City Councilor Mary Ellen Daly-O’Brien.
Click image for Haverhill City Council agenda.
Haverhill City Councilor Mary Ellen Daly-O’Brien is spearheading the city’s push to fast track replacement of the I-495 bridges over the Merrimack River near Ward Hill.
Last week, 10 automobiles were sidelined with flat tires after striking a pot hole on the southbound side of the bridge. The councilor plans to formally ask the state to speed up replacement of the 55-year-old bridge.
“Ask the mayor as well as my fellow city councilors to address a letter to Rep. (Brian S.) Dempsey and our other members of our delegation to put it forward. I trust Brian explicitly and I know he’ll do the right thing.”
Daly-O’Brien said she has already informally called Dempsey about moving up the timetable to replace the failing bridge. It’s time to end the patchwork of repairs, she said.
“It’s going to be one more thing. It’s going to be another little repair that falls apart in so many months and it’s intolerable. That is a huge bridge. There is an enormous amount of traffic on 495 and this really has to be addressed.”
A $50 million bridge replacement project is supposed to begin modestly this fall with a $12 million down payment by the state and federal governments. However, an initial timetable suggests it will take three years to complete the work.
O’Brien said, as an elected official, she fully understands how money issues slow down critical projects.
“I know the infrastructure of Massachusetts as well as the United States has taken a toll because money has been spent in other ways, and I totally get it. We make choices like that all the time at city council about which way we’re going to spend our money.”
O’Brien reflected on earlier mishaps involving the Interstate bridge.
“We’ve had numerous problems with the bridge. I think back about the poor llama that almost got thrown off the bridge in a trainer. And then it was followed some months later by, I think it was, a horse trailer. So, what’s next? Is it going to be a human life that is taking a toll?”
Last week’s pot hole opened in the usual place—the southbound bridge between exits 49 and 48, police said.
Mr. Burns,
Your 1.9 billion dollar figure comes from FAIR?
The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), is an anti-immigrant organization that has been identified as a hate group since 2008 because of its virulent and false attacks on non-white immigrants.
FAIR is a lobbying organization. FAIR doesn’t peddle facts; it peddles hate. Its lobbying and legal efforts are based on fomenting fear, on exploiting racial tensions and economic anxieties to convince people that the source of all their problems are illegal immigrants.
Want some evidence FAIR is a hate group? Read on.
FAIR founder John Tanton, a man with a lengthy record of friendly correspondence with Holocaust deniers, a former Klan lawyer and leading white nationalist thinkers, has repeatedly suggested that racial conflict will be the outcome of immigration. In 1998, he told a reporter that whites would inevitably develop a racial consciousness because “most people don’t want to disappear into the dustbin of history,” and added that once whites did become racially conscious, the result would be “the war of each against all.”
Dan Stein, FAIR’s president, is no better. “Immigrants don’t come all church-loving, freedom-loving, God-fearing,” he said in 1997. “Many of them hate America, hate everything that the United States stands for. Talk to some of these Central Americans.”
Need more examples? Former Colorado Gov. Richard Lamm, a longtime member of FAIR’s board of advisors, once said that “new cultures” in America were “diluting what we are and who we are.” And Joseph Turner, FAIR’s former Western field representative, once accused Mexican immigrants of turning California into a “third world cesspool.”
Not to mention FAIR’s “suggested reading” on immigration, which includes white nationalist Peter Brimelow’s “Alien Nation,” a book whose central thesis is that America should remain a country dominated by whites.
FAIR also recommends Pat Buchanan’s “State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America,” which argues that America’s shift away from being white-dominated is “one of the greatest tragedies in human history.”
By defending racism, encouraging xenophobia and nativism, and giving its all to efforts to keep America white, FAIR has more than earned its place in the pantheon of hate groups.
It’s not my figure, it’s FAIR’s, I didn’t legitimize it one way or another, nor PEW. I also noticed you forgot to mention The MA State Auditors findings, is Suzanne Bump anti-immigrant or part of a hate group?
“defending racism, encouraging xenophobia and nativism” –
You can save the Democratic talking points for someone that cares about them. I don’t. I care about the rule of law, and both Party’s and their supporters thumb their noses at them.
Sadly Cee, Buchanan is right. It IS a third world invasion and it WILL have an epic affect on our country. Buchanan predicted this would happen back in the 80’s as he predicted NAFTA would decimate our jobs and cities. And it did !
thank you MEDO’B…………..
To say the bridge is an embarrassment would be an understatement.
Someone is going to get killed on that bridge. Good for calling for a fast track….it really needs to be called an emergency.
Mary Ellen, you’re never a disappointment. Maybe you can print up some tshirts?
Llamas Lives Matter !!!!
Sadly, Jack Haverhill, you never disappoint either. So much vitriol, so little time. I didn’t think it likely that anyone could find something so offensive to say on this particular issue, but you did.
So offensive? I thought I was tame.
I was going to ask her why she feels compelled to comment about the safety of Llamas but didn’t bother to say a thing…not one thing… when a teenage girl was dragged into the woods at Riverside Park by two criminal trespassers in this country illegally and raped. With her being a Liberal Democrat Award Winner and I’m sure pro-woman’s rights, you’d think she would have said something about such a viscious sex crime in the city she is an elected representative, don’t you think? Yet, Llamas are what she is concerned about?
You know those criminals, dontcha Cee? The ones that are ripping off Massachusetts taxpayers to tune of $1.9BILLION…Yes Billion….EVERY year in welfare costs which they have no right getting. How many bridges could be fixed and built in Massachusetts if brain dead liberals like O’Brien actually did something about the corruption and thievery instead of standing by and doing nothing??
C’mon Cee, you can’t make this up it’s so insane!
Facts about illegal immigrants in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts:
Immigrants who are here illegally cannot get either food stamps or cash assistance. If they have children who are born in the U.S., those children are eligible for food stamps and cash assistance. But it’s just to cover the kids.
Illegal immigrants do get some limited housing subsidies. If it’s housing subsidized by the federal government, the illegal immigrants are required to share a home with at least one family member who is in the country legally and pay a share of the rent.
Illegal immigrants are not eligible for Medicaid, the federal program for low-income Americans, and they also can’t get into the state-subsidized health insurance programs through Massachusetts’ Health Connector. In fact, legal immigrants can’t do that until they’ve been here at least five years.
Illegal immigrants are not eligible for unemployment in Massachusetts.
Illegal immigrants are not eligible for in-state college tuition rates.
Everybody’s looking for ways to save money, and everybody’s looking for government waste. Illegal immigrants are an easy population to pick on.
I’ve never seen anything that supports your assertion that illegal immigrants cost the state 1.9 billion. Care to provide your source? As a courtesy, I would ask you to resist the impulse to call me names or assume you can easily label my politics, if you choose to respond in this forum.
The children of Invaders are simply taking advantage of The 14th Amendment which was meant for Black Slaves. Both Party’s have failed on addressing this issue.
Invaders can and do still receive healthcare in Massachusetts, paid for by taxpayers, mostly through the Health Safety Net pool.
Invaders can and do work, just like the Invader that raped a woman at Haverhill Stadium. He did NOT pay taxes because he worked under the table for a roofing company. Another issue and failing of government not going after employers of Invaders. Of those issued tax I.D.’s, that is just over 1% of federal income taxes collected.
The Massachusetts State Auditor routinely published fraud and accounting issues, which also includes monies going to Invaders.
The fiscal burden of $1.9 billion is from a report by Federation For American Immigration Reform.
Some of the aforementioned does include/exclude costs attributed to healthcare, social welfare, education, and of course the criminal justice system.
Invaders are easy because it’s a rule of law issue, abet one that isn’t enforced, until now.
Cee, how about answering my question?
Why do you think Daily O’Brien would advocate for the safety of Llamas, but say nothing about a teenager being raped in a city park in the city she is an elected official in? Save the “you’ll have to ask her” line. What’s your opinion?
On a similar note, Haverhill female State Representative Linda Dean-Campbell, who is the Co-Chairman of the Legislature’s Committee on Public Safety, and also a liberal democrat like O’Brien, also said nothing publicly about the rape in Haverhill. Yet shortly after she introduced legislation to protect the well being of dogs and cats while at Massachusetts MSPCA’s.
What is it about female elected officials in Haverhill? They say nothing about the brutal treatment of young women in the city, instead spending their energies in protecting pets and animals? What do you think that’s all about Cee? Talk about blatantly ignoring the consequences of the liberal public policy to protect the agenda, huh?
That’s a good one !
This has been going on for decades and you are screaming now about fast tracking the bridge ? Just shows how late to the party and out of touch most of these folks really are. If you look at that bridge from an aerial view, you can see the dozens of patches that have been done to fix the holes. Where have you been MEDO for all this time ?