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Mayor James J. Fiorentini wants the Haverhill City Council to make an exception to its recently passed prohibition on in-street fundraising to allow city firefighters to collect money for the Muscular Dystrophy Association, saying the all-out ban “goes too far.”
Fiorentini on April 18 vetoed a council ordinance passed a week earlier banning so-called tag days in or on any public way in the city. Councilors said the move was to alleviate traffic and to protect the solicitors who stand in traffic.
Other than city firefighters, who perform the “Fill the Boot for MDA” campaign every year around Labor Day to raise money for research and services for those with muscular dystrophy, the most common in-street fundraising efforts are by local veterans groups.
Fiorentini is asking the council to allow firefighters to collect on Water Street in front of the city’s central fire station. If the council agrees to the mayor’s request, all other in-street fundraising, including collection by veterans groups, would continue to be banned.
According to council rules, the mayor’s request must remain on file through one council meeting cycle, so the soonest it could be acted on is May 2. However, Fiorentini will be unavailable that week and has asked the council to postpone action until May 9.
I smell a lawsuit coming here. You cannot discriminate for one group against another. So much for all of the Mayors’ talk about compassion and understanding. He puts on a good charade but in reality it is all about himself looking good. Seems the council understands it is all or nothing.
While I support these methods of collecting funds for various charities, I don’t see how the Mayor or City Council can ban one group (the Veterans) one day in the streets collecting, but allow the fire fighters to collect for 3 days in the streets. Plus this Water street location is not (was not) on the approved list of streets to collect funds on. Two wrongs don’t make it right. They should make the rules fair, and encompassing to all who wish to collect for charities. Allow the Fire Fighters three days, then the Veterans get three days. Fire fighters allowed to collect on Water Street, then the Veterans can as well.
In other aspects of this issue with traffic, simple change to ‘coin toss’ instead of a fill the boot, stop and go traffic….
In 2010 fire fighters all across the State of Massachusetts falsely signed documentation stating that they had taken state mandated EMT training which they never took. In the process they committed felony theft as they were compensated $1,800.00 each by the city that they work in. There was a total of 30 Haverhill fire fighters who conspired with each other to rip off taxpayers…more than double the number of any other city in the state.
The EMT scandal was followed by Haverhill fire fighters conspiring with each other to pull off a sick time scam. HFD employees planned a way to rip off taxpayers by falsely calling in sick so the then covering person could collect overtime pay.
The sick time scam was followed by Haverhill fire fighters secretly covering shifts and sharing comp time for one of their brothers who, unknown to department management, was in prison in New Hampshire.
This was then followed by a HFD employee publicly stating that they didn’t respond to a fire properly in the city in which an 80 year old woman died because of financial reasons during a contract negotiation. This was such egregious behavior it brought Ed Kelly the Boston area fire fighters union chief to the city to smooth things over.
Through all of this thieving, cheating and ripping off taxpayers by HFD employees through the years one thing remained constant…the mayor standing by them and supporting them at every turn. And now here is the mayor defending the rights of these known crooks to be out on the streets of the city collecting cash?
The city council needs to shut these thieves down.