Recap Follow-Up: Citation Connection Cause for Concern
This is politics and you should always follow the money.
Written by: Dan Shibilia
If you read our recap of the March 16th city council meeting we published last night, you may remember my comment when the Council was giving out proclamations, "This reeks of unfair dealing." A few readers asked what I meant by that. I said I'd look into it. Here's what I found.
Let’s start with what I found in the public record, because one of those things is something Methuen residents haven’t seen reported yet.
Citation recipient Johan Lopez donated $200 to Yanilda Santos’ city council campaign.
That’s not a rumor. It’s in Santos’ pre-election campaign finance filing, on file with the City of Methuen. You can find it yourself since the city posts all campaign finance reports publicly at cityofmethuen.net. Pull up the Yanilda Santos Pre-Election PDF and look for yourself.
A few months after that check was written, Santos stood in the Great Hall during the March 16th meeting and presented Lopez and his wife with official citations from the City of Methuen. The room applauded. Nobody said a word. The meeting moved on.
Well, since the Council sat quietly by, I will openly discuss what they should have raised at the table.
So, who cares… who is Johan anyways?
Johan Lopez isn’t just a local realtor. He’s one of the most connected real estate figures in the Merrimack Valley. He is the Broker-Owner of Home Shop Properties, Inc. in Methuen, which he describes as having done over $200 million in sales. He and his wife Walkiria Manzueta are co-founders of Jowamar Companies, a real estate development firm specializing in multifamily and mixed-use properties in Gateway Cities. Their portfolio includes the Bell Tower/Marbella Lofts project in Methuen (across from Country Kitchen) and a $6.57 million mixed-use development on Essex Street in Lawrence.
Lopez is also, per his own Instagram bio, the Chair of the Board of the Greater Lawrence Community Action Council (GLCAC), one of the most significant community organizations in the region, administering programs in housing, education, immigration services, and more.
He is not a small operator. This is a man with deep roots in the exact geographic and economic space where a Methuen mortgage loan officer operates every day.
Why does this even matter? Well, because like everything in politics, you need to follow the money.
Santos is a Mortgage Loan Officer at Rate (formerly Guaranteed Rate), operating out of their Methuen branch at 225 Broadway. Before Rate, she held mortgage roles at Citizens Bank, Santander Bank, Metro Credit Union, and the Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America (NACA). Her LinkedIn also shows time as a real estate agent at Daher Companies. Both she and Lopez are UMass Lowell alumni.
Ok, so what?
In the mortgage industry, a loan officer’s business is built almost entirely on referrals. Real estate agents send their buyers to mortgage lenders they trust, like, or that send them deals in return. In a market like Methuen and Lawrence, if you’re the broker of one of the most active real estate shops in the area and you have a relationship with a mortgage loan officer, that is a business relationship with real dollar value on both sides.
Now that we’ve properly identified the players, we can get into the issue.
Lopez runs a real estate brokerage that refers buyers to mortgage lenders. Santos is a mortgage loan officer who depends on referrals from real estate agents. They operate in the same market. He donated to her campaign. She gave him a city citation.
Not one of those things alone is disqualifying. Together, they describe a web of mutual professional interest that should have prompted a disclosure before Santos honored him with an official citation from the City of Methuen.
It didn’t. Nobody flagged it… at least publicly. The meeting moved on.
Given how Lopez isn’t just active in real estate and has quite the social circle, this is bigger than it seems. As Chair of the GLCAC board, he holds a position of substantial civic influence in the region. GLCAC administers fuel assistance, housing services, immigration assistance, and early education programs. It is a politically connected institution, and its board chair is someone who has now received a citation from a sitting city councilor who received his campaign donation. This is undoubtedly a client source for him.
These aren’t accusations of corruption. Do not take this as a knock against Lopez, his business, or his philanthropic work. These are simply dots that the public deserves to know are connected and that Councilor Santos should have disclosed before standing up at a public meeting and putting her name on an official honor for someone in her professional orbit.
The question that lingers after all of this isn’t complicated but at the same time, it really should be… why did this happen? Why did a councilor with a documented professional and financial connection to someone choose to publicly honor that person without a word of disclosure? Why did no one in that roomsay anything? Not a peep from the fellow councilor in the same industry, or the chair who is also in the same industry, or the city solicitor sitting at the table who is aware enough to know with whom he shares the table. Those questions don’t have answers yet, and we’re not going to pretend they do.
I will say this, though… and it will probably come as a surprise to her… I agree with Councilor Pesce and she may have been onto something when she brought forward TR-26-27 (her resolution to limit and better manage how citations are issued). It got tabled Monday night, and it will be worth watching whether it ever comes back. Because if citations can be handed out to campaign donors without anyone batting an eye, then the question of who gets honored in that chamber and why is no longer ceremonial. It’s political.
We’ll be watching who gets citations, who sponsors them, and how those connections map to the broader relationships inside Methuen’s political world. Consider this the first entry in that ledger.
Have documents, tips, or direct knowledge of any financial relationship between Councilor Santos and the Lopez/Manzueta real estate network? Reach out. Everything is treated confidentially unless you say otherwise.