Revere Beach was packed on Labor Day as the last day of the summer of 2007 went into the local history books. With the beach still all chopped up while receiving its new public face, it didn’t look nearly as good as it will look next year at this time.

Next year at this time the beach will be a veritable boomtown as new developments should be well underway by that time.

In many respects, the city itself is far better off today than it was just 6 years ago - and if Mayor Ambrosino leaves shortly as expected, his legacy will be all the development ongoing that will not be finished when he is gone.

Retailers on Revere Street have suffered major losses in revenues as a result of the lengthy reconstruction of the Revere Street bridge. Retailers on the street to a person have all bemoaned their fate.

Said the owner of Fiore’s Market: “No one seems to care about us. My business has been hurt. The beach people have stopped coming during the week as often as they used to. Now we’re being told the bridge won’t done until Christmas.”

It is certain that when present city council president John Powers comes to the end of his term, either city councillor at large Dan Rizzo or George Colella will be the next council president.

Colella hasn’t been lobbying his colleagues for votes, and it was expected that Rizzo would be next. In a recent meeting between the two, Rizzo said he was hoping to receive Colella’s vote but would step aside if Colella made his intentions known.

It is doubtful Colella will be actively running for the council presidency.

Rumors from a variety of sources persist about Mayor Ambrosino readying himself for a new position. No one can say with any certainty what that position might be, except to say, it will cause him to ultimately give up his mayor’s seat here - leaving Revere with a temporary mayor and a special election at some point.

Persistent talk among most of the city’s political power brokers centers around the ambitions of Mayor Thomas Ambrosino. The mayor does not have a candidate to challenge him for re-election. He is home free for another term. However there is the belief that he is leaving for another position, and soon.

The mayor will say nothing about his plans. He tends to hold everything close to his vest. Not even his closest friends and advisors have any idea what he is planning, except to say they know the mayor is planning his next move. Some say he is being considered to permanently head the Mass Turnpike Authority. Others insist he is to be given the eladership role in a non-existent gambling authority position.

The only certainty is that the mayor is leaving. The big questions are these: where is he going and when?

This city’s effort to keep people out by telling potential developers that we can’t accept new housing because the people moving into the city might have children who will need to go the public schools is all wet.

This city cannot survive without growth. On the other hand, the $65 million BJ’s development proposal could stand on its own, without the apartment housing. However the developer wants the right to build housing here.

What are we to do, build a new cemetery where the apartment housing would go. Turn the land into a private storage facility - would that be better? How about making it a parking lot or just keeping it a useless, ugly junk yard. Would that eb better than a $65 million development.

Governor Deval Patrick came to Revere Beach yesterday where he made a policy statement about the state’s future management of the beaches under the control of the Department of Conservation and Recreation.

We trust and we hope the governor was serious, and that his visit here wasn’t yet another photo-op with the governor spouting nice phrases that we all want to believe.

Mayor Tom Ambrosino released the updated Capital Improvement Plan last week, and its entirety is available on the city’s website (www.revere.org).
Among the highlights in the plan are the priorities for the street paving and sidewalk program.
This summer, crews will finish up work on the Revere Street neighborhood, including:
•Pomona Street
•Stowers Street
•Tuttle Street
•Shurtleff Street
•Hastings Street
•Neponset Street
•Carleton Street.
In the late summer, crews will start work on the Park Avenue side streets. The streets targeted include
•Irving Street
•Jarvis Street
•Kilburn Street
•Lambert Street
•Madison Street
•Newbury Street
•Oxford Street
•Howard Street
•Rand Street
•Dale Street
Outside of the target area, the following streets will be targeted for the next couple of years.
They are: Proctor Avenue (Broadway to Vivien), Porter/Eliot, Morris Street, Liberty Avenue, Borden Street, Tapley Place/North Ave, Rice Avenue, Keayne Street, Vinal Street, Endicott Avenue, Olive Street, Fenley Street, Newhall Street, Franklin Avenue, Centennial Avenue, Campbell Avenue, Tuscano Avenue and Beckert Street.
Target areas in fiscal year 2010 and beyond include Riverside, Point of Pines and Shirley Avenue.

The U.S. Supreme Court has refused to hear the city’s case versus the adult video store, Moon-Lite Reader, which operates out of a storefront in Linden Square and formerly was located in Bell Circle.
The city had filed a writ of certiorari earlier this year with the court to hear the case. The city wanted the court to rule on whether its restrictive adult entertainment ordinance was unconstitutional or not, and whether attorneys for Moon-Lite were entitled to any fees for the 15-year-old case.
The city’s case was the oldest of some 250 cases before the court. The highest court took only four of them from that batch.
“It’s a difficult proposition,” said Zaleznik. “The other side initially waived their right to respond and the court actually asked them to file a response. It wasn’t a perfunctory dismissal.”
While it was too early to tell, the ruling appears to have ended the fight to get the city’s adult entertainment ordinance to meet Constitutional muster. It is uncertain if the city will have to re-write their ordinance now to something less restrictive.
Had the court heard the case and had the city prevailed, it was the hope of local authorities that they could shut down Moon-Lite altogether, or make them relocate to a remote area of the city.
The case, however, is not over.
The city is still waiting for a hearing before the state Supreme Judicial Court on the attornies fees billed by Moon-Lite’s defense team. That hearing should take place in September or October.

For one drive-thru clerk, this was not the kind of tip she was looking for.
Around 6 p.m. on May 30th, a man pulled around to the window of the Dunkin’ Donuts in Johnnie’s Foodmaster driving a brown motor vehicle. The clerk said he didn’t utter a word, but kept motioning towards his lap.
When she looked, well, he was doing inappropriate things.
The clerk screamed and took down the man’s license plate number as he sped off. Police ran the license plate and traced it to the suspect’s father.
The suspect’s father contacted his son and, soon after, the son came to the Revere Police Station from his Somerville home.
Once at the station, officers asked him if he knew why he was there. He said he was pretty sure he knew why. That was pretty much the end of it. However, instead of confessing verbally, the suspect was too bashful and, instead, wrote down his confession.
Matthew James Blunt, 20, of Somerville, was charged with lewd, open and gross behavior.