From alleged death threats to unpaid parking tickets, Somerville had a busy and quirky news year in 2007. Here are the top five news stories of the year as we see it.

“We’re going to bury him”

Rick Scirocco’s campaign for mayor had a difficult day on Friday, Aug. 24. That day, the Boston Herald ran a full page story on Scirocco’s multiple domestic violence arrests and the four restraining orders taken out against him by four different women. Later in the day the Somerville News reported Mayor Joseph A. Curtatone was being guarded by a police officer on paid detail after his office learned a Scirocco supporter – Lenny DiCicco – had told a Curtatone volunteer, “We’re going to bury him.” DiCicco insisted his remark was in reference to election results and not a threat to do bodily harm to Curtatone. However, either Curtatone or his staff took the threat seriously enough to demand an armed guard at the cost of $1,034 to protect Curtatone from the elderly DiCicco.

Obama’s parking tickets

Before Barack Obama was a United States senator and a presidential hopeful, he was a Harvard University law student living in Winter Hill who parked in bus stops and accumulated hundreds of dollars in parking tickets. And for nearly two decades those parking tickets went unpaid, until a representative of Obama’s settled his $400 debt with Cambridge’s Traffic, Parking and Transportation Department on Jan. 26.
The Somerville News broke the story on March 7 and Obama’s traffic misdeeds were reported on throughout the world in the next couple of days. It was hardly the biggest issue of the presidential campaign trail but it was the only one to involve Winter Hill.

East Somerville Community School burns

Almost 600 students lost their school when an electrical problem in a room heater caused a fiery explosion devastating the East Somerville Community School (ESCS) on Sunday Dec. 9. The ESCS was the city’s biggest elementary school and featured the only auditorium in the city aside from the one at the high school. Students returned to class 10 days later in three other schools in the city – the Edgerly, the Cummings and the Capuano schools. Curtatone estimated the damage from the fire was in the millions.

Progress on the Green Line

After almost two decades of delay, the Green Line extension through Somerville took its most substantial steps toward becoming a reality in 2007. Just weeks after announcing a possible delay in the project, Gov. Deval Patrick stood in Gilman Square and pledged his administration would try to beat the projected 2014 completion date for extending the Green Line. Then a few months later he fully funded the $600 million project for the first time. The extension has near unanimous support in the community and when the Green Line finally does roll through Somerville, 2007 will be remembered as the year it got its first big push.

New top cop in town

Anthony Holloway will become the third man to lead the city’s police force in less than three years when he takes over from Acting Police Chief Robert R. Bradley on Jan. 1. Holloway was chosen for the job by Mayor Joseph A. Curtatone in August over Bradley and Miami-Dade major Ruben Galindo.
When Holloway steps into the job in the new year he will set three milestones in the department’s history – he will be the city’s first black police chief, the first appointed by the mayor outside civil service guidelines and the first hired from outside the department.