Looking at the News

New Light Shed on Parlingate Library Controversy

By Josh Resnek

The Mayor, who has been quoted as saying he never saw a library he wanted to enter during four years at college, has come to take a commanding interest in the management, or mismanagement, of the city’s library system.

The system is utterly demoralized by the administrative changes ordered by the mayor that have been made in recent months, according to sources.

The facts of the matter have come to light about why Parlin Library officials stopped sending old city photographs and descriptions to the Leader Herald after we had been publishing the popular series for longer than a year.

In this dispute alone the seeds of the changes the library has undergone were planted.

It was the mayor’s doing entirely, the remaking of how the library system is run and the placement of a city lawyer without library experience or library training to run the system, according to sources who spoke with the Leader Herald.

Continue reading “Looking at the News” →

— Eye on Everett —

This & That

Screen Shot 2018-08-08 at 5.00.04 PM
By Josh Resnek

What a coincidence.

Or is it ironic?

No sooner had Parlin Chief Librarian Stacy DeBole been badgered into resigning by the administration, and the way the library is managed totally restructured, the mayor appointed Assistant City Solicitor Matt Lattanzi to head the library or to lead its reorganization or both.

We aren’t exactly sure what experience Lattanzi has with libraries but he is a lawyer and running a library is not like running NASA the space agency or the CIA.

On the other hand, everyone in the library needs to know what their duties are and how to manage their own responsibilities.

Lattanzi has apparently reorganized the place, spiffed up the rules and regulations, and brought the library into line with what exactly the mayor wants – which is another department for him to hire people into.

Continue reading “— Eye on Everett —” →

— Eye on Everett —

Looking Inside the Casino

Screen Shot 2018-08-08 at 5.00.04 PM

By Josh Resnek

Eating lunch at the 8/10 on Tuesday I sat with a Wynn employee who’s been working the site for 22 months.

He’s a tradesman. A higher up type of employee overseeing many other tradesmen.

He said the place is in fact coming to completion fast.

He said the restaurants are nearly completed and that a Dunkin’ Donuts was going to open there, contrary to rumors that Kickback Carlo had succeeded in getting a Honey Dew Donuts concession in the casino for himself.

He said the gaming floors are complete. The slot machines are fully installed and ready to go.

The famous Popeye sculpture by Jeff Koons, which Steve Wynn paid $27 million, is not located at the entrance to the casino in the middle of the twin staircases as originally planned.

He said the sculpture will be located further inside the casino.

He said the hotel is done, that it was finished some weeks ago, that only smaller details are left to complete here and there.

This guy has no skin in the game.

He’s just an employee looking forward to being done and taking a vacation.

Parking will very likely be a disaster, he said.

The parking lots don’t have even a fraction of the spaces that are needed if the crowds arrive.

As I have written recently on several occasions, the question is not whether or not the casino will be crowded, rather, but how crowded it will be.

Continue reading “— Eye on Everett —” →

Library coming under Rule of mayor’s office

Through a combination of legal, economic and political reasoning the city’s library system, and its employees will shortly be controlledand entirely funded by the mayor’s office and will be subject to theyear to year budget discretion necessary to keep the doors open for all the Library’s many thousands of users.

The mayor’s legal department has already assured members of the Library’s Board of Trustees that everything about the city’s two public libraries will remain the same – that is – the hours of operation, thefunding, and the staffing.

In addition, the library system’s staffing requirements will nowfall under the domain of the Human Resources Department, and themayor’s office.

Continue reading “Library coming under Rule of mayor’s office” →

Library administration dismantled; new leadership to take over

By Josh Resnek

In a command performance Monday night at city hall, the mayor and his solicitor bullied and intimidated Parlin Library Director Stacy DeBole and the Library Board of Trustees and belittled their existence before attacking them and snuffing them out.

It was a fierce forage by a pack of hungry, greedy wolves versus defenseless lambs on a wide open field where the final outcome was never in doubt.

The city council voted 6-4 allowing the change in administration of the library system as desired by the mayor, thus ending 139 years of independent administration of the city’s public library system.

The mayor, the city’s Human Resources officer and city solicitor’s office will be running the library for its own good now. The library will be staffed by the mayor’s appointees and approved by his Human Resources director.

Terrifying liability issues have now all been resolved with the change. Utterly lost, never considered and unspoken by the mayor, and his solicitor are the intellectual and philosophical underpinnings allowing libraries to breath and to thrive since the ancient Greeks first created them.

Continue reading “Library administration dismantled; new leadership to take over” →