Ed Burley, until last month co-chair of Jamaica Plain Progressives, explains his decision to resign after the September preliminary, in which its endorsed District 6 candidate, incumbent Kendra Lara, was soundly defeated after that car crash. Read more.
King vs. Weber, Pepen vs. Ruiz.
Voters in District 6 (Jamaica Plain, West Roxbury, Mission Hill) today solidly rejected one-term incumbent and crash-plagued incumbent Kendra Lara, while voters in neighboring District 5 (Hyde Park, Mattapan, Roslindale) gave the boot to ethics-plagued incumbent Ricardo Arroyo. Read more.
King, Lara and Weber in Zoom forum.
The three candidates for the District 6 (Jamaica Plain, West Roxbury, Mission Hill) City Council seat - incumbent Kendra Lara and challengers William King and Ben Weber - met last night in a Zoom forum sponsored by JP Progressives, Right to the City Vote and MassVOTE.
The top two finishers in the Sept. 12 preliminary will then meet in the Nov. 7 general election for the two-year seat.
Some of the issues: Read more.
NBC Boston reports Boston election commissioners today rejected demands from Kendra Lara haters that it bump her off the fall ballot in District 6 (West Roxbury, Jamaica Plain, Mission Hill), concluding they'd failed to provide enough proof that she doesn't live in the district.
Lara said she was in a midst of a divorce when she ran for office and decided she’d rather use her maiden name than her married name – and got approval from the election office to do so.
City Councilor Michael Flaherty, a former prosecutor, says Councilor Kendra Lara needs to quit now because she'd been driving without a license for years even before she crashed into a house on Centre Street in Jamaica Plain, NBC Boston reports.
WBUR reports that at a hearing today, City Councilor Kendra Lara (Jamaica Plain, West Roxbury, Mission Hill) had charges of negligent operation and recklessly permitting bodily injury to a child added to the the driving an unregistered and uninsured motor vehicle and driving with a suspended license that police initially charged her with after she alleged drove into a house on Centre Street in Jamaica Plain on June 30. Councilors Tania Fernandes Anderson, Julia Mejia and Ricardo Arroyo attended the hearing to support her.
Innocent, etc.
City Councilor Kendra Lara (Jamaica Plain, West Roxbury, Mission Hill) today apologized and sought forgiveness for her June 30 car crash, in which she veered off Centre Street in Jamaica Plain and into a house, after which police issued her a summons for driving an unregistered and uninsured car with a suspended license. Read more.
City Council President Ed Flynn has some thoughts on Councilor Kendra Lara's car crash and Councilor Ricardo Arroyo's ethics fine last week: Read more.
WBUR reports City Councilor Kendra Lara (Jamaica Plain, West Roxbury), was cited for driving an unregistered car with a revoked license, no insurance and an expired inspection sticker for a crash into a house on Centre Street Friday afternoon. Both she and her young son were injured.
City Councilor Kendra Lara (West Roxbury, Jamaica Plain, Mission Hill) says she's fed up with what she considers the "homophobic and transphobic rhetoric" from Councilors Ed Flynn (South Boston, South End, Chinatown, downtown), Michael Flaherty (at large) and Erin Murphy (at large) in the days after first responders found a dead man in a Mary Ellen McCormack apartment. Read more.
Flaherty with a "meth and crack pack" he pulled out of his jacket pocket.
City officials from Chelsea traveled across the Mystic today to tell Boston city councilors how a ban on 50-mil liquor bottles has meant fewer drunken incidents for police and EMTs to respond to and cleaner and even safer streets. Read more.
The Bay State Banner reports on a contentious City Council hearing on the idea of letting civilians get part of the construction detail game, in which the police union president went over his allotted five-minute talk time and so city councilors Kenzie Bok, Kendra Lara and Ruthzee Louijeune walked out until he was done.
City Councilor Tania Fernandes Anderson (Roxbury) today proposed a halt on any further sales of city-owned vacant land in Roxbury for development until neighborhood residents get more of a say on what gets built on it before any RFPs to developers are published. Read more.
Fernandes Anderson plays racist voice mail she got.
City Councilor Tania Fernandes Anderson (Roxbury) had enough this afternoon.
Slamming her desk in frustration at what she says is the treatment of Black and Hispanic councilors, Fernandes Anderson turned a discussion about a proposed effort to redistrict Boston into a cry of disgust that started with the way Councilor Ricardo Arroyo is being treated to an exposition on fears in her district that redistricting led by a white councilor will mean minorities will remain at a disadvantage in Boston. Read more.
In a contentious meeting in which Council President Ed Flynn had to keep banging his gavel, telling both councilors and residents to keep quiet, Councilor Frank Baker withdrew his demand for a look at the BPD file on sexual-assault allegations against Councilor Ricardo Arroyo, saying his point had been made by today's Globe interview with a woman who claims Arroyo sexually attacked and threatened her in high school. Read mroe.
Somebody dropped some paperwork on the Globe about two investigations into alleged sexual attacks by City Councilor and DA candidate Ricardo Arroyo when he was a student at the O'Bryant School. Read more.
The City Council yesterday unanimously approved using eminent domain to take roughly an acre of undeveloped land on the shore of Sprague Pond for a park, after one councilor assured the others that city officials will offer a fair price to the current owners - a key concern in a city with a history of eminent domain being used to destroy whole neighborhoods for apartment towers and highways. Read more.
Three city councilors say they city should use some of the money the city's getting from the feds to help out the owners of taxi medallions, whom they say have been decimated by unfair competition from Uber and Lyft. Read more.
Mejia argues against state takeover.
The City Council voted overwhelmingly today to fight to keep local control of BPS in the face of possible state receivership, saying a new mayor and a new superintendent deserve a chance to finally bring the sort of change BPS needs and that the last thing Boston - where voters strongly supported an elected school committee in the fall election - needs is an outside commissar screwing things up even more. Read more.
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