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2020 a year to forget for gaming giant Encore

JANUARY 15: The Encore Boston Harbor resort. (Photo by Jim Mahoney)

By JOSH RESNEK

The roll-out of the anti-virus vaccines can’t come soon enough for Encore of Everett.

In Las Vegas, the Encore

Hotel and Casino there is being retrofitted into a mass inoculation site.

There is no official talk about such a thing happening here in Everett.

It is a possibility.

The sooner the entire population is vaccinated, the sooner business and especially the gaming business can get back to normal.

What exactly the new normal will be is anyone’s guess right now, but there is the assurance it will be better than what came before in 2020.

With December 2020 figures published by the Massachusetts Gaming Commission late last week, it was revealed Encore’s revenues rose slightly – about $1.8 million over November’s take.

The total take was $29.2 million, up from November’s reported figure of $27.3.

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Aruba vacation reactions heated

Leader Herald Facebook page commenters not happy

By JOSH RESNEK

The mayor likes to tell his supporters that the Leader Herald is nasty, untruthful, and
involved in a personal plot – something dark and illegal – to end his mayoralty.

Our Facebook comments on his two-week Aruba vacation at a time of emergency attracted 3,800 visitors and more than 150 comments regarding the vacation.

This is what is called blowback.

After all, Everett people aren’t blind and stupid.

On the mayor’s Facebook site, under photographs of him all tan and ready to go . . . in the water in Aruba . . . this warning attributed to him is printed for all to see: “Stay at home. It saves lives.”

Whatever the mayor says about the Leader Herald is one thing.

How he attempts to deceive the people of this city writing about the value of family as the reason he took the Aruba jaunt during an emergency is something for the record books.

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President Biden to launch nationwide vaccinations

JANUARY 15: RN Risa Ferrara prepares a Covid-19 vaccination for first responders at Rumney Marsh Academy. (Photo by Jim Mahoney)

By JOSH RESNEK

The inauguration of President Joe Biden this week will apparently signal the beginning of the federal government’s role in vaccinating the American population.

To date, the creation of the vaccine stands as a modern miracle of medical science, and one former President Trump can take credit for.

The mishandling of the distribution effort and the production end of the program are both enormous failures as Biden takes office.

Everett is an example of how a community only this week got its first responders vaccinated with the general public, largely and almost entirely unvaccinated with no end to such a scenario in sight.

Everett is a living example of a city being overrun by the virus and the inability of its population and its city government to curtail its outbreak.

This week and last week Everett has reported the largest number of infections that have been recorded since the epidemic shut everything down last March.

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Local first responders get Covid-19 vaccine

JANUARY 15: First responders rolled up their sleeve as dozens of area firefighters, police officers and EMTs received the first dose of the Covid-19 vaccine. (Photo by Jim Mahoney)

City suffers 1200 new Coronavirus cases

By JOSH RESNEK

Everett remains one of the top Massachusetts hot spots for the transmission of the COVID-19 virus.

Get-togethers continue throughout the city despite a strong effort by the city government to warn residents about the perils of private gatherings.

The mayor continues to place the blame on the spread of the virus on crowded homes and apartments with family members and visitors not wearing facemasks or exercising social distancing protocol and washing hands repeatedly with disinfectant jell.

The mayor’s recent vacations to Aruba and Arizona run against what he has been urging Everett residents to do – “To please stay at home.”

Everett health officials have reported approximately 1,200 new cases of the virus in the city since January 4.

The city remains in an emergency mode that began last March.

Statewide figures have soared and deaths as well.

Last week, the state reported 4,200 new cases and 67 new deaths attributed to COVID-19.

Mayor now a voting member of school committee after state OK

By JOSH RESNEK

The mayor now officially has the right to sit on the Everett School Committee as a voting member following a swift and well-oiled romp through the statehouse.

Governor Charlie Baker signed the Home Rule Petition which amends the City of Everett Charter and provides for the mayor to be a voting member of the school committee.

“I am honored to accept this responsibility,” the mayor said on his Facebook site.

And just like that, as though with the snap of a finger, the mayor has succeeded in becoming a force to deal with on the school committee.

In previous recent school committee hearings, Superintendent of Schools Priya Tahiliani had protested against the mayor’s effort.

“I do not favor the mayor becoming a voting member of the school committee,” she told her colleagues in the School Department, and on the school committee.

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