Let’s have a little chat about “politicking.”

In the Newburyport Daily News, March 15, 2006, Mayor John Moak said, “Maybe I haven’t been spending enough time politicking.”

Tom Ryan the editor of the Undertoad has made the observation that Mayor John Moak had been paying attention to the Newburyport department heads but not reaching out and paying attention to the Newburyport City Council.

The Newburyport Daily News on March 17, 2006 say’s, “It was the first time Moak has addressed councilors at a meeting. He believed the reason they did not approve his requests Monday was because he did not do enough “politicking” beforehand.”

What I hear from many Newburyport City Councilors is that they feel that they have been ignored and shut out by Mayor John Moak. Newburyport City Councilor Bruce Vogel goes on record as saying that in the March 17th article in the Newburyport Daily News and also expresses his frustration at the lack of a “collaborative approach to governing” by Mayor John Moak in the Newburyport Current, March 17, 2006.

So I was really surprised to read in today’s Newburyport Daily News, March 22, 2006 that former mayor Byron Matthews, Mayor John Moak’s controversial appointment to the NRA board has this to say:

” ‘One thing lacking is no one talks to the mayor,’ Matthews said. “It’s time we starting communicating, the City Council ought to be interested in that.’ ”

Wow. Lots and lots of people have been talking and trying to reach out to Mayor John Moak, and that includes members of the City Council, and as I’ve said in other posts, from everything that I’ve been told, Mayor John Moak is just not listening, not listening at all. Let’s just take his very public and repeated comments on the fact that he apparently has had no interest in taking into account the NRA survey for Newbuyrport’s waterfront and has said on record repeatedly, that he is going to do exactly what he wants.

This is the kind of politicking I do not like. I do not like it when good people try to reach out to Mayor John Moak again and again and then are “accused” and “blamed” (harsh words, but that’s what it sure sounds like to me) of not wanting to communicate with him. It would be one reason right off the bat that I would have reservations about former mayor Byron Matthews being on the NRA. It appears to me that there has been a vast lack of politicking on Mayor Moak’s part, and not any lack of trying to reach out on the part of the Newburyport City Council. Good grief, let’s set the record straight on this one.

Mary Eaton, Newburyport