****INTERESTING!****
— South Shore town administrator out of a job after 7 years by Hannah Morse, The Patriot Ledger: “Michael Maresco is out as Marshfield town administrator. Following an executive session held with the select board Wednesday morning, the town issued a news release relaying that the town had ‘entered into a mutual agreement with Michael Maresco to resolve his employment status.’” — Hopkinton Public Schools goes in-house to pick next superintendent by Tom Benoit, The MetroWest Daily News: “The School Committee opted to go in-house to hire its next superintendent, unanimously selecting Hopkinton High School Principal Evan Bishop on Thursday to replace the retiring Carol Cavanaugh. Bishop was chosen by the School Committee over South Hadley Superintendent of Schools Mark McLaughlin. A third finalist for the job — Ross Mulkerin, director of finance and operations for the Nashoba Regional School District — had previously withdrawn from consideration.” — New Bedford has 'functional zero' homeless veterans. Here's how the city did it. by Frank Mulligan, The Standard-Times: “The last time Gov. Maura Healey visited New Bedford’s Veterans Transition House, she was attorney general and construction work was ongoing. She came back as governor Tuesday to tour what is now the VTH campus to praise its transitional housing and other support services for veterans. Healey also wanted to highlight the first year of her statewide End Veteran Homelessness campaign.” excerpts: New Bedford has achieved 'functional zero' vet homelessness“No one who has served our country should ever have to worry where they’re going to sleep at night,” she said. New Bedford has achieved “functional zero” when it comes to veteran homelessness. That means any homelessness is rare, brief and non-recurring, and no veterans are forced live on the street. That’s her campaign's statewide goal, she said. Progress is being made on the state level, Healey added. More than 500 veterans have enrolled into the program, 100 veterans have received secure, permanent housing, another 100 have received transitional housing while permanent housing is sought, and hundreds more are getting services they need to get housed and stay housed, she said.
It’s been replaced by a new building with 30 units of veteran housing, as part of VTH’s neighborhood rehabbing efforts. Due to demand, they doubled the number of beds available in its first year, Reid said. There are 25 veterans in that program today, who are also provided the support services they need. About 200 veterans per year avail themselves of the support services VTH offers.
— City Council won't confirm Kelly Furtado as police chief; calls for fair interview process by Emily Scherny, The Herald News: “After an hourlong debate that was launched by colorful infighting between council members, the City Council rejected the appointment of Kelly Furtado as the Fall River Police Department chief of police at its April 8 meeting. Police officers filled the majority of seats in the City Council chambers in an unprecedented show of support for Furtado, who had been serving as the department’s interim chief since Oct. 15 of last year, following former Chief Paul Gauvin being returned to his prior rank of captain in September 2024.” excerpt: Police officers filled the majority of seats in the City Council chambers in an unprecedented show of support for Furtado, who had been serving as the department’s interim chief since Oct. 15 of last year, following former Chief Paul Gauvin being returned to his prior rank of captain in September 2024. Arguments in defense of both the third-party investigation conducted by Daniel Bennett’s Comprehensive Investigations and Consulting LLC that resulted in Gauvin’s termination on March 31 — and Furtado’s tenacious ability to lead with integrity and boost officers’ morale — were hurled between city councilors, eventually resulting in a narrow 5-4 vote, broken only by City Council President Joseph D. Camara. Furtado could be seen shaking her head as City Councilors Cliff Ponte and Shawn E. Cadime railed against interdepartmental “cliques” that, to them, ousted Gauvin using “intimidation tactics,” according to Cadime, at the same time Furtado served as interim chief. Mayor Paul Coogan recommended Furtado for the role in an official letter to the council, but the council wasn’t prepared to act on impulse, and in attempting to form a conclusion, took aim at the events pertaining to Gauvin’s investigation to wield as a measuring stick to evaluate Furtado’s performance to date. Councilors voted to send a letter to Coogan, requesting a fair interview process, through which Furtado may apply. Now, Coogan says his administration is ”looking at options,” and wishes to act in the best interest of the city. ****NEW BEFORD! ***** — New Bedford awarded a $110,000 pandemic-era grant despite a risk assessment’s warning that the organization ‘cannot be entrusted to manage federal funds.’ by Grace Ferguson, The New Bedford Light.
Water was pouring into the William H. Carney Lodge — enough to fill a barrel during some storms. This little clubhouse in New Bedford’s West End was a gathering place for the city’s Cape Verdean community for decades. But it’s been empty since 2020, and two years ago the displaced club’s members started pleading with the city for funding to replace the leaking roof so they could move back in. Without it, they said, the water damage threatened to compromise the structure beyond repair. The city swept in with $110,000 of pandemic relief funds in December, funding the roof replacement and other renovation costs. Then, earlier this year, the city’s Community Preservation Committee recommended another grant of $215,000 for fire safety and energy efficiency upgrades. But a New Bedford Light investigation found that city officials proceeded despite an internal report warning that it was a risky project. A routine risk assessment for the first grant said a representative of the Carney Lodge lied repeatedly and refused to follow federal laws. The organization hadn’t filed its tax returns for several years when it applied for the funding, leading the IRS to revoke its nonprofit status.
The assessment concluded with a grave warning, that the organization “cannot be entrusted to manage federal funds.” Mayor Jon Mitchell approved the grant anyway, outside a competitive application process that other vacant property projects underwent. City officials did not agree to be interviewed. In written statements, they said they disagreed with the risk assessment and provided a “relatively modest” grant of pandemic relief funding to revive an important space for the community. The city’s public information officer did not directly address repeated follow-up questions about the risk assessment and process for awarding the grant. The Carney Lodge, founded in 1915, is the local chapter of the Improved Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks of the World, which calls itself the “largest Black fraternal organization in the world.” Lodge members admitted that their organization was in disarray last year, though they have worked to fix the issues over the past few months. Its nonprofit status was reinstated last fall. “We are an upfront organization,” said William Andrews, the lodge’s president. A risky grantBefore the city officially awarded the Carney Lodge its pandemic relief grant, an internal city report completed in November warned that it was a high-risk project. The city routinely conducted risk assessments on projects receiving federal pandemic relief funds. These reports evaluated the risk that a project would fail to meet its goals or comply with requirements. The Light obtained 13 of these risk assessments through public records requests. The Carney Lodge assessment stood out. Not only did it receive the highest risk score of the 11 projects graded on the same scale, but no other assessments included warnings as stark or as detailed. It said that Margaret Mott, a representative for the lodge, provided “repeated and blatant misrepresentation of facts” in emails and “adamantly refuses to follow federal procurement law.” The fact that federal pandemic relief money was funding most of the lodge’s project also increased its risk, the report said. The organization’s failure to file its tax returns for multiple consecutive years was enough to automatically earn the project a high-risk score. Jennifer Maxwell, the city auditor who prepared the report, declined to comment for this story. She resigned from her position in January, according to the city’s personnel department. In an email to The Light, Mott said she never lied or refused to follow the law. She wrote that the assessment’s “accusations” were “baseless.” “I had to fight tooth and nail for that funding,” she said in a brief phone interview on March 31. She ended the interview before a Light reporter could ask for more detail about the “misrepresentations” described in the report. She did not agree to a second interview. It’s not clear what facts Mott, the lodge representative, may have misrepresented during the risk assessment process. The report doesn’t provide detailed examples. City officials did not answer questions about which facts Mott allegedly misrepresented. City Chief Operating Officer Christina Connelly provided a one-sentence written response to The Light’s question asking for details on them: “I don’t know specifically what is being referred to here,” she said. Public Information Officer Jonathan Darling wrote in a statement that “the City” disagreed with the assessment’s conclusions. He said there’s risk in any investment and that the city mitigated risks for this project by paying vendors directly instead of giving the money to the organization, and by inspecting the work. The city officially awarded the grant on Dec. 15, two weeks before the city’s deadline to finalize its pandemic relief spending. Between 2021 and 2024, the city committed $82 million in federal grant money to various projects using its allocation from the American Rescue Plan Act. Since then, the Carney Lodge’s roof has been replaced, and the next step is to replace the interior ceilings, the project manager said. Two lettersThe Carney Lodge renovation did not have to go through a competitive process to receive its grant, unlike many other construction projects around the city that received pandemic relief funding. The lodge sent a letter to the city’s chief operating officer asking for $110,000 last June, city documents show. Less than a month later, the mayor wrote back with a conditional award of $85,000 in pandemic relief funds. That number later grew to $110,000, the lodge’s full request. This is the first time the city has disclosed that it provided a pandemic relief grant outside of a competitive application process. Connelly, who oversees the city’s pandemic relief spending, had said in previous interviews that the city chose grant recipients by issuing requests for proposals, or RFPs. Each RFP invited organizations to apply for funding in a specific category, such as housing or child care, and required projects to meet certain criteria. An internal city team or committee approved or denied the applications. At first, officials told The Light in two written responses that the lodge received the grant through the “Vacant and Abandoned Property program,” though not through an RFP. But the Carney Lodge project did not come close to meeting the requirements listed for the program in a 2022 announcement. Those projects needed to have a budget of at least $750,000, about seven times the size of the lodge’s request. And the program couldn’t fund more than 50% of project costs — but the Carney Lodge project was mostly funded by the pandemic relief grant at the time. The program’s application window closed at the end of 2022, more than a year before the lodge applied for funding. A committee reflecting “a mix of perspectives” reviewed vacant-property applications and recommended which ones to fund. But the Carney Lodge project bypassed the committee. After receiving the lodge’s letter, Connelly recommended the grant to the mayor, who approved it. After The Light asked for more information, Darling updated the city’s response and said the grant was actually awarded through the The Vacant or Abandoned Property Rehabilitation Fund, not the The Vacant or Abandoned Property Rehabilitation Program. He said the program was only one part of the fund, comparing it to slices of a larger pizza. Darling did not respond to The Light’s request for documentation showing that the fund and program are separate entities. Darling declined further comment in response to follow-up questions, including whether the city ever publicly advertised that projects could receive money from the fund outside an RFP, and how many organizations other than the Carney Lodge were awarded grants in this way. ****WORCESTER HOMELESSNESS!***** — ‘Folks in the streets’: Worcester council sees homelessness emergency by Adam Bass, MassLive.
The Worcester City Council is asking City Manager Eric D. Batista to provide them with an emergency plan to address homelessness in the city. The council voted 9-0 Tuesday night on the request, which was put forward by District 5 Councilor Etel Haxhiaj. | 
