Eye on Everett

Play ball!

The weather for the first couple of days this week may not have been great, but on Saturday, April 26, the sky was blue, the sun was shining and hundreds of Everett kids and their parents took part in an annual rite of spring -  the annual Little League parade.
Saturday proved to be the perfect day for the event as the kids, parents, coaches and many local elected officials made the march from the old high school on Broadway to Sacramone Park to mark the start of the Little League season.
Mayor Carlo DeMaria had the honor of throwing the first pitch of the season, and noted that it was good to see so many kids and parents participating in the event.
DeMaria said the city and its children were lucky to have so many parents and coaches who are dedicated to organizing and running Little League and other sports in the city, because it shows how deeply the adults in the community care about the children.
Meanwhile, with Little League off to the start of a new season, it means summer can’t be too far off, with school set to let out in just over a month and the warm weather moving in.
Now if we could just do something about all this rain...

The new city solicitor

We would be remiss if we didn’t first mention the tremendous job that Colleen Mejia has done in her role as acting city solicitor, a job that she had held for the first few months of Mayor Carlo DeMaria’s administration while the mayor was searching for someone to fill that position on a permanent basis.
Even many lawmakers pointed out that Mejia had been very helpful to them over the course of her time heading the city’s legal department.
We thought that she had done a fine enough job that she could have warranted the permanent spot, but at the same time it’s hard to fault the mayor’s logic in choosing his chief of staff, Erin Deveney, for the position.
Deveney is a competent lawyer as well, has quite an impressive resume and has done a great job in keeping Mayor DeMaria’s office functioning at a high level in her job as chief of staff.
The move would also appear to make much financial sense in that the city obviously needs a permanent city solicitor while every mayor needs a chief of staff.
By doing both jobs, Deveney will earn herself a nice raise, but at the same time it will still save the taxpayers more money than if Mayor DeMaria brought in someone else to do the job while maintaining the current staffing levels in his office.
If Mayor DeMaria says he believes Deveney is capable of doing both jobs, we see no reason to doubt him.
On top of that, DeMaria said he believes between his staff and the city solicitor’s office, the city will be able to negotiate upcoming union contracts without having to spend too much, if any, of the taxpayers’ money by hiring outside legal counsel.
It’s hard to argue with his logic providing that what the mayor says turns out to be true.
The only hitch in the plan, if there even is one, is potential conflict of interest violations that the move could potentially create.
We always thought that conflict of interest laws were enacted to regulate the jobs that elected officials could take, rather than forbidding city employees from taking two jobs, but we’ll have to let the state ethics board have the final say on that issue.
The one problem that we could see possibly arising is that as city solicitor, Deveney’s job would be to give impartial legal advice to lawmakers independent of the mayor and that by tying the city’s legal department to the mayor’s office so closely, some lawmakers could come to question whether that’s what they were getting.
We don’t believe that this will become a problem, especially if Deveney’s brief history as the mayor’s chief of staff is any indication.
So far she has done a fine job in that role and we see no reason why she can’t do the same in her new, dual roles.

Still more work to be done

With Mayor DeMaria having chosen a permanent, full-time city solicitor, there is still at least one position he has left to fill in his administration in the form of a new director of veterans services.
So far, DeMaria’s transition into the corner office has been a smooth one, but he did take some flak for firing the former director, Walter Rice, who did a fine job in that position and earned the respect of many area veterans and residents.
Because of that, and the fact that Rice was very good at his job, DeMaria’s choice to replace Rice will likely come under more scrutiny than any of his previous moves in shaping up his administration.
Adding to DeMaria’s conundrum is the fact that we hear there are at least three members of the Common Council who are vying for the job.
We all already know that Councilor Joseph Hickey was eyeing the job, and recent rumors suggest that Councilor Millie Cardello is also seeking the position. We’re not sure as to who the third councilor is, only that there is at least one more.
We hear that Mayor DeMaria was conducting interviews for the position last week and believe that his decision is imminent.
We already said our piece as far as Hickey’s qualifications for the job, so we won’t rehash that here, but we also believe that Councilor Cardello would also make a very good choice.
She is an Air Force veteran who cares very deeply about Everett’s veterans and she has a very good relationship with many local vets, as well as having been very involved with that office while Rice was running the show.
Plus, Cardello would likely be the first woman to hold that job on a permanent basis. We can’t say for sure that Everett has never had a female director of veterans services in its history, but if it has, it’s been quite a while.             
Hiring the candidate for this position could prove to be the toughest choice Mayor DeMaria has had to make in the first few months of his administration, because no matter whom he chooses, he is likely to make 10 enemies for every friend.
However, given all the good changes that DeMaria has enacted since being sworn into office in January, we should all be willing to give him the benefit of the doubt here.