Absentee ballots are now available for the Tuesday, March 3, presidential primary election. Massachusetts voters may use an absentee ballot if they will be out of the city on election day, have a disability that prevents them from voting at a polling place, religious reasons, or if they are confined in a correctional facility. Voters can request an absentee ballot by downloading and returning the absentee ballot form available on www.somervillema.gov/elections.

(The opinions and views expressed in the commentaries and letters to the Editor of The Somerville Times belong solely to the authors and do not reflect the views or opinions of The Somerville Times, its staff or publishers.)

By Joseph A. Curtatone

A monthly look at ways to get involved with your city: Don’t just live in Somerville, be Somerville!

Work at a Polling Location in the Presidential Primary
The Elections Department is hiring polling place workers for the Tuesday, March 3, Presidential Primary Election. All registered Massachusetts voters are eligible to apply. Polling place workers are paid $165 for the day and work from 6:30 a.m. until shortly after the polls close at 8 p.m. with a two-hour break. For more information, please contact Maria Pierotti at 617-625-6600 ext. 4200 or mpierotti@somervillema.gov.

The next time you visit the City of Somerville website to pay your tax or water bills, the online system will look a little different. In December 2019, the City’s Treasury Department changed to “City Hall Systems,” a new bill payment vendor that will make paying and viewing bills online more convenient and user-friendly. The new system allows customers to manage all of their bills from one account, offers a shopping cart checkout process, provides historical payment and bill information, and assists with taxpayer questions through its call center (including taking payments over the phone), email, and online multilingual chat features.

By Jim Clark

Somerville Police officers were dispatched to the Somerville Hospital last week to investigate reports of an assault that took place earlier at an unnamed restaurant on Broadway.

Upon their arrival, the officers met with the victim, who reportedly stated that he was at his station in the restaurant’s kitchen preparing meals. He said he was not pleased with the quality of the potatoes, and he approached the manager to make a complaint about them.

Life in the Ville by Jimmy Del Ponte

I know my English Composition, sentence structure punctuation, phrasing and spacing in these stories aren’t grammatically correct. They are horrendous. But it’s not the fault of the great Somerville and parochial school teachers I’ve had. They tried, but I never paid attention. Nevertheless 13 years of schooling produced many teachers and a lot of them have remained in the area.

Concerns over the deleterious effects on operator health and the environment, as well as noise pollution in general, have prompted city officials to look into the possibilities for a ban on extremely loud leaf blowers.

By Thalia Plata

A citywide ban of gas-powered leaf blowers was a major topic on the agenda at the Somerville City Council’s Legislative Matters Committee meeting on Thursday, January 16.

Councilors discussed a ban of leaf blowers that produce sound levels of 60 decibels or higher, which would consist of gas-powered leaf blowers and very loud electric leaf blowers. Use of all other leaf blowers would be restricted to an as of yet undecided time frame.

Keynote speaker Aba Taylor of the Interaction Institute for Social Change spoke at the Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration held on January 20.

By Shira Laucharoen

The annual Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration event invited audience members to re-examine the traditional stories they know and look to the future, held at East Somerville Community School on January 20. The program was themed “Working Today Towards a Better Tomorrow,” and featured student essay contest winners, as well as keynote speaker Aba Taylor of the Interaction Institute for Social Change.

As part of its multi-pronged response to resident concerns regarding the “Boston Straight Pride Parade” and counter-protest of August 31, 2019, the City of Somerville invites all members of the public to participate in a community dialogue. The forum will be held just outside of Union Square, in the Argenziano School Cafetorium at 290 Washington St., tonight, Wednesday, January 22, from 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. For more information about the city’s follow-up process to the “Boston Straight Pride Parade” and Counter-Protest, the Somerville Police Department’s After Action Report is available at this link, and the administration’s memorandum to City Council regarding next steps is available here.

In 1834, an Ursuline Convent on Mt. Benedict, in what is now Somerville, was vandalized and then burned to the ground. Join in at the Somerville Museum Sunday, January 26, for a talk by Salem State Professor Nancy Lusignan Schultz on the 20th Anniversary of her book Fire and Roses: The Burning of the Charlestown Convent, 1834.

Eagle Feathers #196 – Our Tripolitan Hero

By Bob (Monty) Doherty

In 1808, a 20-foot tall Italian marble monument was erected just inside the gates of the Navy Yard in Washington, D.C. The U.S.S. Constitution delivered it from Italy via Boston. It was the city’s first out door memorial, the first American monument approved by Congress, and the only one for decades to follow.