In an interview with the TAB’s Laura Lovett, Mayor Setti Warren emphasized his focus would remain on Newton as he begins his quest for governor.
“Being the mayor is my first priority. I have done this job 24/7 and will continue to do it,” said Warren
“Warren told the TAB that if he wins re-election he will serve out his entire term and won’t campaign for another office while he is mayor.”
http://newton.wickedlocal.com/x631384946/Setti-Warren-I-m-excited-about-the-opportunity-to-run-again
Setti Warren has been gearing up for this run for many months. But I can tell you from first hand experience that he’s been pretty darn engaged as mayor the whole time. If and until we see evidence to the contrary, I’m going to give him the benefit of the doubt that he can do his day job and run for an election that is nearly and year and a half away.
Meanwhile Tom, while staffing gaps/turnover have been a fair criticism of this administration in some past years, Mayor Warren’s current team is very solid. In particular his DPW and Planning Department hires (the two agencies I interact with most in my day job) have been terrific. (And transportation director Nicole Freedman is a rock star.)
But Gail Spector raised perhaps the most cogent argument of all on a different thread when she suggesting that if Setti Warren stepped down, it would alter the dynamics of our own mayor’s contest. We would then have an acting mayor who is also campaigning for mayor at the same time.
This is a joke. Do any of you actually believe him any more??
What ever happened to him filling all the managerial positions he fired and he was going to fill those seats with the greatest managerial team in the history of municipal management teams (paraphrasing). Lololol. He’s like 2 years old.
I would rather that the scenario
you are speaking of not happen
again Greg. Tom Concannon was in this situation against David Cohen
years ago. While Concannon was a
genial smart guy he had no business running or serving as Mayor of Newton. A lot of people had, and have a lot to say about Cohen, I certainly did, but at least he took a stand on issues. Concannon didn’t seem to stand for anything. He was largely absent or ineffectual, especially concerning the
Needham St/ Stop and Shop battle.
The city doesn’t need a who won’t stumble or take a stand on any issue candidate, ever again
For Setti’s remaining time in office, he is going to do as little as possible to ensure “no controversy” arises.
He can’t risk to be involve in any issues which may jeopardize his changes as Governor, the only stand or decisions he’s making on behalf of Newton will be on behalf of his campaign and not Newton….
and how’s that’s different from the past six-plus months?
@Charlie: Not unusual but also not the right thing to do either.
It would not be that unusual for the Pres of the Council to be acting Mayor while campaigning…it would be like a tryout for Scott. Bonus: Setti would be lauded for saving the taxpayers money, and he could focus completely on his race for Gov.
Do I see that as realistically happening? No. But it’s fun to speculate :)
So when he is no longer Mayor in January, 2018 – who will pay for his Police Escort/Drivers? His Governor campaign funds?
Greg is spot on about the Planning Department. We’ve had great professional support from many in the Department in our efforts to move consideration of a Local Historic District (LHD for Newton Highlands, especially from Katy Hax Holmes and Barbara Kurze with Historic Preservation who have kept us going off the rails on a few occasions. But also from Barney Heath, Jim Freas and Alice Ingerson who have been very generous with their time, advice, support and guidance and Doug Greenfield in ITT who has suffered through many changes we made to the LHD boundary map. Great folks as are many others I’ve interacted with at City Hall.
@Greg
Words matter. Promises matter. Honesty matters.
Setti thought his was an important enough that he made a specific commitment to Newton voters. While your logic makes sense, Setti didn’t agree when it mattered.
Some will agree with you, others won’t.
Setti should keep his word.
Joanne – It’s well known that the police are bodyguards and not drivers – not something Newton should be proud of.
I’d like to add the law department, the IT department, and Elections department as doing superb work for the city. And of course David Olsen, but that goes without saying. DPW has been great of late and Josh Morse in the buildings department is terrific as well.
I’m not dissing our city employees…they are terrific.
I am making fun of the comments that come from the Mayor. Unless you all think this is the greatest municipal team in the history of municipal teams…lolol. Who hired these people?…I don’t think we’ve had an HR director for the past 5 years…lol.
But you guys keep believing this man and keep pumping him up. The farther you pump him up, the larger the fall.
Andy Levin weighed in on this issue in today’s TAB.
I agree with Andy on many things, but for two specific reasons, I strongly disagree with his position that because Setti has worked moderately hard as Mayor he therefore deserves “comp time” to run for Governor.
First, candidate Setti promised voters that he would not seek higher office while serving as Mayor. However, the simple fact is that in the eight years that he will serve as Mayor, he will spend a reprehensible twelve months running for higher office. First he ran for the United States Senate in 2011, now he’s running for Governor in 2017. If he is willing to violate his own promise so egregiously, why should we take him at his word that Newton will remain his first priority over the next seven months?
Second, in Newton’s Charter, it reads: “The mayor shall devote full time to the office and shall not hold any other elective public office, nor actively engage in any other business, occupation or profession during the term of office as mayor.” Reasonable people can disagree as to whether Mayor Warren seeking his own personal political ambitions amounts to “any other business, occupation or profession.” However, reasonable people are likely to agree that this provision in our Charter is a mandate for any sitting Mayor that he or she must fully invest their efforts on serving the best interests of Newton.
By spending twelve months of his term as Mayor pursuing his own personal political ambitions, my opinion is that Mayor Warren has let the City of Newton down in a big way as our community is facing immediate issues that require “all in” leadership. For example, in 2016, of comparable communities, Newton saw an unmatched growth in deaths by opioid abuse by 142%. (For comparison, the entire City of Boston saw an increase of 30%.) Furthermore, Newton’s school system is facing a significant budget deficit. In fact, rather than reduce economic inequality as it exists within our schools, the Mayor successfully passed a budget which increased extracurricular fees, which inarguably increases economic inequality in Newton. Moreover, as we enter the summer months, our water fountains are still closed citywide because of a tremendous lead water issue that clearly is not fixed. I could go on and on.
In my opinion, Mayor Warren has abdicated his responsibilities as Mayor, which is why I am going to call on him (in a more detailed writing) to invest $27,125 of his Mayoral salary into an initiative that will immediately and tangibly reduce economic inequality in Newton. When he successfully pushed for his salary increase of $27,125, per the Charter’s aforementioned mandate, the assumption was that Mayor Warren would be fully invested in working hard to solve Newton’s problems. Given that he will spend a reprehensible twelve months as Mayor working hard to pursue his own personal political ambition of higher office, I hope residents agree with me that it’s reasonable to ask him to invest a small part of his salary increase in such a way that is directly tied into the reason he is supposedly running for Governor.
I was going to let this go, but there’s too much on here that I believe is sooooo wrong, I had to chime in.
First the Mayor does not work anywhere close to 70 hours a week. This is a ridiculous exaggeration.
Second, you have all been so deceived over the years you all are believing this nonsense. His staff has been involved in deceiving us. I hope someone from his staff reads this and denies what I am about to say. When his staff tells us he is in a meeting, there’s a good chance that not only is he not in a meeting, but is out of the state traveling. I am not claiming this is true everytime, but a good percentage of the time. I used to follow his expenses, because people would come to me to say they couldn’t get a meeting with him (like it’s my fault) and then I accidentally noticed that the days the staff said he was in a meeting, he would have been out in a mayors conference or some other convention. He used to pay for this out of his campaign funds directly, but after I mentioned this on this blog he started to pay for it through American Express. How do I know?? The payments for American Airlines and hotels, etc. never appeared again and the American Express increased. The beauty of paying through American Express is you don’t have to itemize on your campaign finance reports.
Here is his payment to American Express for the past 6 months:
12/5 $1109.93
1/6 $ 308.58
2/6 $5,223.28
3/3 $ 2,526.62
4/5 $ 3,148.54
5/5 $ 4,210.57
Total: $ 16,527.51
So, for you that donated money for his campaign, you have been financing his trips. I know most of you don’t care, but here it is anyway.
smile and hold the door open for hizhoner as he tries graciously to exit municipal politics, eyeing the bigger prize.