Wow and we thought the Progressive Democrats of Somerville weren’t very open – now we find out that the Somerville Democratic City Committee, behind closed doors, is about to announce at their meeting this coming March 10th, a new slate of officers – ok, well maybe not so new‚Ķseems kind of funny that the Democratic Party here in Somerville behaves more and more like the Politburo. Some of us here at The News and Newstalk have been members of the Democratic Ward/City Committee for over 30 years – and quite frankly can’t recall an election for officers so underhanded and non-Democratic‚ĶThe proposed new chairperson is a Ms. Chang – and oh yeah, don’t worry, Helen isn’t retiring from the committee – she’s running for treasurer we hear. One off the record elected official made the remark to us that this was done to keep out the so-called ‚ÄúProgressives‚Äù – and before you get all huffy with us, we weren’t happy about that kind of remark either. Regardless of who wants in or not, in the end we think the process should be open and above-board – this meeting on the 10th could be interesting.

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Since we decided to publish our Legislators voting record in the paper and now online‚Ķwe’ve noticed a huge jump online visits – even more then normal – we’re now up to over 1,300 hits most weekdays and for a couple of days in February, well over 1,500 hits. You can go online every week to see how they vote and how long they were in session for – and we do not edit this information at all – what you see is how we get it. Maybe publishing this information will push our legislators to work for the issues that are good for Somerville. We hear that there are still some Home Rule Petitions at the State House (some for a few years now) and our own legislators are not pushing them – and we are wondering why. So now we will all be watching closely to see if they are ignoring the wishes of the voters here in Somerville.

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A Tandem Trailer took down a good sized tree in front of Congressman Mike Capuano’s home on Friday around midday – seems the driver was driving a little to close to the sidewalk and caused the entire tree to be uprooted, which in turn caused the electricity to be down for a while in the neighborhood. Mike was his usual in good spirits over the entire incident – the DPW responded along with NSTAR immediately – we were glad no one was hurt.

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Also on Friday during the snow it was nice to see our city meter people out there giving out those $100.00 fines – especially in front of businesses. We spotted one such well-known meter person being driven around by a DPW truck – issuing 5 tickets in Ball Square in 5 minutes – you do the math. Speaking of that, another great job done by the employees of our DPW, as well as the Commissioner – Stan Koty. The proof is how clean our streets were.

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Anthony Holloway, the new Somerville Police Chief, was out there on Friday as well – covered from head to toe with snow, helping to keep the city streets clear and safe during the storm – we observed him patrolling different sections of the city and even directing traffic in Davis Square and giving out parking tickets to Snow Emergency parking offenders.

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Happy Birthday to Michael Gabriel Curtatone Chiaravalloti, who just turned 3 years old this past Sunday! Michael was all full of smiles at his birthday party and when asked by one of our Newstalkers to comment, he refused saying “no comment” other then he was happy.

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Congratulations to the Somerville Lion’s Club for their soon to be Grand Opening of their newly renovated building located on Innerbelt Road! The Club House will be a state of the art function hall facility complete with a kitchen, dance floor, bar and much more! With its elegant styling and d√©cor, the hall will be available for private functions such as weddings, banquets or any occasion to fit your function needs. For more information, call Somerville Lions President Ann Sabbey at 617 331-8460 or email her at ann.saabey@nemoves.com

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There was a little article posted online at our newspaper’s web site – Saturday at 7:03pm – now some of us at Newstalk were wondering when we looked at the story‚ĶSaturday at 7pm and Rep. Carl says someone took out papers from Medford at the State House to run against him – doesn’t it seem funny – his comment (Carl that is) – that he only heard from the person and his wife once when they called him and mentioned they were against the Gay Marriage proposal?  Does Carl really think that everyone who might run against him is homophobic – or is that his strategy?

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We’re going to get the contribution list of our state legistlors and take a good hard look at it and all the special interest groups that contribute to each of them – either these so-called ‚ÄúProgressives‚Äù have deep financial pockets or outside interest groups paying their way – because quite frankly we don’t recall Rep. Carl or any of the other PDS-ers having one fundraiser, but we could be wrong.