Where Was the Mayor, As Usual?

Last Wednesday, Governor Deval Patrick came to town to tour North Shore Community College with its president Wayne Burton and Congressman John Tierney. Also along for the tour was the state’s education maven and one of Patrick’s key cabinet members, Paul Reville.

By himself, Reville is a major league character considering this city’s number one bad boy is its seemingly unfixable and unmanageable public schools and the deluge of problems afflicting them.

The governor is an entirely different matter.

Here’s a guy who isn’t just the governor. He talks with the president and the two are dear friends growing closer as the campaign intensifies.

And there was Tierney. For all his faults, he was there, caring enough to be present with the governor and Secretary of Education Reville.

The only major cog in the wheel that was missing, absent without leave, was our mayor.

No doubt, she was performing important constituent work or investigating the minutiae of an arcane or inane contract that has virtually no meaning whatsoever except to her.

Then again, maybe she was just too busy doing whatever it is she does during the day everyday to take a moment to free herself in order to be walking next to the governor, our congressman and the secretary of education and oh yes, the president of Lynn’s junior college, Mr. Burton.

At this point, except for this editorial writer, her absence wasn’t even noticed much less missed. No one mentioned her name.

She has managed to miss just about every major meeting a mayor should attend during the past two years.

It would be unfair to say she’s missed all the meetings because that simply isn’t true.

She’s just missed nearly all of them, not finding somehow the strength to tear herself away from her constituent work to make it to accompany the governor in our city, which is ostensibly her city.

Snubbing the governor, the secretary of education and the congressman is no big deal to our mayor.

She’s snubbed just about everyone who means anything in city government here since got elected.

There is virtually no meaningful communication between the mayor and her associates and colleagues elected and unelected at city hall.

They all talk about it among themselves and frankly, they are all amazed.

Everyone is working in a vacuum without the mayor in a city where everything about progress for the city begins at the top.

Maybe everyone, including the governor, the congressman and the secretary of education and oh yes, Wayne Burton, are better off.

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