is going to change – and so too is the notion of leadership.
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Steve Pinto comments on politics and city issues for the Leader Herald. He is a longtime Everett resident.