>>Valley Patriot>> |
I’m running for mayor because I really believe I can make a difference in the city of Methuen. What do you do for work? I’m an interior designer. I opened up my own business 25 years ago. Why do you think you are qualified to be mayor? I think I am qualified because, in the last 10 years, I have made local government a great study of mine. I graduated from Katharine Gibbs in 1972, which taught me great reference that I am very good at investigating. I have been watching this city for years and have found many things that I do not like, and I want to change them. What are your goals as mayor? My first goal as mayor is to have an audit. I want to audit every fund that comes into the city. I want an independent audit, too. We have to hire someone who has no bias to come in and take a look at the finances of the city. Second, I want a moratorium on residential building. I think that we need to catch up on our services, like our police, fire, schools, and our water. Our water treatment plant has been bonded so that it is currently being built, but we need to catch up on our other services and stop the residential building. What
do you plan to change if you are elected mayor? I plan to change the fact that the government is not open to the people. We need to take back the government and give it to the people. People must have access to public information and they have to be listened to. When they have concerns and they call up the mayor, their concerns have value. What is your favorite book? I have so many favorite books. My favorite book is probably “The King of Torts,” by John Grisham. I like John Grisham a lot, but I often don’t have a lot of time to read for recreation. What makes a good mayor? A good mayor is someone who listens to the people and acts in the best interest of the people only. It is someone who doesn’t bring politics into it, someone who does the job for the honor of doing the job and taking care of the people. When I’m elected, it’s not going to be about me, it is going to be about the people. How are you different from your competition? I am different from my competition because I am not one of the good old boys or good old girls. I do not owe anyone anything. I come with a clean slate, which will make it easier for me to do the job and take care of the people’s needs first - above and beyond anything else. If elected, do you have any new ideas as chairman of the school committee? Yes, I do. I just came back from a whole school year in North Carolina. And I got to see exactly how a different school system operates and I liked it very much. They separate their classes differently. I was just reading Senator Baddour’s plan to promote better schools; he wants to add an extra hour to the school day. In North Carolina they already have added that hour and it is working out very well. They also have a program called SAGE for advanced kids. What they do is take the advanced kids and run about 8-12 lessons ahead of everyone else. So kids are not held back if they are bright. They can move at their own pace. Do you support MCAS? Yes, yes, I do. I think there need to be checks and balances in everything we do. I really believe in checks and balances in government. I think MCAS needs a little work, but it is a great start. Should good teachers be paid the same as bad teachers? Well, yes, but they have a contract so it is hard to weed out the bad teachers. Where did you grow up and where did you go to school? I grew up in Salem, New Hampshire and went to Saint Joseph’s School from first to eighth grade. I went to Salem High School and then Katharine Gibbs School in Boston. Do you have any children and, if so, where do they go to school? I have three children: two daughters who are out of school and a son who is in the eighth grade at the Tenny. Do you have any new ideas for the school curriculum? As I have talked about before, I would certainly like to look into the enrichment pro-gram. Right now my son is in the enrichment program and he doesn’t like it because they take him out of school in the middle of the day. It disrupts his other classes, so I would look into changing that. Also, we need to train our students to be vital members of society when they get out of school. Is “No Child Left behind” working in Methuen? I don’t know, honestly, if it is working in Methuen. One of the reasons I am running for mayor is because I can’t get access to public information like this. I think that once I am in office, I will be able to look at all this and see how all those programs are working. Right now, public information is not made available to me, or they charge me so much money that I can’t afford it. Who has endorsed you and do endorsements help? I believe some endorsements help, but I also believe that they feed into the good-old-boy and good-old-girl system. And the people in the good-old-boy and girl system believe that endorsements help. But I’m not looking for endorsements of the politicos; I am looking for endorsements of the people I will be serving. I believe that I am going to get the endorsement of those people because they are tired and don’t want more of the same. Will you raise taxes? No. I won’t raise taxes. Again, I am going to need access to the public records that I haven’t been able to get access to. Methuen, over the last six years, has taken a 15 million dollar levy limit and dwindled it to almost nothing, while performing the biggest build-out in the history of the city. So, one has to wonder where all this money is going. I plan on tracking it and looking into every corner. The last thing I would ever do is raise taxes. In fact, I’m looking to do an underride. What are you going to do about the schools that were put on the warning list because of MCAS? Well, I am certainly going to look into that. I don’t think we are getting a clear picture of what is going on in our schools. I would very much like to support Senator Baddour’s proposal to bring more accountability to our school systems. Do you support the city council vote not to give the next mayor a raise? I certainly do. In fact, if it had passed last month, I would have taken the amount above and beyond whatever the current mayor receives for pay and use that money for the independent audit I want when I get in. We had to reschedule this interview because of a zoning board meeting about cell towers. Can you tell me what happened at your meeting? Unfortunately, at the zoning board meet-ing, the board failed to uphold the bylaws that I wrote, and I am furious. Their thinking was that if they didn’t let this cell tower antenna into a building - which is going to be the base station - and the antennas end up on the fire department building near day care where kids play outside, they were afraid that Omnipoint would have sued us. I believe that some things are worth getting sued over and that the health and well being of the citizens is one of those. What are your concerns about local boards, and whom would you appoint to city boards if you get elected? I would very
much like to set up a talent bank of qualified people who
want to serve on these boards. It takes a lot of time to
serve on the boards, especially those like the zoning
board. You need time to ride around and look at the land
parcels. I think that there are plenty of wonderful,
intelligent people in Methuen who would like to do their
civic duty and serve on these boards. *Send your questions
comments to ValleyPatriot@aol.com |
Why are you running
for mayor?