Mayor taking ideas from McCrea & Arroyo

While the North End looked like a war zone with no elected city officials onsite to take the heat and try and make things better, the Mayor was announcing that he had read Kevin McCrea's website and it had so many good ideas he was going to start using some of them. (well....maybe not exactly...)

Yesterday a 14" water main blew up in the north end about 1 am. 50 or so businesses were flooded and were without water. Maura Hennigan was there around 7 am to talk to the business owners cutting short her vacation day at the beach in Maine. BW & S was there working in what looked like a huge bomb crater. I went by in the afternoon to talk to some of the shop owners. Most were actually quite resilient, with a comme ci, comme ca attitude even though they could not open for business without water. Many were not pleased with the Mayor however. I spoke with one older Italian woman who owns a store on Hanover Street and she started cursing the Mayor in Italian. I have been amazed at how many of the Italians in the North End are not happy with the mayor even before the electric and water problems.

No sign of at-large councilors Flaherty, Arroyo or Murphy. It is interesting to see the hurricane katrina stories and how people want some leadership from their politicians. We have a tiny disaster in an area of the city and our politicians aren't there. (District Councilor Scappiccio is in Vietnam on a leadership junket, which I applaud him for doing. However, I still haven't received an answer from Mintz, Levin on what he is doing for them. As one councilor told me, he treats the city council as a part time job)

Meanwhile, the Mayor was on city hall plaza announcing he's trading in his SUV for a hybrid vehicle and that city diesel vehicles will start using bio-diesel. Of course he didn't invite Felix Arroyo who had introduced the bio-diesel proposal months ago. And he especially didn't invite Kevin McCrea who wrote about changing the city vehicles over to hybrids last spring time. I believe I blogged about how Las Vegas has 90 percent of its non-essential vehicles as hybrids. Once again we have a reactive Mayor and City Hall not a proactive one.

Hey, why be in the North End where people needed help and comfort when you can steal someone's ideas and have a press conference on city hall plaza.