Posted on 03/04/2012 1:10:51 PM PST by reaganaut1
...
Times are hard in the state’s poorest city. The mayor is under federal and state investigation for campaign-finance improprieties and other questionable behavior, while a state-appointed overseer is managing the city’s municipal budget. Lawrence’s public school system is in receivership — the former superintendent, Wilfredo Laboy, is under criminal indictment for fraud and embezzlement, and the high school dropout rate is more than 50 percent. Public-safety cuts have been drastic, and felony crimes have skyrocketed from 1,777 in 2009 to 2,597 during the first 11 months of 2011. Unemployment is as high as 18 percent, compared with the state average of less than 7 percent. With 76,000 people squeezed into 6.93 square miles, violent crime on the rise, and a public school system that’s the worst in the state, the once-proud “Immigrant City” has become an object lesson in how to screw things up.
...
Immigrants from Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic began arriving by the middle of the 20th century, just as the textile industry was migrating south in search of cheaper labor. The city has had difficulty replacing the lost jobs, and for the past four decades, most people in Lawrence, an estimated 74 percent of whom are Latino, have struggled to get by. Lawrence saw its median household income fall more than 20 percent between 1979 and 2010 to $31,631, the lowest in the state. (In comparison, Holyoke’s median household income is $31,948, Springfield’s is $34,628, and Chelsea’s is $40,487.) Over the past five years, Lawrence’s median single-family home assessment value dropped 18 percent to $221,800, second only to Peabody’s 20.3 percent loss during the same period. And last year, in its scathing district review, the Massachusetts Department of Education noted that 23.8 percent of [...] Lawrence public schools were less than proficient in English.
(Excerpt) Read more at bostonmagazine.com ...
bkmk
Wait, aren’t these lower assessments and income levels indications that our national policies of equalizing everything are having terrific success? We are getting our incomes and home values down to these of Mexican nationals, in Mexico. I thought everything was supposed to be equal.
Wilfredo Laboy?
As a former resident of Massachusetts, I can report that Massachusetts is a 100% one party state. The party is democRAT. Lawrence is just the predictable result of 40 years of RAT rule. Expect the same in all other RAT controlled areas.
One minor point, though... Lawrence had a GOP Mayor prior to the current one until 2010 (and Lawrence was the only city above 50k in MA with a GOP Mayor for a time). In fact, for the last 15 out of 21 years, it had GOP Mayors.
Wilfredo Laboy?”
The AA superintendent who couldn’t even pass a teacher certification exam.
Lawrence was a dump 35 years ago (I went to school in neighboring Andover from 1976-1979). I saw a lot of it when I took driving lessons from a driving school in Lawrence.
There were no republican mayors for Lawrence from 1900-1991.
Gee, that must look good on a resume.
But, sereisly...
If you like Lawrence you'll love the city of my birth, Brockton.
You're right. Over the past 50 years, Lawrence has been transformed from a reasonably safe and attractive city into a dangerous slum. The German immigrants who came to work in the mills at the turn of the century took pride in their homes, but the later waves of immigrants (welfare recipients, for the most part) have turned it into a disgusting pit.
I think you got that latter info off of Wikipedia. The information for Mayors and party affiliations post-1900 is incomplete. I researched MA Mayors about a decade ago going back to the ‘70s, but wasn’t able to find definitive records online prior to that. I was merely pointing out that as bad as Lawrence is, it is one of the few locales in MA of any size to have elected GOP Mayors recently. Currently, the only city of any size to have one is in the “infamous” Lynn.
Yep, Michael Sullivan.
I see it every day. I live here.
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