There has literally been no citywide conversation as to whether these questions are even advisable, not to mention any consultation with the mayor’s office over whether they are in the correct format to be legally placed on the ballot.
Jack Spillane sits down with four of these students, as well as one of their mothers, to talk about LGBTQ+ life at the high school and concerns as to whether the city’s school resource officers will keep these kids safe, given the police union’s endorsement of the newly elected Ward 3 councilor, Shawn Oliver.
Jack Spillane joins WBSM’s Town Square Sunday to talk about a recent New Bedford High student protest of newly elected Ward 3 councilor Shawn Oliver, the reaction from local politicians and his future in office.
The students called out the local elected officials for not doing what they should have done, standing up for the city’s transgender community as soon as the Oliver Facebook story broke.
Watch Jack Spillane discuss the latest news in New Bedford, including a recent gathering with some members of the city council that raised questions about open meeting laws and Tuesday’s Ward 3 city council special election, during a recent appearance on WBSM’s TownSquare Sunday.
The two city councilor finalists in New Bedford may be new to politics, but they’ve learned the game very quickly. They’ve both taken cautious, middle-of-the-road positions on nearly everything.
Ward 3 Councilor special election finalists Shawn Oliver and Carmen Amaral sat down with Jack Spillane to talk about constituent services and communication with the public.
“It would be very hard to argue that this is not a public meeting when they are giving public notice of the meeting … It seems like an effort to skirt the open meeting law.” — Justin Silverman, the NEFAC executive director of the New England First Amendment Coalition
At the start of his second full year as chancellor of UMass Dartmouth, Mark Fuller has some big challenges in front of him. Among his tasks are to turn around declining enrollment and retention numbers.
Shawn Oliver and Carmen Amaral will now face off in a Feb. 28 special final election that looks like it could bring as much attention to Ward 3 as has anything in years.
It was not her good qualifications that defeated Carol Pimentel. Rather it was the determination of the City Council not to follow the state’s 2021 directive to vocational technical schools to change their admission policies so that more English learners and disabled students can attend. Pimentel and the mayor support the reforms.
In the past month or so, I’ve had a chance to walk with all of these candidates in their home neighborhoods within the ward. I’ve learned a whole lot about both them and the different enclaves — some of them quite out of the way — that they call home.
Ventura is running perhaps the most traditional of the campaigns. He has issued a spate of press releases outlining his positions on issues, even criticizing certain actions of the current council.
“I’m just mad about what’s going on. I want to get in and basically right the ship, get it in place, and then be able to move on and pass it on to somebody else.”
Her advocacy is hard-won and emblematic of an immigrant’s success story. Amaral came to the U.S. when she was 4 years old, with parents who spoke no English. She grew up in the Portuguese enclave of triple-deckers around Madeira Field.
He’s taking a chance to see if he can knock on enough doors, leaflet enough cars, to possibly win this seat and perhaps shake this city government up a bit.
“No one person is going to solve all the problems in the city. You have to listen to other voices. I know we do that in my own family. There’s people out there that probably have the greatest ideas that I never thought of.”
Oliver talks like a guy who’s interested in building consensus, almost like a Team New Bedford. “We’re all trying to fight for the same goal, to live well in a city and a place that we enjoy,” he said.
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