City Council

The calendar may have turned, but Methuen has not yet turned the page. The new/next City Council has not been sworn in. That ceremony happens Friday at the Music Hall. And yet, before the new term even formally begins, the same patterns from the last council are already resurfacing. According to very reliable insiders at City Hall, the City Council is considering a resolution that would bar part-time employees from receiving health insurance. This is not idle chatter. This

Tuesday night’s City Council meeting was anything but quiet.... Despite the actual cries from the audience to speak up. The council chamber was full, with a noticeable turnout of seniors alongside current and former local elected officials. What should have been a routine meeting quickly became chaotic when sound issues made it difficult (and at times impossible) for the audience to hear councilors. The crowd let the Council know, loudly, that poor audio in a room filled with

This isn’t transparency. This is a self-serving rush job that shows open disregard for the public. Council leadership has also confirmed that if you want to be heard, you need to show up either in the Great Hall or via Zoom (link below).

Here comes Veto Clause to help all the good taxpayers

Sean Fountain’s sentencing last week should have been the moment when accountability finally caught up to one of the most astonishing failures of public oversight in recent Massachusetts history. Instead, Methuen got a civics lesson in how the system shrugs, mutters “no victim here,” and moves on. After four years of pretending to be a sworn Methuen police officer complete with a badge, a gun, arrests, searches, prosecutions, and a taxpayer-funded paycheck, Fountain walked ou

At the final meeting of its term, the Methuen City Council voted to make councilors and school committee members eligible for City health insurance. That vote raises a serious legal questions, not about politics, but about whether the Council acted within the authority granted to it by the City Charter.

Tonight (December 15th) the City Council meeting revisited two separate but highly charged issues: the proposal to make City Councilors eligible for health insurance, and the no-confidence vote directed at Methuen Public Schools leadership. Both discussions were marked by confusion, competing narratives, and sharply different understandings of how City government actually functions. This article focuses on what was said, what was voted on, and where the record does not align