Wednesday, Nov 4: Mayor Jon Mitchell

Good morning. Good morning. Welcome to Midweek with the Mayor. Day after a rollicking election. Good morning, Mayor. Your reaction to the election last night? Well, there were lots of reactions, both to the local results as well as the statewide results, as well as the national results. Let's start local, because after all, I am a local official, Chris. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Nothing too surprising. There were a lot of either uncontested or lightly contested races for legislative seats here. So. So most of it was unsurprising in that way. There was a heavily contested race for the state rep seat that's now occupied by Steve Ouellette, Jesse St. Gilles. I won that seat, which I, given the results of the last election in which both of them ran along with another candidate who ran as a Republican who got a lot of votes, it looked like it was going to go Republican no matter what, and it did, but the results, I don't know if you noticed it, but the The results didn't come in until 3:47 a.m. Not from the city of New Bedford, but because there's only that... The seat only covers one precinct in the city. But obviously, we work closely with whoever occupies that seat. But that's how late it was to be decided, just a few hours ago. So, but... But I've talked to both of those candidates this morning. And Steve Ouellette's a real good guy, worked really, really hard. And I personally like Jesse St. Gilles, known him for a while, and I look forward to working with him. Tim, Ed Pacheco. who won the seat that has been occupied by Chris Markey for the last 15, 16 years or so. So, I mean, I talked to him as well. He ran a really strong race. So we look forward to working with him. With both of them, Chris Markey is our new district attorney. I talked to Chris this morning about how we can be helpful to him as he makes that transition into that job. He knows what he's doing. He was an assistant DA for a long time. And so I think that's going to be a very smooth transition over there. Um, and And so that's kind of if local, like in terms of the statewide stuff, Um, nothing really surprising there, um, to me. Um, I think, you know, the governor's race, I think some people thought it was going to be closer. I thought it'd be a little bit closer, but, um, I, I just, it's, it's hard. I mean, I, I mean, I've, I've, I endorsed the governor and, and, um, and, uh, but I thought just sort of. I thought it was, I thought it would have been a little bit closer. I'm glad she, she won. Um, and we were, um, we've worked closely together. I've worked closely with the Lieutenant Governor. Um, in the city that broke out in an interesting way. Um, Governor Healy won every precinct except the precincts in Ward 1. So Ward 1 was, uh, and I just, I, I haven't had it. Time to do a deep dive into the numbers. I just got them, but I just scanned the raw numbers, and that was one of the more striking things about the governor's race locally, which was that Ward 1 went entirely to Minogue, all six precincts. And I haven't seen where the towns were or not, but I suspect that the towns have been, or New Bedford suburbs have been voting. somewhat consistently with with ward one they did so in the presidential election so um people have probably analyzed this morning i haven't had a chance i don't know if you're in dartmouth which is interesting yeah okay that's not that's not surprising so um so yeah that's consistent with what happened in the in the presidential election two years ago so that that's where that's where things are uh locally and i i don't So none of it's all that surprising there. I think the and at the state level is for candidates as far as the ballot questions go. It kind of went the way I thought, although I was surprised at question three, you know, because I endorsed it here and it. Got clobbered. I don't know. Silly me. I was with you, man. I took a lot of heat for it, but I was with you. Yeah, I was just surprised. I don't know. Yeah, I don't know what that was about, right? So I would welcome calls with people's opinions to offer up theories why. People didn't want to eliminate party primaries, and I have my guesses at it, but I just thought with literally two-thirds of the registered voters not belonging to either party, that more people would have embraced that, right? Because if you don't belong to either party, that means you're doing that because, I would think, because you want to be able to vote in either primary, but that may not have, would she? You, you know, you can't do, we can't do both now. Right. So, um, as we discussed on the air. So I thought that would have, I thought that would have, I thought that would have done better, but no, um, I was wrong. Uh, so that, but the, the other ones I think, um, went to, went the way that I personally thought, um, the public record requirement for the legislature, uh, won overwhelmingly, which I think is, is what are they going to do with it though? I don't, well, they're not going to just accept it at face value, I would say. So I think people need to be mindful of that. Thank you, Matt. But I think the legislature made a big mistake in not applying it to itself. The public record law is pretty, in Massachusetts, on municipalities, is fairly burdensome. We spend a lot of resources managing that stuff. We actually have two employees. We have one in the solicitor's office and one in the police department whose full-time job is to field public record requests. And those positions didn't exist. Before the law was passed, whenever that was, a couple years ago, three years ago, or expanded, I should say. The law has been in place for a long time. But we get flooded with public record requests, mostly from... Well, mostly from one or two, one media outlet, but a lot of them just come in from wherever, and so it's pretty time-consuming. So, yeah, we want to – government should be transparent, but we do spend a fair amount of public resources just fielding those things, and the legislature, I think, has not. I felt that burden, and now it will, and I think people look at the legislature and say, you know, it's just a lot happens behind closed doors, and so we think there should be a peek behind those doors, and I can't say that I blame them. I voted for it, too. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's... But we'll see what the legislature does with it. Yeah. Yeah. Do you have a question? And then nationally. Yeah, that's where the action was at the national level and for both congressional. Well, I should say, when I say national, I mean not just for federal races, but also for governor's races around the country. I mean, the fact that in Texas, both the Senate seat and the governor's seat went Democratic is pretty astonishing. There have been demographic changes in the state for sure, Uh, these are really surprising. I don't know where Mississippi ended up, but like the fact that it was, it was competitive in Mississippi, even if the Democrat ultimately went, I think so. Yeah. South Carolina, Iowa, Ohio, boy. Um, and then the house went overwhelmingly, um, a couple of mayor friends who won seats in Congress, um, uh, who were, you know, both very moderate Democrats and very well respected. I'm not surprised they won, but like a lot of the other... Seats around the country, I don't think anybody thought the Democrats would win as many seats in both houses, in either house, but they did. And you can't... Every race was about the occupant of the White House. That was the issue. Of course, the issues are framed in terms of affordability, and there were public integrity issues and all that, corruption and so forth that were discussed a lot. But at the end of the day, it all ties back to people's impressions of the president. And that was a full repudiation of the president. And so it has to be seen that way. And honestly, it's one, as you know, I tend to agree with. I think that's like the excesses we've seen in the White House in terms of the undermining of public institutions, The diminishment of the U.S. His reputation on the world stage, some of the errors in judgment that he's made, especially on the foreign scene, it goes on and on and on. The focus on all the things that he's... That move him, like the reflecting pool in Washington, that's what he was talking about the day before the election, like not about like anything having to do with people, stuff people care about. Like it's at some point, the point came at somewhere along the way where people were like, even supporters of his. said, you know what, this isn't working out. So you look at, for instance, polling among people ages 18 to 30-ish, and in the presidential race, they went Trump, and that completely flipped. A lot of younger people are totally turned off by him now, especially young men. That happened really quickly, abruptly. The same thing goes with Hispanics in a lot of many parts of the country. They've gravitated pretty markedly in the direction of Trump for the presidential race and then for the midterms that didn't happen. It was quite the opposite. So, you know, there's a lot of those trends. It'll all be parsed by others. But, you know, my feeling is, like, we need a federal government that... It does a lot of things differently. We need a federal government that understands the concerns of people around the country and addresses them and is oriented toward solving problems and not performing, is oriented toward maintaining the country's reputation overseas and getting along with friends and knowing who the friends are and who are not friends because that's been completely conflated now. Yeah. And to project the sense of decorum and decency that I think has been lacking in the last, obviously, in the last couple of years. And that's kind of what people voted for, honestly. I think that the Democrats would make a big mistake in getting cocky about this, right? It's like this is some, it's an entirely a validation of, it's a validation of. The entire platform of every Democrat, I mean, as you and I have talked about it, I think there are some elements of the party that espouse policy positions that are out of step with the country and don't lend themselves to problem solving. And I think the Democrats would make a big mistake in saying, yeah, this was a mandate for us as opposed to a repudiation of the president. So, and if Democrats... understand that, then I think it'll work out pretty well in 2028 and transitioning away from a MAGA-oriented approach to governing to something that's a little more sensible and a little more oriented toward the country's long-term interests. We have the mayor of New Bedford here. We're going to take a break. We'll be back. You can join us at 508-996-0500. The mayor's here to answer your questions, make comments. We'll be right back. This portion of programming on WBSM is brought to you by D's Hot Dogs in New Bedford, where you can get two hot dogs, chips, and a soda for just six bucks. Back to Chris McCarthy and South Coast now on WBSM. Call 508-996-0500. Welcome back. We're here with the mayor of New Bedford, John Mitchell. Mayor, we're going to go right to the phones. We've got a bunch of people here on hold. Good morning. Thanks for holding. Yes, hi. Right. I would just like to ask the mayor About the MAGA movement. MAGA means Make America Great Again, right? It was one person's vision, that's how it started out, to stop fraud, waste, abuse, close our borders down, things like that. So what is it about that that's so offensive to people? I don't understand what is so wrong with that. The MAGA movement, as soon as you say MAGA movement, everybody freezes. I'm just curious to know, that's like not in a good place. The city's falling apart. Do you live in the city? Things I do. Things aren't affordable. Yeah. And I also work 68 hours a week. And I'm homeless. Why am I homeless? Because I had mold in my apartment and they chose to get me out before anything could be done about it. But that's besides the point. The point is. Is that, what is it so bad about the MAGA movement? You said, like, you want to, like, it'll steer people away from the MAGA movement, as if that's a bad thing. Yeah, so let me just, so I'll say a couple things. So first off, let me just say about your housing situation, just make sure you, just make sure you call either my office or community services, because if you're homeless and you're out because of a mold issue. Just let's make sure we're doing what we can to deal with your situation because that doesn't sound good. So I know that's not why you called, but just please do that. No, it isn't. It isn't at all. I'm just letting you know that I am a worker. I work 68 hours a week in home care. I do hospice. No, that's a lot. That's a lot. So I'm just saying if we can be helpful to you, we want to be okay. So just for starters. Well, I appreciate that, because I've reached out to every resource that I can think of in Massachusetts, and not one person has been able to help. Yeah, so call my office, and we'll do, if there's something we can do, we'll do it. All right. All right. So, you know, as far as your comment goes, I just say, look, I have, there's a lot that... has happened in this country in the last couple of years that I think is not in the country's interest. So I don't think it's in the country's interest that the president. He started a war in Iran without talking to Congress and without sort of thinking through the strategic implications of that action. And so it's not just this legalistic opinion about, yeah, of course he violated the War Powers Act and all that, but it goes beyond that. It's just like we're in a bad place with it. He started bombing Iran, and now Iran just said, okay, all right, is that all you got? And so there's no, like, good way out of that right now. And it turns out that what it's done to Iran is they've said, yeah, you know, we can have an impact on world oil prices better than we thought we could because we can attack shipping from our vantage point along the Strait of Hormuz and in other places. And we can do it with weaponry that's pretty cheap that we hadn't really used before. And so, yeah, you talk about prices. Well, I don't know. We've all watched gas prices go up and everything gets shipped by vehicles that run on that gas. And yeah, we shouldn't be surprised that inflation has ticked upward recently. Um, far beyond, uh, levels where, where it was when Trump took office. So, uh, so there's, there's that. Um, and then you think about, I mean, we could talk about a lot of stuff here, but, you know, throwing people off of Medicaid and SNAP benefits. And that's something that, look, uh, you can talk about whether those benefits are worth it and you can have these discussions. I happen to think that we take care of a lot of people, right? I mean... And as you can attest, when people fall on hard times, sometimes those kinds of benefits matter, can matter an awful lot. Mm-hmm. So that's something that I think is important for people to consider. There are institutions like... My former employer, the Department of Justice, that have completely been transformed by a president that's politicized their activities, like going going out and indicting political enemies like that's kind of that's kind of the kind of stuff you see in third world countries and totalitarian countries like we're supposed to be above that and we're supposed to set a good example. Um, yeah. Knowing who's a friend and who's not a friend, right? Going after Canada, of all things, is not exactly in our interest. That makes things more expensive. When we slap tariffs on Canada, Canada exports all kinds of stuff to the United States, like automobile parts that, frankly, make automobiles more expensive these days. And never mind that they're our closest ally. And then siding up to the likes of... Nasty dictators like Vladimir Putin, who went in and invaded a country for no good reason and has continued to wage a war in which hundreds of thousands of people have been killed. And Trump's saying, like, let's get behind Russia's viewpoint, view of the post-war. Post-war order. In other words, it's completely amoral. He just wants to get a deal done like a business, but it doesn't matter who started the war and who's right and who's wrong. That's not something the U.S. has been for. I could go on, but I think a lot of people, everybody's been watching the same TV show for the last two years, but it's no way to run a country. We've got a lot of problems in this country. We've got a lot of problems when it comes to the price of things. We've got a lot of problems with a ballooning deficit and debt. That is going to make it harder for the U.S. to defend itself in the long run, to solve a whole lot of social problems. Artificial intelligence is moving ahead at an uncontrolled pace. And that is something that this current administration really hasn't seen fit to deal with. That is something that is going to affect our lives for the foreseeable future. Mm-hmm. And there are lots of other stuff too, like the planet's warming up, all that stuff, right? So there isn't an orientation towards solving problems. That's what I do as mayor. I solve problems. And that's kind of why I'm in the business of public service. I want to try to make things better. It doesn't feel like this president's been doing that at all. So you asked me why not MAGA. That's kind of why, but I could go on. No, what I was trying to say was I didn't understand what was so bad about the movement that that one man and I'm not saying I'm for or against President Trump. I'm just saying that that one man came up with and now everybody was so fearful about it. My other thought, my other question to you was, do you think and this is I'm just asking you your opinion. And do you think that when Biden opened the border? And allowed so many people to influx into the United States. Do you think that helped or hurt us? I think that was a mistake. I also think they figured it out too late. They did figure it out. They did close down the border. But it was like for political purposes. It was way too long into the presidential election season when that happened. But yeah, I agree. That was a mistake. I mean, they were too loosey-goosey with... With asylum applications, pretty much everybody who showed up on the southern border had said, I need asylum. And they were, you know, let in provisionally, and then they just sort of entered the country. And we had a wave of people coming in. So that, yeah, that was bad policy. No, I've said that. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off there. No, go ahead. Would you agree that Maura Healey having a... Um, you know, with her policies, you know, in being a sanctuary state, would you agree that that has hurt us in Massachusetts or that has helped us in Massachusetts? Like, has it benefited anybody, anybody at all? Like us, us taxpayers, has it benefited the veterans? Has it benefited the elderly? Has it, has it not? I'm just, um, well, I would say this on that front, you know, I've, I've, we've talked about this on this program before. I have my opinion about the housing first policy in Massachusetts. is that it went too far in its application to migrants. In other words, we have this policy in state law, and I think Massachusetts is the only state in the union, and this was a law passed well before Maura Healey got in, that says if somebody's homeless, you've got to find a place for them. And so we sheltered a lot of people who were flooding into the state, and that caused more people to come into the state. And as I've noted on this program, I personally told her, I think that that's got to change. I think it was not not the right policy for for for Massachusetts. So you ask the next question, why? Why would you ever support someone like that? Well, because I don't I don't support people on any issue. Right. I there is I disagree with members of my own family about stuff. Right. And I don't disown them as well. And they don't disown me. Right. So you look at all these things in totality, and that's just one thing that she and I didn't see eye to eye on. I will say this. I just want to close with this comment. And again, please do call my office about your personal situation. But on the point about the MAGA movement, I get it. There are a lot of people around here in the last decade plus who have said, we want something different. We just talked about how the voting patterns have changed in the city and in the region. This area used to be a democratic stronghold and almost to the point of sort of this religious fealty to party politics. And I think people have started to reassess that. And there were reasons, lots of reasons for that that have developed. Not just here, but in the United States over time, changes in the economy, like we're less of, certainly here, less of a manufacturing center than we were. And there's some federal policies like NAFTA and others that have facilitated some of those changes, those changes in the tax code, lots of stuff, right? And lots of technological changes that have caused a lot of investment to flow out of. Cities that are not major metros, two major metros, and that's had all kinds of cultural and political implications. So that's left a lot of people thinking in a place like ours, right, not part of a major metro, a place that's lost manufacturing, to say, you know what, people aren't listening to us. And you know what, I kind of feel, I feel the same way. That's me. That's my daily existence, honestly. It's like, I, I... I'm really assertive with... The state government, the federal government, and others, because I know that I have to speak up much more loudly on behalf of my city than in other places, because there are disconnects. There is a disconnect that we do experience here and other cities that are similarly situated around the country also feel that. And I think a lot of that, you look at the voting patterns, you look at where President Trump got his support in 2016, And then, again, in 2016, and then, again, in 2017, 2024, it's, you know, it's he didn't get it in those major cities that are prospering, but he got it pretty much everywhere else around the country. And no matter what happens in the next couple of years, the country has to come to terms with that. There's a big cultural gulf in the United States because of all these economic changes. And it's, you know, it's it's something that we feel and I feel it personally here, you know, having grown up here and being. I'm rooted here, and I get it, and so I just don't think that the solutions associated that have arisen from this administration even begin to solve that problem. That's why I don't support what the president, by and large, don't support what the president does. We have the mayor of New Bedford, John Mitchell, here with us. We're talking about the election, and we've got some other local stuff we're going to talk about, but we've got people on hold. Good morning. You're on with the mayor. Hi, good morning, Mayor. Just a quick comment. For the second time, I have gone and done early voting at the library. And I just want to mention that, you know, once inside the library, everything is very efficient, very done very well. And the staff there is fantastic. The process works smoothly. However, a little constructive criticism. The location is part of the problem. When I went to go vote, I had to park beyond Coney Street and had to walk. Um, not, not my problem. I can walk and I was determined I was going to vote. So that's it. But I had to pay, pay to park. And once you got there across from city hall where the entrance is, um, I was surprised to encounter people out there smoking marijuana, hanging around. I, it just sends the wrong message to anyone. And I'm in my fifties, but as someone in their seventies or eighties is not going to park their car and go walk by those folks to go vote. Yeah. Well, I'm sorry you had that experience. We see somebody doing something like that. We call the police. Um... Yeah, I thought you were going to say something else about just the availability of parking. Thank you. If you're running into people who are breaking the law doing something like that, then that's really a police issue as opposed to really the problem with the voting location. If the voting location doesn't have that much available parking, and if that becomes an access issue, then we have to address that. I would treat that as separate issues. But my bottom line for me is... Yeah, that's something that, I'm sorry, you encountered that, and it's not, I look right out my window at that spot, I can tell you that's not something that goes on 24-7, but, you know, it does happen every once in a while, the issues with vacancy downtown is a complex issue of civil liberties and mental health. Is it possible to move the early voting location to someplace else besides it being downtown at the library? Um, we could, I think some of it is honestly a, a, it's, it's somewhat out of convenience for the elections office staff, right? It's right across the street from city hall. And, you know, for them, like we could pick a library in some other part of the city and, and, and do it, but they'd have to be, I mean, they shuttle. And I, again, this is something else I observed, like looking out my window, they, they, they shuttle equipment back and forth and ballots and other stuff and they have to monitor things. And so... The proximity of the library to City Hall is an advantage for them, if not a necessity. So that's the primary reason. Okay. All right. Well, I just figured I'd bring it to your attention. Yeah, no, I appreciate the feedback. Something, you know, early voting is a great thing. It does work. It's convenient. Like I said, once you step into the library, it was fantastic. The staff, everybody upstairs, smooth as butter. Smooth as butter. Yeah, there you go. It's just getting there. Yeah. No, I hear you. The problem you flagged is something that we contend with, and we're going to continue to try to deal with it. But it's, you know, I get it. Thanks for the call. We do appreciate it. We'll take a break. We'll be right back. Stick around, folks. If you're on hold, stay there. We'll be right back. Remember, always be generous with the nutmeg. Just eyeball it. Okay. Mom's wisdom has served you well, but now it may be your turn to guide her. Hey, I'm worried about Mom. 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Welcome back to Midweek with the Mayor and Mayor John Mitchell here. Mayor, we've got a press release from you on your ordinance regulating ALPR technology. Please talk about that. Automatic license plate readers, right? So we've been talking about this for a while. And look, it's come up where the city used one vendor called Flock that people are familiar with. There are other vendors. The city has announced that it's ending its contract with Flock, and we've had a discussion with the city council about how we move forward in a way that allows the city to use license plate readers, which have been around for 20 years, in a way that's responsible and And respects, in particular, respects privacy and trust. And so... Our police, headed up by our police chief, Jason Doty, we have taken a look at a number of emerging policies to regulate the use of license plate readers. Because I think people, you know, we've heard from a number of folks that they're a little concerned about their use. I think we've... Heard from a lot of folks that they want to have the technology in place because nobody wants to not have that technology in place if their kid were abducted or if there were a dangerous person, armed and dangerous person on the loose and the police didn't know where they were. So what we've done is we've proposed an ordinance, I think, covers every base that has been discussed by the city council over the last couple of years. couple of months concerning license plate readers. So it is, you know, we've put in place a proposal that would require city council approval before there's a contract with any license plate reader that the police officers who use it have to use it for a criminal investigation or missing person and that they would have to go through training to do that. That the data would not be retained more than 30 days by the department unless it was part of, you know, a court case or like a legal or a court order to preserve the information that the data wouldn't be sellable to other places to buy by the vendor that the vendor would also that that would also. For the sharing mechanism, the sharing mechanism wouldn't be automatic anymore. It used to be that other other law enforcement agencies could just look up stuff here. They can't do that anymore. Wouldn't be able to do that anymore under this. This ordinance, they'd have to put in a request to our department and affirm that they are doing it for a criminal investigation and that they weren't going to retain the data, that they were going to comply with our ordinance. So that would be sort of a manual. It wouldn't be an automatic sharing mechanism. It would be a manual mechanism. They'd have to come and ask us for permission. So, um, and then it would be subject to audit and the audits would be, um, shared publicly. So I, it is, it is a. I think this will be, if passed in this form, I think this will probably be a national model, I dare say, in how these things can be regulated responsibly. So what this will do is it will enable the police department when there's a bad guy, a really bad guy out there, that they can actually identify that person's license plate and know where that person is. But at the same time, we're not going to have the risk that law-abiding citizens are going to have their data sold to places and that they're going to be constantly watched by Big Brother. So I encourage people to take a look at this. Where can they find this, Mayor? So this will be linked to the press release, but the press release summarizes it pretty comprehensively. But the actual... And the actual ordinance, proposed ordinance, will be linked to that on the city's website. Okay, so people can find this now. Yeah, so this is... It's comprehensive, it really is. Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, I'm sure you guys will be talking about it in the next couple of days as people start to absorb it. But, you know, we wanted to get this out. Now, it's taken us a little while. We've been very deliberate about what we've put in this and the clarity in which it is codified or proposed. And it was ready to go in the last couple of days. And I think it just made sense to do it after all the elections, right? So people, now that the elections are over, people can pay attention to this and it doesn't get, you know, politicized. But this is our attempt at striking what I think is a reasonable balance here. People need to be, we need the tools to keep people safe. But we also don't want people to feel like their civil liberties are being trod upon. So when will this go in front of the city council? It'll be filed today. Okay. We've already sent them. You know, a copy, and so they have this. And, you know, we had some good conversations with counselors about the content of this. I don't think it will gain 100% support of counselors, but I think in general the feedback that I've gotten and the police chief has gotten is that, you know, most of the counselors recognize the need to have some technology in place along these lines that can help keep people safe. The conversation's gotten way out of control in the civilian world around people of all kinds of conspiracy theories. Yeah, no, I get it. Look, people are antsy about the march of technology, and I get it. There's a lot of stuff going on these days, especially with artificial intelligence that makes people antsy. It makes me antsy, too. So what we're trying to do here is something that's reasonable. And honestly, I do think that this could become a national model. But we'll have that conversation with the council in the weeks ahead. It's quite an answer to the problem. It's very comprehensive. You can go online to the city's website and find it. Let's go right back to the phones. Good morning. Thanks for holding. Good morning. I was just listening to a previous caller and he was talking about one of the negatives about the early voting was having to walk through the illegal use of cannabis product in public. And this clearly shows the mayor is out of touch because for the mayor to state that you should call the police to have them do something about it is a joke Because the police, when I was at the feast, the Portuguese feast. I specifically told the police officers who was doing it right within 10 feet of them, and they said they wanted to deescalate. I think there's an unofficial policy within the police department to not hold accountable the people that are breaking this law. And a lot of people voted for that law because it was gonna be made illegal in public. And now the state is actually turning its back on the people. And that is proven because even though the law passed, I mean failed to To recall the legalization of marijuana, there's enough people out there that are aggravated with the public use, even driving around. People are driving, using cannabis, and the rest of us have to deal with not just the smell, the effects that it has on them and the accidents that happen. And for the mayor of the state to call the police department is a joke. Well, what would you have me do? Have a look at the number of tickets that have been given out for illegal use of cannabis. How many minors have been given tickets for illegal use of cannabis? Follow up with the police department and tell the chief that we want better. We want more. We want the law enforced. Yeah, but you're saying it's a joke. It's your job. But I just said that someone should call the police if they see that. So you're saying we shouldn't call the police? Yeah, but if you don't know that the police aren't doing their job, how can you do that? How can you tell somebody to call the police when you don't even know that the police isn't doing their job and the public is telling you that the police are not doing their job? Because this is right downtown. You're telling me the police can't drive by and smell the marijuana and not even bother getting out of the car and tell somebody you're getting a ticket for this? Well, so you're saying we should call the police, but the police should do something. That's what you're saying. Right. I think you're right. I agree. As I said before, people should call the police. I can tell you the policemen. A lot of time in that general area, and they've arrested a lot of people in that area. Not only can you not smoke marijuana within 25 feet of the library, you can't even smoke a cigarette. You can't even smoke a peace pipe. There's no smoking. It doesn't matter. You can smoke a Cuban cigar. You can't smoke. And yet you had another caller calling in stating that that was a problem. And that tells me that you're out of touch, and you certainly don't consider the effects that this has on the whole community. This gets back to the broken windows. You've got to take care of the little things, and the big things will fall into place. When you ignore the little things, the whole community will be at bat. Nobody's ignoring it. Nobody's ignoring it. You're wrong. Sorry. We spend a lot of time on this. I can't just round people up because they look like a bomb on the city in the library steps. They even look like they haven't showered in three weeks. You can't just do that. We do. Apply the rules. So if they're blocking the sidewalk, if they're smoking in a place where they can't smoke, the police address it. I will say, if you want a place to complain to. Thank It's frankly the court system because they get arrested, the police arrest a lot of people in that general area, but they walk in the door of the courthouse and they walk right back out again. Because even if they are repeat offenders for the same thing again you. and again, we have a problem with the... It's a district court judge is not wanting to hold them. So that's part of our problem. But the idea that we're ignoring it, that's just completely false. And, like, the idea that we don't deal with broken windows, honestly, look at the crime data. Like, honestly, we've had as large of a drop in crime in our city as pretty much anywhere in the country in the last 15 years. So I don't – I just – I get the frustration. There's nobody more frustrated than me when I look out the mayor's office window and see people hanging about. But that is a more complex problem than meets the eye. We're going to take a break. We'll be right back more with the mayor. Stick around. All right, welcome back. We've moved a lot of calls today. Mayor, you seem to have had some fun with Halloween. We're not surprised by that. You had a cow on your property. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, no, that's... That one just came to me, Chris. I'm always looking for opportunities. We had our skull up, our oversized skull that I pump dry ice through. Kids love that. But my wife, Ann, said, you know, I'm going to be a cowgirl for Christmas. Not Christmas, Halloween. And, of course, that meant that I would be a... Cow, not a cow, but a cow. So we had this cow suit. So I put on the cow suit. And she was telling me, I didn't put it on initially. She said, can you put that on? And I'm like, yeah, it's going to be kind of hot. It's probably going to be itchy. And so I said, okay. I was giving out candy to the kids with the cow suit. And then I thought, I sat down because there was a break in the action. And I said, okay, well, you know, it's kind of funny. Like, if I sit still, will people know? That I'm in here and so sure I just sat there motionless on my porch and all these kids are coming up and like looking to see if I was just like a mannequin or something. So then I said all right I can really start to mess with the kids so I had this big basket of uh. candy and they're reaching into it. And as you saw in the video, like when the big kids would come up after thinking everything was safe, I'd grab their arm. I'm in it. It's all available on your Facebook page. It's on Facebook and Instagram. It's pretty funny. It's really actually funny. Yeah, I got a big kick out of it. It's all good, clean fun, Chris. Mayor, what's coming up? Anything? We got about 30 seconds. Yeah, well, look, we're going to start ramping up the holiday stuff soon enough. Got some interesting things. You get the high school sports seasons are winding down a lot. The playoffs are starting on an interesting Thanksgiving Day game between New Bedford High and Durfee, one of the oldest Thanksgiving rivalries in the country. Um, and that's which will be, um, they're playing it this year in Fenway Park. So I think that'll be great. And then the next week, of course, is Veterans Day. That'll happen, uh, obviously, uh, earlier, uh, next, yeah, next Wednesday on the, on, uh, on the 11th. So we'll, uh.