This Thursday evening, April 5, the Somerville Chamber of Commerce Business After Hours is being held at MidiCi The Neapolitan Pizza Company from 5:00 to 7:00 p.m. No cover, free appetizers, excellent networking, business card drawing and cash bar. Sponsored this month by the East Cambridge Savings Bank and hosted by Dana Iacopucci of Cubby Oil & Energy. RSVP with name and affiliation for you and your guest to smackey@somervillechamber.org.

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Make your voice heard on the proposed new tax City Hall wants to put into effect. Make sure that the Board of Aldermen and the Curtatone administration hears from you at the public hearing on the 1% tax on selling your home here in Somerville tonight, Wednesday, April 4, 6:00 p.m., at City Hall. We hear that this new Board of Aldermen just might find out that they will have awakened some who might disagree with them going for another tax grab. It seems like all the city can do since Joe Curtatone has been elected is not only raise your taxes but find even new ways to tax us, now including if you want to sell your home. The new Board leans very heavily to the left and they want as much money as they can grab from the residents. Show up for the public hearing and let your voices be heard, either way. But we have a suggestion if what the Board wants to do is to help middle income families stay: they can ask the state for more Section 8 housing grants. We think it’s too late to save the middle incomers here in Somerville. Soon it will be two different classes of residents, the very poor and the very rich. Again, the middle income population will run from the city because of all the taxes that keep pounding the residents. The City of Cambridge City Council was proposing the same 1% tax on home sales that could also have been 2%, but the Cambridge property owners showed up at public hearings and made their voices heard and the Council voted the proposal down. Maybe the same thing will happen here in Somerville. Again, we think that no longer can voices go silent. Show the administration and the left leaning Board who it is they work for. It’s called a transfer tax. Remember, once they vote on a tax affirmatively they will never do away with it. And aren’t you upset that the sales tax was increased so that now the city of Somerville gets a part of the sales tax directly? Ask yourself how much more in taxes you want to pay.

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Last week we mentioned that because the Board subcommittee didn’t do their job on appointments with the police cadets instead of confirming them to the full Board in time, they stooped to asking political questions, so the Board had to call an emergency meeting. Well, we heard that meeting was supposed to be at 12 noon because certain members couldn’t attend in the evening because of Passover. Someone must have realized that Good Friday is also a Christian holiday and is supposed to be observed from 12:00 to 3:00 p.m. It’s one of the most celebrated of Christian holidays. So they postponed the meeting to 4:00 p.m. and guess what? Five of the alderman didn’t show up. Were some of them on that subcommittee? Who sets the time frame? If the meeting had to be done prior to Monday so that the cadets could start their training, why not have the meeting Saturday? Since they are now getting paid 41K a year for a part time job, why not avoid offending anyone and have the meeting on Saturday?

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By the way, here we go again. Newstalk has been a part of the paper since its beginning. It’s basically a rumor column, as well as sharing information on events here in the city. It doesn’t have anyone’s name on it. Many individuals throughout the city and at various city departments send us information and some of it is just rumors, so we print it. Every once in a while new people move into the city and read our paper but can’t figure out what a rumor column is. First of all, we are only a community paper. We only print local Somerville items. We have always encouraged residents to write letters or op-ed pieces sharing their opinions, and we also hear tips on what is happening around the city. Any citizen of Somerville who wants to write a piece or send us a tip on something that is going on can call in or write. We would be happy to look at it. We have several people who write pieces with different opinions and we once again always encourage anyone else to do so. We don’t judge!

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Another Giggles Comedy Night is coming up, this time for the Masonic Lodge on Highland Avenue. Specifically, the Building Association is having its 6th Annual Giggles Comedy Night at Giggles on Rte. 1 in Saugus on Wednesday April 25 at 6:30 p.m. Lots of laughs with 3-4 professional comedians, over 23 gift baskets specially made for the event, and a great time for all. Only $25 per ticket for all the pizza you can eat and all the laughs you can stand. It’s not a tax deductible night but a funable night. Tickets at the door or email Donald Norton at donaldfnorton@gmail.com.

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So, we had 1 or 2 inches of snow – maybe a dusting – on the first day of the month. No snow emergency called day before? No banning of cars day before? And no school cancelling the day before? What’s this city coming to? Or maybe DPW Commissioner Stan Koty was on another vacation cruise. Doesn’t matter, he can’t use the two-way in the DPW office as he’s barred from it by the union.

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A rumor we’re hearing is that Mayor Joe Curtatone is calling around various businesses or institutions looking for jobs. It’s no surprise, he has told different people he’s not going to run for re-election. We also hear several names of some that might be thinking about running for mayor, leaving some wards here open for local races. Of course, a lot can happen in a year, can’t it? But our sources confirm that the mayor is activity looking.

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Speaking of city unions, how come we can buy so many new vehicles, create huge pay raises for city department heads and appointees, and many of the city unions have still been working for several years without a contract. So why are the new aldermen not demanding that the city negotiate in good faith a new contract for the many hard working city employees that deserve it? What surprises us is the fact that several unions backed different candidates for office and it’s now April and we don’t see any pressure from the on the mayor to get something done. Maybe the Board is being offered a new pay raise. It’s terrible that the Board is not asking questions on why there has been no pay raise.

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Happy birthday this week to the following: Happy birthday Sue Pye, of the famous Pye family from Somerville. A great lady and we hope she has a wonderful birthday. Happy birthday to Tyler Hart, of the famous Harts. Happily married and we know he must be celebrating a great birthday. Happy birthday to Pat Scrima, a great guy and former resident who used to work down at ISD. We hope he has a great birthday. Finally, to Joe Cassaro Sr., we hope he has a great birthday as well. To all the others we might have missed, we wish you a happy birthday.

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On Friday, April 20, the Dave Martini and Nick Peters Scholarship Fund is having A Night with Jim Plunkett. The event is being held at the Dante Club, 5 Dante Terrace off Craigie Street here in Somerville. It’s a great time and lots of fun. Tickets are $40, and include well-known local singer Jim Plunkett, plus a 50/50 auction, lots of raffles, and a buffet dinner. For tickets, please contact: Janet7345@yahoo.com or you can purchase tickets at the Eventbrite page, www.eventbrite.com/e/dave-nicvk-scholarship-fundraiser-with-jim-plunkett-tickes-44716590526

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Last week it was pointed out that we missed a couple of birthdays, and we mentioned a couple of names. Well, again we forgot a couple and were reminded that two others celebrated their birthdays. Happy birthday to Ricky Lewis, celebrating a week or so ago. Ricky, who currently lives in Florida, was originally from East Somerville. He reads our paper all the time. A big happy birthday to Rosalee Zammuto, who is also well-known and still lives here in the city. Rosalee is noted for the wonderful pictures she takes for the Somerville News Weekly (not to be confused with us). We wish Rosalee a very nice birthday. Thank you, Bob, for letting us know! We think we are covered now. If we missed anyone, let us know.

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We heard that some of the new Board of Alderman members were yelling and screaming at various city department heads recently at their subcommittee meetings and being very disrespectful. Some of us remember that in the days of Mayor Capuano if that happened to any of his department heads he wouldn’t allow them to appear before any of the BOA’s subcommittee meeting to be mistreated and abused. We guess Mayor Joe isn’t aware of this or doesn’t care so much, since he is allowing it. We thought that the job of the aldermen was to accept or reject the mayor’s appointments, accept or reject the budget and some other minor items. We won’t mention names of those aldermen in question, but we hear that the subcommittee meetings are taped. We also heard that some alderman might want to check and make sure the microphones and cameras in the committee room are not on, just saying! We heard some very special conversations happening after the meetings are adjourned, and maybe some alderman might not want to have their words slip out.

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Our own congressman and former mayor Mike Capuano held a fundraiser recently in Boston and well over 200 people attended. We hear he raised over $100K for this one event. Congressman Mike is a good guy, but he has competition this year. He will be looking to wake up that army of his that he had back when he first ran. Hundreds of volunteers. We here at The Times didn’t get an invitation, but we had spies there and a few of them and gave us an accurate account. Note: Mayor Joe Curtatone wasn’t present!

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The Somerville Garden Club presents Gardening to Attract Native Bees, April 11, 7:00 – 9:00 p.m. Nick Dorian, a first-year Ph.D. student in the Crone Lab at Tufts University, is an ecologist interested in bee biology and conservation, plant-pollinator interactions, and modeling the population dynamics and movement of insects. Nick also has a passion for gardening and has planted pollinator gardens in Somerville and Medford in part to support urban bees and to raise awareness about their importance. All Somerville Garden Club meetings are free and open to the public. Meetings are held at the Tufts Administration Building, (TAB), 167 Holland Street, second floor, wheelchair accessible. Parking is available, and the building is a ten-minute walk from the Davis Square MBTA stop. For additional information please visit www.somervillegardenclub.org.

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El Sistema Somerville, the daily after school music program for Somerville Public Schools, will be having a Gala Fundraiser Concert on Friday, April 13, 8:00 p.m., at the East Somerville Community School auditorium. The goal for this fundraiser is to raise money to support the costs of music instrument repairs at El Sistema. Their total instrument repair costs will exceed $4,000 this year, and these donations will help us continue to provide high quality instruments to students in need who could not otherwise afford them. $10 per person. Students and siblings free. Tickets available from the El Sistema office, ESCS Room 151, Monday – Friday between 2:00 – 6:00 p.m.