Good turnout of a crowd at the flag raising ceremony up on Prospect Hill Park on the 1st – as usual the Mayor was there to welcome everyone as they raised the flag. Lots of city officials were on hand as well. The ceremony marks the first flag raised by General George Washington.

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Acting Chief Bob Bradley had a nice send off party this past Friday evening at the Mt. Vernon/Wharf in Revere – the place was filled to standing room only with just about all the personnel from the station including all the high brass! One of our News Talkers just happened to be on the scene as well to wish the Chief farewell and to say thanks for a job well done! Good luck Chief!

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Year-end house cleaning to do now that 2007 is in the history books whether we liked it or not. Something of interest for the Police Department – seems that Home Depot owes the Somerville Police Department close to $70K in past due detail fees! Our sources tell us that Home Depot owes the Everett Police Department about the same amount Рwe wonder if the store managers might have a problem in paying bills?

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Kind of confusing – the near riot down at Russell Disposal‚Äôs yard this past week. Local 25 Teamsters have said they will continue to be on site everyday until Russell‚Äôs gives in!  This also means that Russell‚Äôs Disposal will have to hire a 24-hour police detail while the protests are still going on! This could run up a huge tab in the thousands for Russell Disposal Company to dish out – some of us still don‚Äôt understand why this is being done in the first place, since Russell is a non-union shop and when they asked the employees to sign the slips to become a union shop, only about 12 signed out of 120 employees – not enough to have a vote – we thought you needed at least 50% of the employees signatures? If this is true, then why is Local 25 picketing Russell?

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Well, we told you we would keep tabs on what’s going on with our former Editor РMr. McCabe Рwho also runs The Alewife in Cambridge and the new Powderhouse here in Somerville. Seems that the last update on either of the web sites was December 20th and we heard from a couple of sources that his backers aren’t going to continue to support him – that he’s out of business Рbut we don’t believe it for a second here. We are thinking that maybe it’s a ploy to continue with his criminal charges and the court appointed (free) attorney that he was granted due to supposed indigence – probably once the case is over he will go back? Time will tell, and we will keep you posted.

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The City Inaugural is slated for 6:00pm, this coming Monday, January 7th at the High School Auditorium and right afterward there will be a reception at the Holiday Inn in East Somerville. There will be plenty of News Talkers on hand at both and we’ll keep you posted.