VETERAN HOMESTEAD MOBILE MEDICAL UNIT COMING TO METHUEN
Local Veterans Will Receive Free Medical Service
Mayor William M. Manzi, III in conjunction with the City of Methuen Veterans Services Office will be sponsoring a daylong medical clinic for veterans who are unable to access medical care because of transportation or homelessness. The Veteran Homestead Mobile Medical Unit will be set up in the parking area of the American Legion at 200 Broadway from 10-3 on April 29th. Routine health care, physicals, blood screenings, EKG’s and other medical services will be offered.
“I am very pleased that Methuen veterans will be able to receive these much needed medical services,” Manzi said. “No one should go without health care, least of all those who have served our country in the military.”
The van is operated by Veteran Hospice Homestead, a non-profit that provides homes for elderly veterans. They last visited Methuen in August of 2008. For further information, please contact the Methuen Veterans Services office at 978-983-8585.
There is plenty of bad news in the House budget for municipalities, which saw a real decrease in local aid (non education) accounts of 32 percent. That is draconian, and will lead to a real decrease in our ability to provide services that are at the core of our function. We recognize the reality, and I will for the time being forego a discussion of additional revenues. But we cannot forego the complete outrage engendered by this type of budget being put forward without immediate and full reform of the higher cost structure imposed on us through state rules with regards to things like health care. As we await the Rosenberg/Donato report on municipal relief it would be fair to say that with these local aid numbers half measures out of that Commission will not be sufficient. One of the ironies of this budget is that the Committee utilizes an increase in employee health care contributions to help balance the budget (doubling the employee health care contribution). This change in plan design is exactly what Mayors have been seeking, and is a tool that has been continually denied to us. And so while the State cuts local aid they continue to insist that we maintain a higher cost model of doing business, and refuse to give us the same rights they excercise to balance their own budget. That is wholly unacceptable. Real reform must come now. As a final note I must ask where the promised pension relief is, and how the Commonwealth expects municipalities to make full funding payments that in good times are budget busters???? Where is the promised extension of that full funding schedule? This nonsense must end now. More to come, including additional analysis of Methuen’s numbers. I have attached the Executive summary of the House budget, as well as the letter from Chair Charlie Murphy.
Today, I announced that state government continues to have serious budget problems. I know these challenges have had a significant impact on our state. Most are into or past your second year since your last cost of living adjustment. Some of your co-workers have been laid off. Everyone is having to make due with less.
In order to close the latest gap, we are using a series of difficult cuts, efficiencies, discretionary federal recovery dollars, the elimination of 750 jobs, and furloughs for managers in state government. For those making between $50,000 and $75,000, there is a mandatory 3-day furlough before the end of the fiscal year, June 30. For managers making more than $75,000, there is a 5-day mandatory furlough. The Lieutenant Governor and I will take 5-day furloughs as well. Employees making less than $50,000 will not be subject to furloughs.
I want to acknowledge that some state employees, a large majority of them at Health and Human Services, have already participated in an agency-wide furlough program since October. I want to thank you for your sacrifice, and assure you that today’s initiative will not result in a double-furlough for you. If you took the required 3 or 5 unpaid days already this fiscal year, no further furloughs are required. Please check with your agency head for additional details about your specific case. You can read the full details of the plan here.
Over the next several weeks you will hear of discussions at the collective bargaining table, as the Administration seeks to work with state employee bargaining representatives to fashion the fairest possible solutions to these ongoing challenges. I am committed to the principles of equitable treatment and shared sacrifice, and I look forward to working with you in meeting these challenges and positioning the Commonwealth for a prolonged period of growth and prosperity. Together I am confident that we can make this promise a reality.
I know that, like working people all across this Commonwealth, many of you and your families are already struggling to hold on and that today’s announcement will add to your anxiety. Unfortunately, we have no good options. Nonetheless I do want you to know that I appreciate you and the extraordinary work you do every day on behalf of the people of the Commonwealth. If you lean on each other and work with me, if you give me your ideas and good counsel just as you give the public your dedicated service, we will get through this together and state government will be the better for it.
Thank you for your understanding, your partnership and your sacrifice.
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts continues its budgetary free fall, with Governor Patrick indicating yesterday that he will, for the third time in the FY2009 budget, be forced to downgrade his revenue estimates and impose further cuts in the state budget. The Governor estimated a budget shortfall of over $400 million, with $156 million being the immediate shortfall. The Governor proposed forced furloughs for 5000 executive branch employees of up to a week, laid off 750 additional state workers, and asked A&F Secretary Leslie Kirwan to begin negotiating concessions from state unions. The Governor’s proposals, for FY2009, would not even put a dent in this years deficit. He indicated that further proposals to close the FY2009 gap require legislative action, and he would not identify what proposals he would make. He also refused to identify what concessions he would seek from labor. As we are now in the middle of April it is highly unlikely that the Governor will be able to close this gap without a massive hit to the State’s rainy day fund.
The Governor has ratcheted up his criticism of the legislature, including direct criticism of their non-action on the FY2009 deficit. The Governor filed a bill that would have raised revenues via immediate tax hikes (soda, beverage alcohol, etc) over thirty days ago to try to offset some of the FY2009 shortfall, but that bill has been shunted aside by the Legislature. It is now simply too late to make meaningful reductions to the FY2009 budget, and that failure by all parties concerned will only worsen the FY2010 budgetary armageddon we now face. Revenue estimates downgraded three times in one year? Michael Widmer, at the begining of this budget cycle, correctly predicted that the Governor’s revenue number was off by over a billion dollars, and that was before the downturn. Widmer is already calling the Governor’s 2010 budget filing revenue estimate way off, and frankly that makes House 1 not worth the paper it is written on. As the House prepares to unveil its budget today the failure to act in Boston will become evident in the starkest of terms. I will post the ugly details, as well as further postings on impacts to Methuen, in the coming days.
I had a chance to visit Beacon Hill today to talk budgets and health care, and had a chance to sit and talk with Senate President Therese Murray about issues of concern. I was joined by Mayor Thatcher Kezer of Amesbury and the Executive Director of the Merrimack Valley Planning Agency, Dennis DiZoglio. We talked municipal health care, and we were able to make our case to the Senate President, as well as Senator Susan Tucker, Senator Bruce Tarr, Senator Stan Rosenberg, and Senator Steve Baddour. There is a lot more to post about, and I will try to do so tommorow, which will bring the unveiling of the House Ways and Means Budget. I know that people think they realize that it will be a “bad budget”, but we are talking about much more than bad. Without even dealing with the wholesale decimation of local aid the cuts that will be made against state level programs that serve our neediest citizens will likely be shocking. The Ways and Means Budget will include no new revenue, and the Rosenberg/Donato Commission will not make its municipal report until next week. And tensions continue to rise between the Governor and the Legislature, making political settlements of the complex issues all the more difficult. Look out below, and gird for a major political donneybrook after Charlie Murphy unveils the House budget tommorow.
MAYOR MANZI NAMES E.T. KIRBY AS THE APRIL ARTIST OF THE MONTH
Kirby’s Work on Display in the Mayor’s Office
Mayor William M. Manzi has named E.T. Kirby as the April Artist of the Month. Ms. Kirby a Methuen resident and the grandmother of U.S. Air Force Airman First Class Mark F. Mozdziez who was recently stationed with the 99th Securities Forces Squadron at Joint Base Balad in Iraq.
For several years, Kirby’s work has found its way into the lives of hundreds of patrons throughout the United States. Credits and awards are numerous, spanning many years with major Boston art exhibitions, galleries, and art colonies of Cape Ann as well as accreditations by the Salmagundi Club of New York, and the historic Marblehead Arts Association of Massachusetts. Kirby paints in varied media including egg tempera, dry brush English watercolor, acrylic, and oil, creating a vast range of landscape and botanical statements. The Boston Globe critiqued Kirby’s work as “a thoughtful form of poetry in the realm of art today…spiritually refreshing”.
Born and educated in Boston, she now resides in Methuen to be close to her family. The artist has also enjoyed several years in Charleston, South Carolina and Woodstock, Vermont; overlooking green mountains and valleys where she continually exhibits, receiving recognition in ‘The Artist’s Profile’ publication.
Mayor Manzi stated, “It is my pleasure to display Ms. Kirby’s work in my office. I also had the pleasure of recently meeting her brave grandson, Mark, when he was home from Iraq. She and her entire family are a great asset to our community. I encourage the public to come by City Hall and view her fine work.”
The Methuen Artist of the Month Program was created by Mayor Manzi three years ago in order to give members of the Methuen Arts Community a forum to display their work and to encourage participation in Methuen’s growing creative economy. Methuen artists interested in being considered for Artist of the Month should contact the Mayor’s Office.
The City of Methuen is now sending out updates via Twitter. You can sign up to receive these updates at www.twitter.com/cityofmethuen The City will utilize this tool for special announcements as well as emergencies that require public notifications. Obviously the twitter tool will supplement what we utilize already since it has not as of yet achieved significant market penetration, but it can be a useful tool and the price is right. If you have any questions on how to utilize this tool drop me an email at wmmanzi@ci.methuen.ma.us I have my own twitter feed, which you can sign up for at www.twitter.com/billmanzi
HBO Sports unveiled its documentary on one of the greatest boxing battles ever fought, the Ali-Frazier Thrilla in Manila. That battle capped a three fight “long war” between Ali and Frazier, with each having won once before this epic. Both men left pieces of themselves in the ring that day that they have not recovered, and it was just not the damage to their bodies. Each left a major piece of their heart and soul in the ring in Manila, and neither have been fully right since.
The documentary does not include commentary from Ali, who suffers from Parkinsons disease, but features Joe Frazier looking at film of the fight for the first time since it occurred. Frazier’s bitterness at Ali for all of the verbal torture Ali put him through is clear, and is so sad. Joe takes some expressed pride in at least being partially responsible for Ali’s current condition, and that is truly terrible. Despite the bitterness there is some grudging respect shown to Ali by Joe, who marvels at Ali’s quick rise from the canvas in Ali-Frazier 1 after one of the most powerful shots I have ever seen delivered in boxing, a trademark Frazier left hook that should have ended the fight then and there. Ali rose at the count of 4.
The Ali-Frazier trilogy truly did transcend boxing. Their first fight, pitting two undefeated champions against each other, created a huge political divide in the country. Ali, who had refused induction into the U.S. Armed Services as a conscientious objector, had been stripped of his championship and refused a license to box. He lost two and a half years in his prime, and stirred a backlash with his draft refusal and association with the Nation of Islam. Frazier, during Ali’s absence, had become the champion recognized by boxing authorities. But Muhammad Ali was “the peoples champion”, undefeated in the ring and the master of bringing p.r. to his fights by baiting, inciting, and verbally torturing his opponents. The media loved the act, and gave it prominent play always. When Ali was licensed to box again the collision with Frazier was destined to be monumental. And it was.
Ali, in his first bout with Frazier, denigrated him as an “uncle tom”, a tool of the white power structure. This was on top of calling him ugly and stupid, and truly led to bitter feelings that never were healed. I saw that first fight in Lawrence at the gym at Central Catholic on closed circuit, and I have never quite seen anything like it to this day. Frazier was the winner by unanimous decision, but to look at him after the fight was truly shocking. He was unrecognizable, his head being a massive series of lumps. Ali’s face, while not as bad, had massive swelling where Frazier had hit him with the left hook that felled him. As an Ali fan I was shocked by the loss, and I grew to respect Joe Frazier immensly. He was a warrior with a heart as big as a lion. That heart came into sharp focus in his loss to Ali in the Thrilla in Manila.
Ali engaged in his usual theatrics before the Manila fight, in which Ali was again the Champion, having defeated George Foreman in “The Rumble in the Jungle” a year earlier. Ali’s continued reference to Frazier as a gorilla is given a lot of time in the HBO documentary, but at the time it was not treated, to my memory, as a racial slur. “It’ll be a killa, a chilla, a thrilla, when I get The Gorilla in Manila.” Ali really did torture Frazier before the fight, and the documentary makes clear that Ali thought Joe Frazier was a shot fighter. Frazier dissuaded Ali of that notion after round 4 in Manila, taking over the fight and delivering withering body blows to Ali. (Fight Doctor Ferdie Pacheco said Ali was peeing blood after the fight). Frazier had withstood the early Ali barrage, in which he was pounded and almost knocked out early. Those middle rounds almost put Ali out, and his mobility was limited due to the ferocious Frazier body attack. But Ali was a special fighter, and like Frazier found a way to reach down and find that little bit extra, re-establishing control in the twelfth, and imposing some real punishment on Frazier. Both Ali and Frazier, in those final rounds, showed what heart and guts are. Frazier should have gone out in the fourteenth, but simply refused to go down despite literally not being able to see in front of him.
Ali later said that this fight was the “closest thing to death” that he had experienced, and Frazier cornerman Eddie Futch refused to let Frazier answer the bell for the fifteenth. The documentary left open without resolution the claim that Ali had ordered Angelo Dundee to “cut them off” and was ready to quit himself just before Futch threw in the towel.
Ali and Frazier were never truly the same after the Thrilla. Ferdie Pacheco had it right when he said that Ali should have hung it up after this fight. Frazier fought some more too, but really was just a shadow of his former self. The documentary brings home how a boxing rivalry really turned into something so much more. Ali and Frazier are forever connected in history, and their great rivalry, for a short period of time, mirrored the great divide in American society, over Vietnam and more. Despite the bitterness that still exists it is fair to say that boxing has never had two champions with more heart and soul than Muhammad Ali and Smokin Joe Frazier.
Methuen’s annual Easter Egg Hunt, scheduled for today at noon at Veteran’s Park, has been postponed due to rain. It will take place on Monday, April 13 at 4:30 at Veteran’s Park.
Today’s Globe printed a follow up story on the potential fare increases and service cutbacks at the T, and the story ran the gamut from outraged users to legislators saying that the T would not be getting the 6 cents that the Governor’s gas tax proposal would give them, leaving a hole of as yet undetermined magnitude. Marc Draisen talked of the negative impact of these service cuts on Greater Boston.
Marc Draisen, executive director of the Metropolitan Area Planning Council, said the MBTA plan “would be nothing short of a disaster for the Greater Boston area.”
He estimated that the reduction in services would result in 25 million new automobile trips per year with 119 million additional miles traveled and 6 million extra gallons of gas consumed.
“We’re just going in completely the wrong direction,” Draisen said. “If there has ever been a time to encourage people to get on public transit, this is it.”
But Draisen’s point, while no doubt correct, points to the ongoing political problems with the Governor’s gas tax proposal. The perceived geographic inequity still has a political impact, despite the Governor making strong efforts to deal with that perception through his proposal. Senator Steve Baddour talked about that political problem in the Globe, and pretty much threw cold water on hopes of a state rescue.
“That’s the legislative conundrum,” said Senator Steven A. Baddour, a Methuen Democrat and chairman of the Senate Committee on Transportation. “You have folks in Western Mass. and different parts of the state, and they have a different view on how much is needed to fund the MBTA. There is no easy solution.”
He said the news about the MBTA reductions would have little bearing on the debate at the State House, at least for now.
“The whole world is laying people off and is going through difficult financial times,” he said. “The MBTA needs to be a part of that. . . . If that means layoffs or reductions in services, so be it.”
That is some pretty tough talk, and does not portend well for the Governor’s gas tax proposal. Senator Baddour’s House counterpart Joseph Wagoner also weighed in, and appeared to throw as much cold water on the T as Baddour did.
“Unlike the federal government, we can’t print money and try to spend our way out of it,” said Representative Joseph F. Wagner, a Chicopee Democrat and chairman of the House Committee on Transportation. “We have an obligation to balance our budget and we’re going to have to make difficult decisions, including on transportation.”
Maybe the mantra should be changed to “reform before very little revenue”. And Secretary Aloisi, who has not been heard from too much lately, seems to have gotten in trouble again with the Senate President. President Therese Murray expressed “dismay” that she did not have advance notice of the T internal document leaked to the Globe.
Senate President Therese Murray was caught off guard yesterday by the news, and appeared frustrated that she was not briefed.
“I just think it’s odd that we were not given this information,” Murray said in an interview. “I was there all day yesterday, I’ve been there all week. And I pick it up and read it in the paper? They do have meetings, there is a secretary who oversees those meetings. Wouldn’t someone come and talk to us about this?”
Secretary Aloisi first gets in trouble for speaking, and now gets in trouble for not speaking. Tough couple of months. And the Secretary did a blog posting that addressed the issues at the T. (No, it was not at Blue Mass Group!) The below is from the Secretary’s transportation blog.
As you read or hear about possible financial scenarios and options for closing the MBTA’s $160 million budget deficit, it is important to remember that no decisions have been made about service reductions or fare increases.
The T staff brought forward to the board at a public meeting one month ago a budget for the fiscal year beginning in July 2009 that includes the projected deficit and shows the T’s extraordinarily difficult budget circumstance. Just one example is the cost of the principal and interest payments as the bills come due on $5.2 billion in Big Dig-related debt. Those debt payments next year will increase by $77 million, and debt payments overall consume 30% of T revenues.
Despite this daunting financial challenge, as Chairman of the MBTA board and your Transportation Secretary I am committed to reviewing every available option to cut costs and close the gap. Right now the MBTA is busy analyzing a full range of options that may or may not include service cuts. But it is too early to tell since no formal set of options has been presented to me.
At the same time, Governor Patrick ‘s Transportation and Economic Security Plan calls for fundamental reforms in transportation and in pension benefits, including ending the “23 and out” retirement benefit at the T. The House and Senate have passed reform bills and will soon meet to hammer out the differences. The Governor has also said that only after comprehensive and meaningful reforms are in place should we consider using additional gas tax revenues to avoid service reductions and fare increases at the T.
As these ideas are considered in the coming weeks and months, I want to assure T riders that any decisions about services and fares will be made only after a complete and transparent public review process. Whether they are using the T to get to work, school or to a doctor’s appointment millions of our state’s residents depend on the T as a critical transportation service. I am committed to ensuring that the MBTA undertakes a robust civic engagement process before any decisions are reached.
Bill Manzi.com 