Massachusetts Mayor Has Mental Meltdown

LAWRENCE, MASSACHUSETTS, MAYOR WILLIAM LANTIGUA has just returned from a vacation out of the country and finds himself in the emabarrassing position of trying to defend the city’s failure to provide adequate fire protection.  The Lawrence Fire Department has approximately half the number of firefighters they had just four years ago and are trying to protect the city of 80,000 residents and a large supply of old and decrepit buildings with just 15 on-duty firefighters.

August 8, 2010.  Five alarms, Fourteen fire departments.
Eagle Tribune photo

Last week’s string of multi-alarm fires brought more than a dozen fire departments from neighboring cities in to assist the LFD over the weekend.  Now there is a growing dissatisfaction among the other communities who feel that the constant mutual aid calls are in effect a ploy to use their finances to pay for Lawrence’s basic fire protection.

The Lawrence FD is currently being directed by an acting chief who doesn’t have to worry about his political appointment and has been very outspoken about the crises in the department.  As you listen to him tell what’s going on in this video interview with WCVB-TV in Boston, note the comments by the mayor’s aide who is speaking in the mayor’s absence.  He claims that all extra and extensive mutual aid runs really don’t cost the other cities anything “because they’ve always done it before.”  He also attempted to shift the blame onto the firefighters because they are unwilling to take pay cuts.

Now that the mayor has returned, he finds himself in a bad situation with the other cities and their FD’s demanding that Lawrence start pulling their share of the load.  Still refusing to acknowledge that the city hasn’t used its resources wisely, Mayor Lantiqua launched a counter-attack against his own firefighters by calling on the citizens to spy on the firefighters at work.  The Salem News reports,

Mayor William Lantigua has enlisted a volunteer corps of film crews to chase firefighters and record their actions at the scenes of accidents, fires and other calls they respond to.Lantigua says he has received several complaints from citizens concerned about “slow response” times by firefighters and questioning whether the jakes’ actions are driven by last month’s layoff of 23 from the department. The mayor said some of those callers have volunteered to follow firefighters, video them on the job, and turn over the tapes to City Hall.

“It’s unbelievable that a mayor of a major city in the Commonwealth would do that to his employees,” said Graeme Millar, secretary of the Lawrence firefighters union.

Now not only has the mayor embarrassed himself, but he has also embarrassed the city council as well.  The Salem News continues,

City Councilor Dan Rivera said he felt Lantigua had handled himself well in budget negotiations with firefighters, but the mayor’s call for citizen film crews was irresponsible, Rivera said. He said it will escalate tension between the firefighters and the mayor’s office. “The mayor should not have said what he said,” Rivera said. “Everybody in this situation has to come to the table and this doesn’t help.”

City Councilor Marc Laplante, said the mayor’s comments could cause Lawrence citizens to distrust the Fire Department — individuals vital to public safety.  “The last thing we need to be doing is undermining the very job that they need to do,” Laplante said.

NECN filed this excellent video report on the conflict and in it the mayor further demonstrates his dementia by inferring that some of the fires are being set by the firefighters themselves and then deliberately  responding slowly to calls.

Get your popcorn ready and pull up the chairs, folks.  This is going to be a good show.