czsz
Senior Member
- Joined
- Jan 12, 2007
- Messages
- 6,043
- Reaction score
- 7
This guy rarely makes a meeting, has created a bureaucratic backlog of which he's insouciantly unaware, makes mysterious or vapid excuses for missing significant events, and yet he's popular enough - because he happened to total his car and is forced to take the Orange Line, and because he's a nice guy, if you happen to catch him - to be a potential mayoral candidate. And so Boston politics march into the next generation, nonsensical as ever...
Councilor steps to his own beat
Arroyo's style hailed, ripped
By Matt Viser, Globe Staff | July 2, 2007
City Councilor Felix Arroyo, carrying a canvas satchel with an iPod and a lunch of leftover chicken and Ramen noodles, stepped onto the Orange Line train as though onto a stage, ready to perform. Since a car accident last year totaled his Volkswagen, he has opted for the subway and discovered a whole new world of followers. On this recent morning he recognized a woman in the crowded car.
"Hola!" he exclaimed, before they conversed in Spanish about a Puerto Rican festival, an after-school karate program, and the high number of Latinos who have diabetes. He nodded and furrowed his brow and spoke with expansive gestures. She was clearly charmed. When the ride was nearly over, he told her to call his City Hall office but realized he had no business cards. He reached for a notebook in his shirt pocket but did not have anything to write with.
"Does anybody have a pen?" he asked.
It happens to everybody, forgetting a pen, keys, or any of the other instruments of daily business. But with Arroyo the moment was a kind of parable of his political life: He is one of the city's most popular politicians, an avuncular 59-year-old who has been a top vote-getter and an object of speculation as the city's first Latino mayoral contender. But he has fumbled with details.
He has been criticized for spotty attendance, all but ignoring committee meetings on one subject over which the council has power, the budget. The committees he chairs have hardly met this year. And with a City Council election this fall, Arroyo has only $2,728 in his campaign account. In contrast, his fellow at-large councilors, anticipating an expensive race, have campaign chests of $66,000 to about $450,000.
In an indication that he is losing some political capital, Arroyo failed to gain the endorsement last month of the Ward 5 Democratic Committee, which includes Arroyo's liberal base on Beacon Hill and in the Back Bay and two years ago gave Arroyo its only endorsement. Committee members cited attendance at meetings as an issue.
"Everybody seems to really like him -- he comes to [neighborhood] meetings, he's active in the community, and he's very polite," said Rob Whitney, chairman of the committee and "a concerned Arroyo supporter." "But the most important part of the job is to be a part of the council, and to attend the meetings."
A loss by Arroyo in November would be a blow to the city's Latinos, who helped make him the first Latino city councilor and who have given him an exalted status in Spanish-speaking communities.
"He's like your uncle, your dad, your grandfather," said Giovanna Negretti, executive director of the Latino mobilization group ?Oiste?. "He's old-fashioned and proper, he's respectful and charismatic. He embodies all these values that we embrace as a culture."
Arroyo is unfazed by his paltry campaign account, discounting his funding shortfalls as an inconsequential personal foible. "To say, 'Give me $50,' I'm not comfortable with that," he said.
He shrugs when asked about criticism that he misses meetings, including several in recent weeks to review Mayor Thomas M. Menino's budget proposal.
"Budget hearings are good, don't get me wrong," Arroyo said. But he prefers to read over documents on his own and speak individually with City Hall department heads instead of sitting through testimony in council meeting rooms, he said.
Arroyo says he likes getting out and meeting people the most. On a recent day, he left City Hall after sitting through 45 minutes of a budget hearing -- one of the few he participated in this year -- for a luncheon at the Boston Hispanic Center.
At the luncheon, Arroyo exuberantly darted about the room, posing for group photos, kissing cheeks, and making jokes.
On the way to a Police Department promotion ceremony minutes later, he said one of his most important functions as a city councilor is to be a standard-bearer for Boston's Latinos and a contact for them in the white-dominated political system.
"People want to feel like they are treated equally, like they count," Arroyo said.
He connects with those constituents in ways that other councilors have not . Arroyo is the only city councilor who speaks fluent Spanish. He appears on Spanish-language radio stations twice a week, presenting a report on city politics.
His photos frequently appear in Boston's Spanish-language newspapers, and he is often treated with a deference in Latino communities that some other councilors jealously call "rock star status." Arroyo was greeted late one recent night at Tacos El Charro in Jamaica Plain by an enthusiastic staff that served him supper after the kitchen had closed and all the customers had left.
It is a different story at City Hall, where some councilors said they have few interactions with Arroyo and refer to his chief of staff, Jamie Willmuth, as the "shadow councilor" because he attends so many meetings on Arroyo's behalf.
The council's Environment and Health Committee, which Arroyo chairs, has not yet met this year, according to council records. The other committee he oversees, Youth Affairs, has met once.
Arroyo took last December off, helping to organize a delegation of Americans to observe elections in Venezuela. He traveled with his Venezuela-born fianc?e, Selene Acosta, and divided his time between the elections and leisure, he said.
Councilors say that because of Arroyo's frequent absences, there are fewer opportunities to forge political bonds with him.
"Personally, people like him. He's very genuine and pleasant to talk to, and I've never heard the guy raise his voice," said Councilor John M. Tobin of West Roxbury. "But I have to say, of everyone on the council, he's the person I know the least about."
Arroyo participates in a wide range of political events, though some of them are not in Boston. Earlier this month, he eschewed Boston's Gay Pride Parade to join Ricky Martin, Jennifer Lopez, and Geraldo Rivera at the National Puerto Rican Day Parade in New York, a fact that his staff struggled to explain to Gay Pride organizers. Arroyo informed aides that he might have to miss Boston's Dominican Parade next month because of a commitment in New Hampshire.
"Councilor, I don't know what your commitment is in New Hampshire, but this is a pretty important event," said Calvin Feliciano, Arroyo's director of constituent services.
Arroyo said he would think about it.
On the council, Arroyo has championed a variety of initiatives that were well received, including a proposal to place a moratorium on university expansion in Boston and another measure proposing that illegal immigrants in Boston be allowed to vote.
After receiving enthusiastic receptions, however, the measures remained dormant for months. Last week the council did approve one of his proposals, that a stretch of Jamaica Plain's Centre Street be made into an avenue celebrating the Latin-dominated neighborhoods that conjoin it.
Arroyo said the council often ignores his proposals because they are too controversial for his colleagues who, he says, do not want to challenge the status quo. "I guess too many of my things are too heavy," he said.
In one instance, that was not the holdup. An Arroyo -authored resolution to discourage spanking by parents has languished in his Youth Affairs Committee. He said he had not realized that the resolution had landed there.
Councilor steps to his own beat
Arroyo's style hailed, ripped
By Matt Viser, Globe Staff | July 2, 2007
City Councilor Felix Arroyo, carrying a canvas satchel with an iPod and a lunch of leftover chicken and Ramen noodles, stepped onto the Orange Line train as though onto a stage, ready to perform. Since a car accident last year totaled his Volkswagen, he has opted for the subway and discovered a whole new world of followers. On this recent morning he recognized a woman in the crowded car.
"Hola!" he exclaimed, before they conversed in Spanish about a Puerto Rican festival, an after-school karate program, and the high number of Latinos who have diabetes. He nodded and furrowed his brow and spoke with expansive gestures. She was clearly charmed. When the ride was nearly over, he told her to call his City Hall office but realized he had no business cards. He reached for a notebook in his shirt pocket but did not have anything to write with.
"Does anybody have a pen?" he asked.
It happens to everybody, forgetting a pen, keys, or any of the other instruments of daily business. But with Arroyo the moment was a kind of parable of his political life: He is one of the city's most popular politicians, an avuncular 59-year-old who has been a top vote-getter and an object of speculation as the city's first Latino mayoral contender. But he has fumbled with details.
He has been criticized for spotty attendance, all but ignoring committee meetings on one subject over which the council has power, the budget. The committees he chairs have hardly met this year. And with a City Council election this fall, Arroyo has only $2,728 in his campaign account. In contrast, his fellow at-large councilors, anticipating an expensive race, have campaign chests of $66,000 to about $450,000.
In an indication that he is losing some political capital, Arroyo failed to gain the endorsement last month of the Ward 5 Democratic Committee, which includes Arroyo's liberal base on Beacon Hill and in the Back Bay and two years ago gave Arroyo its only endorsement. Committee members cited attendance at meetings as an issue.
"Everybody seems to really like him -- he comes to [neighborhood] meetings, he's active in the community, and he's very polite," said Rob Whitney, chairman of the committee and "a concerned Arroyo supporter." "But the most important part of the job is to be a part of the council, and to attend the meetings."
A loss by Arroyo in November would be a blow to the city's Latinos, who helped make him the first Latino city councilor and who have given him an exalted status in Spanish-speaking communities.
"He's like your uncle, your dad, your grandfather," said Giovanna Negretti, executive director of the Latino mobilization group ?Oiste?. "He's old-fashioned and proper, he's respectful and charismatic. He embodies all these values that we embrace as a culture."
Arroyo is unfazed by his paltry campaign account, discounting his funding shortfalls as an inconsequential personal foible. "To say, 'Give me $50,' I'm not comfortable with that," he said.
He shrugs when asked about criticism that he misses meetings, including several in recent weeks to review Mayor Thomas M. Menino's budget proposal.
"Budget hearings are good, don't get me wrong," Arroyo said. But he prefers to read over documents on his own and speak individually with City Hall department heads instead of sitting through testimony in council meeting rooms, he said.
Arroyo says he likes getting out and meeting people the most. On a recent day, he left City Hall after sitting through 45 minutes of a budget hearing -- one of the few he participated in this year -- for a luncheon at the Boston Hispanic Center.
At the luncheon, Arroyo exuberantly darted about the room, posing for group photos, kissing cheeks, and making jokes.
On the way to a Police Department promotion ceremony minutes later, he said one of his most important functions as a city councilor is to be a standard-bearer for Boston's Latinos and a contact for them in the white-dominated political system.
"People want to feel like they are treated equally, like they count," Arroyo said.
He connects with those constituents in ways that other councilors have not . Arroyo is the only city councilor who speaks fluent Spanish. He appears on Spanish-language radio stations twice a week, presenting a report on city politics.
His photos frequently appear in Boston's Spanish-language newspapers, and he is often treated with a deference in Latino communities that some other councilors jealously call "rock star status." Arroyo was greeted late one recent night at Tacos El Charro in Jamaica Plain by an enthusiastic staff that served him supper after the kitchen had closed and all the customers had left.
It is a different story at City Hall, where some councilors said they have few interactions with Arroyo and refer to his chief of staff, Jamie Willmuth, as the "shadow councilor" because he attends so many meetings on Arroyo's behalf.
The council's Environment and Health Committee, which Arroyo chairs, has not yet met this year, according to council records. The other committee he oversees, Youth Affairs, has met once.
Arroyo took last December off, helping to organize a delegation of Americans to observe elections in Venezuela. He traveled with his Venezuela-born fianc?e, Selene Acosta, and divided his time between the elections and leisure, he said.
Councilors say that because of Arroyo's frequent absences, there are fewer opportunities to forge political bonds with him.
"Personally, people like him. He's very genuine and pleasant to talk to, and I've never heard the guy raise his voice," said Councilor John M. Tobin of West Roxbury. "But I have to say, of everyone on the council, he's the person I know the least about."
Arroyo participates in a wide range of political events, though some of them are not in Boston. Earlier this month, he eschewed Boston's Gay Pride Parade to join Ricky Martin, Jennifer Lopez, and Geraldo Rivera at the National Puerto Rican Day Parade in New York, a fact that his staff struggled to explain to Gay Pride organizers. Arroyo informed aides that he might have to miss Boston's Dominican Parade next month because of a commitment in New Hampshire.
"Councilor, I don't know what your commitment is in New Hampshire, but this is a pretty important event," said Calvin Feliciano, Arroyo's director of constituent services.
Arroyo said he would think about it.
On the council, Arroyo has championed a variety of initiatives that were well received, including a proposal to place a moratorium on university expansion in Boston and another measure proposing that illegal immigrants in Boston be allowed to vote.
After receiving enthusiastic receptions, however, the measures remained dormant for months. Last week the council did approve one of his proposals, that a stretch of Jamaica Plain's Centre Street be made into an avenue celebrating the Latin-dominated neighborhoods that conjoin it.
Arroyo said the council often ignores his proposals because they are too controversial for his colleagues who, he says, do not want to challenge the status quo. "I guess too many of my things are too heavy," he said.
In one instance, that was not the holdup. An Arroyo -authored resolution to discourage spanking by parents has languished in his Youth Affairs Committee. He said he had not realized that the resolution had landed there.