FALL RIVER Mayor Paul Coogan made his second State of the City address Tuesday in a joint session of the School Committee and City Council, marking the first in-person meeting for the council in 2021.
While the elected officials gathered in person for Coogan’s address, the public, like in many events in the last year, had to listen to the mayor’s speech remotely.
Here s five takeaways from the State of the City address:
City finances
Coogan acknowledged the disruption and uncertainty the city faced during the past year’s COVID-19 pandemic which shut down communities in the Commonwealth just a week before the mayor was due to give his first State of the City address last March.
FALL RIVER The tables were turned on Mayor Paul Coogan s media coordinator Elaina Pevide recently: She authored an article on politics, and for a major national magazine, no less.
Pevide s article, All Politics is Local: Changemaking Happens Closer to Home Than You Realize, appeared last month in Ms., a magazine founded in 1972 by Gloria Steinem and Dorothy Pitman Hughes.
So how did this happen? It all started at Brandeis University, where Pevide became involved with the Educational Network for Active Civic Transformation ENACT, a national program engaging undergraduates in state-level legislative change by learning to work with legislators, staffers, and community organizations.
FALL RIVER Mayor Paul Coogan will deliver his State of the City address on Tuesday, but unlike charter-mandated annual events in the past, he’ll only have a live audience of City Council and School Committee members in City Council chambers.
“We’ll talk about COVID obviously, but we’re going to concentrate on what’s going on in the positive, despite COVID,” said Coogan on Friday. “We’ll talk about what our goals are going forward.”
Tuesday will be the first live City Council meeting in months with previous meetings being held remotely on Zoom.
The public is not allowed to attend and Coogan said he’s not invited his staff or any department heads.
Silvia garnered attention last week when a lengthy and strongly worded letter he submitted to a local independent media outlet was posted on its Facebook page.
In his letter, Silvia referred to the Durfee High building as being the most poorly constructed structure he’s seen during his 51 years of working in the construction industry.
The online letter led to a rebuttal in the form of a five-page letter sent to Mayor Paul Coogan by Boston-based company LeftField, which is acting as owner’s project manager (OPM) on behalf of Suffolk Construction.
In his letter, James Rogers, principal of LeftField, attributes most of the delays at the Durfee High project to what he says is the unsatisfactory performance by Silvia’s DDS Industries, which has a $26 million contract to install the heating, ventilation and air conditioning system.
FALL RIVER The public sparring continues.
The Fall River School Committee defended itself in a response on Tuesday to criticism rained down on members by the City Council, which condemned four members for their November vote to keep Superintendent Matt Malone despite allegations he harassed and bullied school staff.
“Last week, City Council members questioned the performance of this Committee and its response to these allegations suggesting that a conflict of interest influenced its actions in response to the complaints against the Superintendent. Any such suggestion is unfounded. The members of this Committee followed the proper legal procedure and received specific guidance from the Massachusetts State Ethics Commission prior to participating in or voting on the matters concerning the Superintendent. There is no legal or ethical basis for raising such concerns and it cannot be fairly questioned that the members of the School Committee ethically and lawful