City councillors Monday night denied a request to take by eminent domain two pieces of property on Beachmont Avenue that would have allowed stairs for beach access to be re-built at that location.
The Council voted after much discussion - discussion that included more than 25 neighbors supporting the Beachmont Avenue location and one abutter in opposition to the location. In the end, the Council needed to approve the taking - which was fully supported by Mayor Tom Ambrosino - by a two-thirds majority (meaning eight votes). However, there was enough opposition on the Council to override the swell of support present in the Council Chambers.
The final vote was six in approval and five in opposition, effectively blocking the taking.
Those councillors for the taking were Doug Goodwin, John Correggio, Arthur Guinasso, Bob Haas, Dan Rizzo and Tony Zambuto.
Those in opposition were Mark Casella, George V. Colella, Ira Novoselsky, George Rotondo and John Powers.
Goodwin said afterward that the city would probably move to try and locate the stairs at the alternate location on Winthrop Avenue - a location that was voted down by the neighborhood 177 to 56 at City Hall last summer.
See more details in Wednesday’s edition of the Journal.

The city and Club Lido owners have entered into a settlement agreement that calls for the club to close as early as September 2008, or as late as December 2009.
The settlement was announced last Thursday night at the License Commission meeting in City Hall.
Both sides are trumpeting the agreement as a good compromise and a fair agreement.
Look for more in Wednesday’s edition of the Journal.

Mayor Tom Ambrosino has formally declined an offer by state Environmental Affairs Director Ian Bowles to head up the state Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR) - the agency responsible for maintaining Revere Beach.
In a phone call Monday morning, the mayor told Bowles that he would not accept the post, but rather would seek re-election as mayor of Revere.
Many have postulated that the mayor is interested in a post within state government. The DCR post was apparently offered to him about two or three weeks ago. After a vacation two weeks ago, the mayor met with Bowles on April 23rd for most of the morning at the State House. Apparently, he took a week to consider the offer and declined it this morning.

Sigourney Street resident Vicki Richardson has been chosen as Revere’s ‘Unsung Heroine of 2007′ by the state Commission on the Status of Women.
Richardson’s nomination and award were kept a secret until just last week, when there was a surprise party for her at the RevereCARES office on Ocean Avenue.
Besides working full-time in Boston and taking care of her husband, Warren, Richardson is very active around town as a member of the Chamber of Commerce, a ComCast public access volunteer and a number of charity endeavors too long to list here. She is certainly the best choice for the award.
A formal ceremony at the State House will be Wednesday, May 16th to honor all of the recipients statewide.
Look for more in upcoming editions of the Journal.

When Revere developer Michael Venditto got approval some two years ago to build a nice new multi-use building on the Revere Dairy site on Broadway, he was handed a permit with some 17 conditions.
Now, the building still isn’t built and the conditions have become so restrictive that Venditto isn’t sure if he’ll even be able to construct the building. Part of the problem, he said, is that he is hamstrung by a condition that only allows him to accept certain commercial businesses and forces him to make the units condos rather than apartments.
“The banks don’t like these restrictions at all,” he said. “They’re very hesitant to finance the project simply because of the restrictions. They don’t want to see me carrying empty commercial spaces and paying taxes on condos that won’t sell right away.”
Monday night he will be before the Council and he is expected to get a lukewarm, if not cold, reception. He is asking the Council to give him three extra feet on his permit, letting him build up to 39 feet rather than 36 feet. Zoning allows buildings to be 50 feet on Broadway.
Last year, he attempted to get three of the restrictions amended in order to pacify his finaciers. However, he did not get that relief.
If things go the same way, Venditto said his frustration is at a level that he will just turn away from the project.
“It’s at a point where I don’t think I can build,” he said. “If I don’t, I will have to lease out the dairy and leave the property as is. This will be a beautiful building and I’m happy to do a lot of the things asked of me, but I can’t build it with some of these restrictions.”

The Revere Housing Authority (RHA) got word from the federal government this week that they have been removed from the ‘troubled performer’ list.
After compounding problems in the authority, in 2005 the RHA Board and federal Housing and Urban Development (HUD) officials began negotiating changes. In January 2006, the RHA was put on the troubled list, and the Board began implementing some major changes.
Those changes began in earnest when new RHA Executive Director Linda Shaw took the reins early last summer.
Board members had hoped to be off the list in one year, and with the coming of the letter, they did meet that goal.
“…the RHA has taken numerous steps to increase its performance, such as recruiting and hiring new staff, including the Executive Director; developing and implementing new policies and procedures in compliance with HUD regulations; assessing employee skills and providing training as necessary; improving financial management and procurement policies and practices; and ensuring annual inspections of all developments compliant with HUD’s inspection protocol,” wrote Donna Ayala, director of public housing at the Boston HUD office.
The RHA has planned a press conference on Tuesday morning to officially announce the development.

The Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR) announced yesterday that they are planning to close down the Boulevard to southbound traffic and west side parking for the next six months, starting on May 1.
The restriction will run from Revere Street to Carey Circle - the entire northern half of Revere Beach.
Tonight, Tuesday, April 24th, there will be an important meeting concerning this announcement and several others connected to the ongoing $8 million infrastructure project on Revere Beach.
Counci President John Powers is encouraging all residents from the areas of Boulevard, the Pines, Revere Street, Oak Island, Riverside and other areas to make sure they attend.
“This will be a very important meeting to them,” he said.
The meeting will take place tonight, Tuesday, April 24th, at the Jack Satter House on the Boulevard from 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.

City Councillors applauded Councillor George Rotondo’s motion Monday night that called for a change in the city ordinance that deals with billboards.
The change would fine companies that leave their billboards torn, or out of date or just unsightly. Several billboards around the city have taken on an abandoned look from time to time, with events more than six months old advertised and, in addition, the placards are often in such rough shape that the message is literally falling off the board.
Councillors also brought to light the structural deficiencies on many of the billboard towers around town, saying that they are rusted, falling apart and perhaps in danger of toppling over.
Rotondo said the worst - and perhaps only - offender is Clear Channel Outdoor, a company based in Texas and in the middle of a heartless contract war with 25 employees long-term employees who belong of the local Painter’s Union. The union has been striking at Clear Channel’s Massachusetts Headquarters in Stoneham for six weeks. In the meantime, Clear Channel has brought in out-of-state scab workers to replace the long-time employees on strike. Those employees were alleged offered a contract in which they had to take a 30 percent pay cut, lose their health benefits and work a more flexible schedule or lose their job. The chose to strike.
Said Rotondo, “This is deplorable. Half of Clear Channel’s 52 billboards in Revere appeared to me to have defect. This is exactly what Clear Channel brings to our community.”
The motion was sent directly to a public hearing for the ordinance change, which would result in stiff fines for billboard companies who don’t maintain their property.

Recent statistics unearthed by the Journal and State Sen. Jarrett Barrios’s (D-Cambridge) office show that Revere has one of the highest rates of foreclosure in the state for a city its size, and one of the highest percentages of high-interest mortgages - mortgages that often lead to foreclosure proceedings.
Some 52 percent of the mortgages currently existing in Revere were deemed high-interest, or risky, according to Barrios’s office. Also, within the last 180 days, there have been 154 foreclosures started in Revere. That makes the city the 10th highest in the state and probably the highest for a city its size.
See a more in depth article on this unfortunate trend in this week’s Journal.

School officials said they had to remove a middle schooler from one of the schools Monday for threatening to copy the actions taken at Virginia Tech last week by a disgruntled student.
The middle schooler was apparently serving an in-school suspension when he told a teacher that he could relate to the Virginia Tech shooter and actually wanted to do the same thing at his school.
“He said that what happened at Virginia Tech was a good thing and he had the same feelings as the shooter and maybe he would do the same thing,” said Superintendent Paul Dakin. “He said the only thing stopping him from doing something was that a 13-year-old can’t get a gun.”
Dakin said they contacted the parents and removed the young man from school and forced the parents to get him some help.
“We will be doing a lot of filings with the state on this to get him some help,” said Dakin.
Dakin said that they were prepared for a copycat student whose frustrations might lead them to threaten something such as this.