Not Exactly the Truth
By Editor at October 23, 2023 | 8:45 am | Print
False accusations from Democratic Mayoral Candidate John McNamara ran rampant during Saturday’s League of Women Voters debate at Trinity on Main.
From the very first statement made through most of the debate untruths were spoken by the Democratic Town Chairman.
He began stating he was looking to restore stability and be transparent. The last Democratic Mayor in Tim O’Brien, who was initially chosen by Mr. McNamara to run for Mayor, is the one who made the budget unstable.
Under Mr. O’Brien the City fell into a $30 million hole and nearly went bankrupt. Only with the decisions of Mayor Erin Stewart did the City survive and become financially stable.
Unlike Mr. O’Brien, Mayor Stewart did not put in false numbers to hide the fact that the budget was not accurate. Mr. O’Brien put in the budget that City revenues would be three or four or times more than was possible. Mayor Stewart’s budget was accurate and transparent.
Mr. McNamara blamed the budget issues on the fact that 10 of the last 12 years someone ‘named Stewart’ has been in office.
It was only the one term in which Mr. O’Brien was in office that the City went in such debt as to nearly go bankrupt. Mayors Tim Stewart and Erin Stewart’s budgets did not cause financial problems for the City.
Mr. McNamara next accused the Mayor of inappropriately cutting federal funds. How does a City cut federal funds? The statement makes no sense and is absolutely false.
The next statement from Mr. McNamara was that the City tried to illegally cut money from education. The truth is, Mr. O’Brien made an accounting error giving the Board of Education an additional $4 million. Mayor Stewart tried to fix that mistake. She did nothing illegal or inappropriate.
And yet another astounding comment made by Mr. McNamara was his concern for divisive rhetoric. He vilified a former candidate for his Facebook comments.
Yet, when it came to a member of his own Democratic Party verbally abusing a gay man in his own business, Mr. McNamara brought together a group of people to ask for forgiveness of this man.
Is attacking gay citizens not divisive? Are they not minorities?
It appears Mr. McNamara has double standards when it comes to his Party.
But if this absurdity wasn’t enough, the biggest lie came when Mr. McNamara tried to downgrade the Mayor for raising taxes when she had no choice.
At the public hearing for the 2015-16 budget, Mr. McNamara stood up and publicly claimed the City was $12 million short and wanted that money added to the budget.
Will he raise taxes if elected or not? If he was in office what would taxes rise to?
The stories told by Mr. McNamara were an obvious last ditch effort to distort the facts in his election bid. Hopefully, residents see right through them come election day.
