During the ongoing Massachusetts 191st General Court’s 2019-2020 session – which has been extended through legislative action – the House has passed emergency legislation in response to the COVID-19 pandemic as well as major legislation relating to education, transportation, and…
Month: September 2020
DUA Disburses Final Lost Wages Assistance Benefits
The Massachusetts Department of Unemployment Assistance (DUA) has disbursed the sixth and final Lost Wages Assistance (LWA) $300 supplemental benefit to unemployment claimants in the Commonwealth. The application for these federal supplemental unemployment benefits was submitted by the Massachusetts Emergency Management…
MassDOT Advisory: Statewide Exit Renumbering Project
The Massachusetts Department of Transportation (MassDOT) is announcing an upcoming virtual Public Information Meeting for MassDOT’s Statewide Exit Renumbering Project on Thursday, Sept. 24, from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m. This project is converting all existing exit numbers on freeways to a milepost-based…
East Boston Community Soup Kitchen Celebrates Anniversary Feeding the Homeless
It started as an idea and a way to address what Sandra Nijjar saw as a growing problem in East Boston. Nijjar was seeing an ever-increasing number of homeless in and around Maverick and Central Squares. So three years ago,…
Legislature Enacts $1.8 Billion Bond Bill to Strengthen Information Technology, Physical Infrastructure
House Speaker Robert A. DeLeo, Senate President Karen E. Spilka, and Representative Adrian Madaro joined their colleagues in House and Senate to pass legislation authorizing up to $1.8 billion in spending for the improvement of information technology equipment and other…
Eastie COVID-19 Positive Test Rate Drops by Nearly Half
In August, East Boston’s COVID-19 positive test rates and infection rates reached all time highs since the pandemic began, raising the alarm that immediate action needed to be taken by health and elected officials to curb the dramatic spike in…
Michael Valerio, Former Eastie Resident, Papa Gino’s Founder at 89
Michael Valerio, who immigrated from Italy to East Boston in the 1930s and expanded a small pizza-by-the-slice operation into the iconic Papa Gino’s franchise, died Wednesday, Sept. 2. He was 89 years old. Valerio was born in Villa Latina, Italy…
Apocalypse — Now
The photos of the wildfires in our western states that have incinerated entire communities and that have turned daytime skies to night by their heavy smoke have illustrated the dramatic effects of climate change upon the daily lives of millions…
Donald Trump Is No Winston Churchill
Rage, the new book by veteran journalist Bob Woodward about the presidency of Donald Trump, has revealed unequivocally that Trump deliberately has downplayed the lethality of the Covid-19 pandemic from the very beginning of the virus’s detection in the United…
Guest Op-Ed: Our Fall School Plans Are Guided by Health, Safety, and Equity
By Mayor Martin J. Walsh and Superintendent Brenda Cassellius From the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, keeping Boston’s families safe, healthy, and equitably supported has been our top priority. That’s why we made the tough but necessary decision to close…