A 2021 Haverhill mayoral contender and former Haverhill City Council Vice President Colin F. LePage said Thursday he has decided to seek re-election to the City Council as an at-large candidate. LePage now joins a five-way race for one of four at-large City Council seats, joining Council President Timothy J. Jordan; City Council Vice President John A. Michitson, who took out nomination papers this week; former Council candidate Fred A. Simmons; and Councilor Thomas J. Sullivan. Although the office he seeks has changed, LePage said his goals remain the same. “As a past city councilor and former mayoral candidate, I worked to ‘achieve more with less’ within the budget for the betterment of Haverhill,” he said in a statement.
Proponents of a plan to finance construction of the new Dr. Albert B. Consentino School through a debt exclusion raised more than $22,000 as of last Friday. The bulk of the money was used to pay for three postcard mailings and purchase lawn signs and door hangers in advance of early voting and next Tuesday’s special election. According to campaign finance reports, the Yes for Consentino committee spent $15,185 to reach voters and ask for their support.
A lack of any public comment on next year’s school budget kept a special Haverhill School Committee meeting last night to just under 10 minutes. The meeting was a follow-up to last week’s meeting where the School Committee voted 6-0 to approve a budget of just under $128 million for the upcoming school year. Last night’s meeting was designed to allow the public an opportunity to express opinions and ideas regarding how that money should be spent.
Haverhill and Lawrence are receiving $100,000 each from the state’s Greening the Gateway Cities Implementation Grant Program to plant hundreds of trees. Haverhill will plant 300 trees and hand out educational brochures about the benefits of a healthy tree canopy and tree care, while Groundwork Lawrence plants 350 trees in the South Lawrence West neighborhood, impacted by the Columbia Gas line explosion, and the Tower Hill neighborhood. The state program aims to help communities “build resilience and mitigate the harms of the climate crisis” by supporting tree plantings in Gateway Cities across Massachusetts
“Recently, I got my hands dirty in Malden planting trees.
