Massachusetts State Police were in North Andover Wednesday night assisting with a barricaded subject.
Details were limited, but a police presence could be seen on Waverly Road.
State police said their Air Wing helicopter was also on scene.
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Your Hometown Radio
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Massachusetts State Police were in North Andover Wednesday night assisting with a barricaded subject.
Details were limited, but a police presence could be seen on Waverly Road.
State police said their Air Wing helicopter was also on scene.
No…
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Police in Lowell, Massachusetts, are looking for a missing man last seen Wednesday.
Authorities say 46-year-old Nicholas Papadonis was last seen around 6 p.m. near the Lowell-Dracut-Tyngsborough State Forest.
Papadonis is described as being abou…
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The busy boating season in Gloucester, Massachusetts, is beginning with a scandal at the harbormaster’s office over theft and forgery.
TJ Ciarametaro says he was wrongfully terminated by the city earlier this month. The former harbormaster says he worked with Gloucester police to catch the shellfish warden stealing petty cash. The warden then pointed the finger back at the deputy harbormaster for forging signatures on state grants totaling at $24,000.
“Just a really disappointing and unfortunate set of events that transpired after a pretty long seven-year career here giving it my all,” Ciarametaro said.
“Sort of petty stuff, a signature here, there, whatever — got to play by the rules — but TJ had nothing to do with it except to say ‘whistleblower,’” said Gordon Baird, the Gloucester High School sail team coach. “Somebody did this and he gets fired for that?”
Gloucester Mayor Greg Verga’s office said via email that it could not comment on personnel matters, but that Verga recently met with the interim harbormaster, a former Gloucester police chief.
“The Department is eager to get to work and motivated to provide exceptional service to our residents, visitors and businesses,” Verga said in a statement. “I feel confident in the Department’s ability to meet the needs of our community.”
“The thing that bothers a lot of Gloucester people is the transparency issue with how it was handled,” Baird said. “Not just this mayor, but in other mayors, there’s always this sort of smoke screen.”
City Councilor and former Gloucester Police Chief John McCarthy is taking over in the interim, but the shakeup comes at a time when the harbormaster’s office has its hands full.
Captain Johnny Karvelas of Cape Ann Whale Watch drives the Hurricane 2 — the biggest boat in the harbor, measuring at 115 feet.
“Boats are going to be speeding around and doing stupid things stuff like that, so that could be a disaster, but once I’m past the breakwater, no one bothers me,” Karvelas said. “If there’s a situation that I need help from the harbormaster — I wish TJ was there to help me out.”
Both Karvelas and Baird said the department was never run so well.
“They used to have 10 moorings out there that would be used. Now all 200 are being used,” Baird said. “They are terrific, and they’ve saved our butts a few times, too, when sudden squalls came up.”
Many, including Ciarametaro, are hoping he’ll get his job back.
“I need to clear my name. I think originally, I wasn’t able to say anything, and some really bad info came out of City Hall that left people more confused,” Ciarametaro said. “We’ve since been trying to clear the record, and that’s what I’m trying to do now.”
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Top Democrats expect to file a compromise Wednesday on a bill designed to continue funding the state’s overrun emergency family shelter system and implement reforms to cut costs by limiting how long families may stay in shelters.
As State House News Service first reported, lawmakers working on a fiscal 2024 supplemental budget (H 4466 / S 2711) picked up the paperwork needed to file a deal Wednesday morning.
In a joint statement Wednesday afternoon, lead conferees Sen. Michael Rodrigues and Rep. Aaron Michlewitz said they were finalizing details of the compromise in order to “timely” file the new language “for the House and Senate to consider the report tomorrow.”
Both branches will be holding formal sessions Thursday. Under the Joint Rules, a conference report would need to be filed by 8 p.m. Wednesday in order for the branches to take it up anytime after 1 p.m. Thursday.
“I’m not going to get into specifics, but I think you heard that they picked up a jacket. Usually that’s a good signal. And I think a deal will be done in short order,” Senate President Karen Spilka told the News Service in the afternoon.
Known as a conference jacket, the blank form is used to gather signatures from House and Senate negotiators to finalize a deal. Retrieving an unsigned jacket from the clerk’s office usually indicates that a six-person negotiating committee is close to final agreement.
Rep. Paul Donato of Medford, chair of the Second Division, said he believed a supp deal was on the radar for this week.
“I mean, we’re here, and we’re going to be here for a while. Time to do the supp budget and get it out of the way,” Donato said during a recess in the House’s first budget debate session of the week.
The six-person committee, chaired by Michlewitz and Rodrigues, held its first meeting April 1 after the branches passed competing versions of the bill in March.
In its version, the Senate proposed making an $863 million state escrow fund available to fund family shelters through next fiscal year. The House proposed using $245 million from escrow savings to cover the shelters until the current fiscal year ends this summer. The bills take different approaches to proposed limits on how long families can remain in the emergency shelters.
Current appropriations for the shelter system are expected to run out “sometime mid- to end of April,” Rodrigues said this month, adding that the Healey administration has “other flexible funds that they can use.”
Sen. Patrick O’Connor of Weymouth, one of two Republicans on the conference committee, told the News Service that he learned details of a House-Senate compromise Tuesday and decided to withhold his signature from the jacket.
“You know, we’re in tough financial times, and this is a large amount of money that the state’s been spending on this, and will continue to spend on this. And I would like to see more actionable plans put in place to see where the end-game is here,” he said.
O’Connor said he wants to see state officials “be louder” in calls for assistance to the federal government and the state’s delegation on Capitol Hill.
“We do not have the financial resources to do it alone,” O’Connor said. “And until we have a long-term plan in place, I cannot support the continued spending of this much of our state resources.”
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The public will get to weigh in on a possible ban on sales of tobacco and e-cigarette products to anyone who was born after 2003 in Malden, Massachusetts, at a board of health meeting on Wednesday night.
According to the public hearing agenda, any businesses that defy the ban could be fined and suspended.
“I would support it at this point, but I do think we need to make sure there’s not other access to cigarettes that’s being provided,” city council member Stephen Winslow said.
Some businesses are not sold on the idea of the ban, saying sales will go up in smoke if they are not allowed to sell tobacco or e-cigarette products.
“I heard that exact same thing as we worked to first create, you know, non-smoking sections in restaurants and then ultimately ban smoking and then, you know, restaurants have survived,” Winslow said.
Brookline recently passed its own generational bans on tobacco sales, leading other Massachusetts municipalities to follow suit.
On Wednesday, in response to the Brookline ban, Jon Hurst, president of the Retailers Association of Massachusetts said on X:
“Boards of health taking away consumer choice small biz sales. Out of control & beyond their established roles. Their budgets should drop as small biz close doors cutting local tax collections.”
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The public hearing starts at 6:30 p.m. on Wednesday at city council chambers But, the board of health would not actually adopt the proposed ordinance until their next meeting.
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Police investigation is taking place on Interstate 93 in Braintree, Massachusetts, state officials said.
The left lane was closed at Exit 6, according to the Massachusetts Department of Transportation, which told drivers to expect delays.
It wasn’t immediately clear what prompted the police activity.
Police cars were seen in the median of the highway, behind a work truck and an SUV
This is a developing news story that will be updated when more information is available.
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