The Worcester City Council Circles the Drain; Pt. 1

This piece is the first in a series that will look at actions taken by some councilors over recent years that, when viewed collectively, display a disturbing downward spiral towards a council that serves the interests of its members, not of city residents.

Since 2024, the Worcester City Council has largely eliminated the role of residents in their own local legislature. The public participation portion of the meeting persists, although not without some discussion of further limiting it. However, the majority faction within the council insists on being in total control of what is and isn’t the business of the people of Worcester.

Soon after the Worcester Regional Research Bureau released its October 2025 report, which recommended that the City of Worcester create a civilian review board, City Manager Eric Batista told Talk of the Commonwealth with Hank Stolz that the report had little he wasn’t already familiar with. He said he studied the subject extensively while Assistant City Manager.

Yet here we are, nearly six months later, and no report has made it to the city council. That’s not the manager’s fault. The Mayor, currently Joe Petty, controls the council’s agenda. If he wanted it on the agenda, it’d be there.

A Harmless Resolution in Isolation

On the Worcester City Council agenda for Tuesday, April 14, the council will consider the following resolution:

“That the City Council of the City of Worcester does hereby recognize the Worcester Police Department’s (WPD) excellent work in several recent situations, where potentially serious dangers to the general public’s safety and wellbeing were averted. (Bergman)”

In isolation, there is nothing wrong with this. Based on the Worcester Police Department’s press releases, it worked with departments in surrounding municipalities to arrest 12 and avert planned street takeovers, arrested juveniles on gun and attempted robbery charges, and arrested one and charged two others related to the murder of Tafar Lewis, then-18 years old, in 2019.

Good. We like that.

It’s not the police department, in this case, that is enraging. Coming from this city council, the resolution is infuriating.

Keep in mind that on Feb. 24, just five meetings ago, the council spent over an hour praising the police department based on only crime stats, with Councilor Kate Toomey saying the department has performed “miracles.”

After the 2025 municipal election, the council majority led by Mayor Joe Petty includes Councilors Kate Toomey, Satya Mitra, Tony Economou, Moe Bergman, and Jose Rivera. Councilor Gary Rosen will show independence on some issues. Thus far, both Councilor John Fresolo and Rosen appear quite aligned with the majority on police issues.

Seven of the eight received the endorsement of the New England Police Benevolent Association Local 911, the union that represents patrol officers at the Worcester Police Department. That union endorsed Fresolo’s opponent in the election last year.

Councilors’ Positions on Police Reform

The positions of councilors on police reform roughly break down into three factions.

The Pro-Civilian Review Board Faction

• Councilor Khrystian King
• Councilor Luis Ojeda
• Councilor Rob Bilotta

These councilors support a civilian review board as a check and balance on police misconduct investigations. It’s not a position I share. They rarely work, in my view, and have perceived power that never actually materializes. The position is, at least, better than doing nothing and continuing a half-century trend of being willfully in denial of the problems in policing in Worcester.

The No Changes at All Faction

• Councilor Kate Toomey
• Councilor Moe Bergman
• Councilor Jose Rivera

This group falsely claims that the Massachusetts Peace Officer Standards and Training (POST) Commission is “enough.” Meanwhile, as This Week in Worcester previously reported, the POST Commission’s position directly disputes this faction’s position. While Toomey is chairperson of the council’s Standing Committee on Public Safety, with Bergman and Economou as its members, the POST Commission has never appeared before that committee. To date, none of the committee members have introduced an order to the full council, which would be required to invite the POST Commission to a committee meeting.

Representatives of the POST Commission have appeared before the Human Rights Commission on two occasions. The Executive Director of the POST Commission, Enrique Zuniga, appeared before the Human Rights Commission on March 23.

He told the commission members that POST receives roughly 1,600 complaints per year and directly investigates around 100. That’s good enough for these councilors.

They also pretend that police officers investigating other police officers in the same department is a credible investigation. The WPD Bureau of Professional Standards has been a professional police misconduct and, sometimes, crime cover-up department as long as its existed.

A report by the Worcester Telegram and Gazette “the city, in 2021, told POST that, of the 795 unnecessary force investigations it had ever conducted into its roughly 460 active officers at the time, it had upheld the allegations just two times.”

Bergman was first elected councilor in 2013. Toomey was first elected in 2005 and is in her 11th year as chair of the public safety committee. Neither has ever expressed concern that 99.75 percent of unnecessary force investigations led to no finding of responsibility.

The Too Cowardly to Take a Position Faction

Here are the positions of councilors who know only what they are against:

• Mayor Joe Petty: Against civilian review board, completely bereft of any other ideas he could support;
• Councilor Satya Mitra: Said during the 2025 campaign he would consider civilian review, no clarification since; unlikely to support;
• Councilor Gary Rosen: Against civilian review board, completely bereft of any other ideas but wants oversight of state road projects;
• Councilor Tony Economou: The DOJ report is “just words on paper,” against civilian review, completely bereft of any other ideas but wants to know the mix of the pothole filler;
• Councilor John Fresolo: Against civilian review board, completely bereft of any other ideas he could support.

Let’s be honest. There isn’t much difference between the No Changes and No Position factions.

For those from these factions reelected last year, Petty, Toomey, and Bergman, they took a week of press when immigration protestors interrupted the city council last year after Worcester Police officers supported the ICE operation on Eureka Street (city officials deny this, more on these lies later in the series), focusing on the curse words used in their protest.

When protestors shut down the Worcester City Council meeting after Mayor Petty “reinterpreted the rules” in under 48 hours to prevent a resolution on a ceasefire in the War in Gaza, despite the city council taking up 11 similar matters on international issues in the past, Toomey called the meeting “a riot.”

How brave of the trio to create that situation entirely of their own actions, then try to spin it as anything but self-inflicted.

Yet when a rally staged by police unions descended on city council, when some department employees insisted on screaming “prostitutes” at women in the room and demanding that their own experiences were a lie, all three sat there in silence wallowing in their fealty to police union special interest political power. They wholly and deliberately ignored the causes the DOJ said were contributing causes of abuse and misconduct it cited: a failure to hold officers accountable and supervisory structures so inadequate that the department has little visibility into what officers are doing on the street.

After the “not a riot” meeting, Toomey and Bergman played host to Chief of Police Paul Saucier promoting ridiculous conspiracy theories at a public safety committee meeting about interns at the Department of Justice and imposters cosplaying as cops as the origin of the sexual assault claims against some officers. If he had only called them crisis actors, the Alex Jones-like absurdity of it could have come full circle.

Based on their positions that everything is just wonderful at the police department, here is what we know the two anti-reform factions support:

• When a police officer physically attacks a pastor for saying things the officer didn’t like, in his own church in front of screaming, horrified parishioners, including children, promoting that officer is appropriate.
• When a group of multiple officers conspire to create a false story that an individual, who just happens to be black by the sheer luck of it, accelerated a car at multiple officers that the man wasn’t in (because they had yanked him out), the appropriate response is not to arrest them for lying on a police report (a crime) and conspiracy, but to promote one of them.
• When there is indisputable evidence that a Worcester Police detective told a very different story during a criminal trial than he told at the civil trial after the man spent 16 years in prison, that’s just fine. Put him back on the street to do it all over again.
• Teens bullied into confessions for crimes they didn’t commit, an autistic 10-year-old child with a broken arm, a man held for five months for a murder he couldn’t have committed, and on and on and on.

We know they have no objection to these horrific occurrences because they refuse to do anything about them. This is the police department they want. This is what they believe the people of this city deserve.

What they certainly do not support is the Constitution of the United States, which each councilor pledges to uphold at inauguration.

Across 276 city council meetings from 2018 through 2025, the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution comes up twice, according to meeting minutes. Once, related to the WPD drone program, and the second related to property inspections as part of the city’s rental registry program.

The amendment, which prohibits unreasonable searches or seizures by government officials, never comes up relative to individual rights and law enforcement in the city.

Let’s suspend reality for a moment and ignore the years of egregious conduct by some within the department. Look at the first 36 seconds of this traffic stop in January:

While I am not a lawyer, I can read. It appears, in my view, that evidence of two violations of law occurred during this stop.

1. Massachusetts has a higher standard for ordering drivers out of a car. Unlike the federal standard, which allows exit orders to be given “as a matter of course,” under Article 14 of the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights, legal exit orders require an officer has a reasonable suspicion of danger to themselves or the public, or the officer has reasonable suspicion of criminal activity.

2. A traffic stop in Massachusetts requires reasonable suspicion of a crime or probable cause of a traffic violation.

The officer declared the stop results from “driving patterns that indicate illegal activity.” That is not reasonable, articulable, or particularized suspicion. That’s what some might call a fishing expedition.

I repeat, the city council has discussed protecting the Fourth Amendment rights of residents of this city in their interactions with police exactly zero times over seven years. Zero.

So yes, considering how comfortable the council majority is with doing absolutely nothing in the face of terrible violations of the rights of people in this city, this election-pandering resolution is infuriating virtue signaling.

Although the council heard this resolution after 11 PM during the council meeting on April 14, just five meetings after heaping effusive praise on the department, several councilors didn’t miss the chance to kiss the ring again. It’s not clout-chasing when they do it. Only residents who speak during public participation do that, of course.

Yet they just have no time to hear petitions from the plebs.

Remember, just last year, how important it was to “show up to work.” The record says otherwise.

That will be the subject of the next piece in this series.

See Compensation for All 8,363 City of Worcester Employees

WORCESTER – The City of Worcester released its report on wages paid to city employees in 2025, showing 8,363 individuals received over $589 million last year. The 2024 report shows nearly $566 million paid to 8,162 employees.

City Manager Eric Batista earned the highest gross pay of city employees, $354,103, which includes his regular pay of $295,711 and $58,392 in salary adjustments or retroactive pay.

The second highest earner in city government in 2025 was Police Lieutenant Stanley Roy Jr., who earned $305,609, which includes 79,290 in detail assignment pay.

The highest detail pay earned went to Dimitrios Gailanidis, who earned $138,660 in detail pay alone and earned $218,793 in total compensation, making him the 57th highest earner in city government in 2025.

Of the top 100 employees by gross pay earned, 87 of them are employees of the Worcester Police Department. Detail assignment pay is the primary driver of police department employee pay.

See the full list of city employees and their earnings below. The search function searches both name and position title.

Historic Elm Park Brought to Life Through New Digitization of Original Development

WORCESTER – Visitors to Worcester’s Elm Park now have a new way of experiencing the park thanks to newly digitized documents made publicly available by the Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site.

The Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site is a United States National Historic Site in Brookline, Massachusetts, managed by the National Park Service. The site holds an archive of more than one million original documents related to the work of landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted and his firm.

Since 2012, the site has undertaken a large-scale effort to digitize its archive and so far has digitized and made publicly available approximately 215,000 maps, renderings, proposals, plans, and photographs from Olmsted-designed parks around the world.

Recent additions to the collection include nearly three dozen items related to Elm Park. These include original plot plans, historic photographs, and detailed blueprints that provide a new glimpse of the park’s early 20th-century transformation.

Frederick Law Olmsted was the world’s most famous landscape architect at the turn of the 20th century. His firm, Olmsted Brothers, designed many of the most famous parks and outdoor areas in North America, including New York City’s Central Park and developing the landscape around Niagara Falls.

In 1909, the City of Worcester commissioned the Olmsted Brothers to evaluate and improve its public park system. From 1910 through 1918, the firm played a major role in reshaping Elm Park. Their work included designing and installing the new pedestrian bridge, an icon of the park today. They also added new walking paths and reorganized the space to better accommodate visitors.

The Olmsted Brothers also assisted the city in the acquisition of Newton Hill and worked to integrate its larger natural landscape into the park’s design.

Although the Olmsted firm’s involvement began in the early 1900s, Elm Park’s origins date back much earlier. The city purchased the land with public funds in 1854, making it one of the first public parks in the United States.

Olmsted Brothers later returned to Worcester following the Great Depression, where they undertook additional work in Elm Park, including landscaping the triangular area at the base of Newton Hill and helping with the construction of the Rogers-Kennedy Memorial.

The newly digitized materials date from approximately 1909 to 1940 and depict additions mentioned above and others, including original survey plans, design blueprints, and photos that showcase a new view of one of Worcester’s oldest and most iconic spaces.

Rep. McGovern Joins Protest Against Iran War at City Hall

Congressman Jim McGovern was one of dozens of residents to rally at Worcester City Hall on Tuesday, April 8, as part of an emergency protest organized by Indivisible Worcester to oppose potential U.S. military escalation in Iran and call for urgent congressional intervention.

“I know my office has been inundated with phone calls about this issue like never before,” Rep. McGovern told the crowd. “If this cabinet had a half an ounce of integrity they would invoke the 25th Amendment and take the nuclear code away from this psychopathic lunatic before he hurts any more innocent people.”

Rep. McGovern was one of a number of lawmakers who condemned comments by the president made Tuesday morning on Truth Social, which read:

“A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will. However, now that we have Complete and Total Regime Change, where different, smarter, and less radicalized minds prevail, maybe something revolutionarily wonderful can happen, WHO KNOWS? We will find out tonight, one of the most important moments in the long and complex history of the World. 47 years of extortion, corruption, and death, will finally end. God Bless the Great People of Iran!”

On WBUR’s Morning Edition, McGovern heavily criticized the statement and accused the president of “saying things that make him sound like a madman.”

In support of the Congressman’s criticism, several local residents organized the rally on Tuesday to demand de-escalation, raise alarm over the president’s rhetoric, and pressure Congress to assert its authority over war powers.

During the rally, McGovern also urged immediate congressional action regarding the war in Iran, calling on lawmakers to return to Washington and address the situation directly.

“I’ve called on the speaker of the House to call Congress back in session,” said McGovern. “We should be back in Washington. We should be debating this, and we should vote to cut off all funds for this war.”

Corry Root, a board member of Indivisible Worcester and one of the event’s organizers, explained the urgency behind the gathering.

“We organized this because the shameful leader of our country has threatened genocide in Iran and that all the people need to understand what an existential crisis that is,” Root said. “We need to come together and be organized and ready to face this moment.”

President Trump has since announced a two-week ceasefire for military action in the region.

An additional protest at Worcester City Hall takes place Wednesday, April 8, at 6 PM. This event is part of a national day of action organized locally by Worcester Indivisible, Massachusetts Peace Action, and others.

Learn How State Education Funding will Effect Worcester This Year

WORCESTER – The Worcester Education Justice Alliance (WEJA) will host a forum on Thursday, April 9, on the state education budget with the Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center (MassBudget). The forum takes place at Claremont Academy, at 15 Claremont St., starting at 6 PM. Attendees are requested to RSVP. Childcare and dinner will be provided.

The forum, “State Funding & Worcester Schools: What You Need to Know,” will discuss the education funding landscape  in Massachusetts this year and its effects on Worcester.

Anthony Clough, a policy analyst at MassBudget, will participate in the forum.

MassBudget is a public policy research and advocacy organization advancing equitable policy solutions that create an inclusive, thriving Commonwealth.

WEJA is a coalition of students, parents, educators, school staff, and community members, standing together to mobilize for greater racial and social justice in our Worcester Public School System.

Water Filtration Maintenance to Impact Service to Worcester Residents

WORCESTER – The City of Worcester asks residents to conserve water and avoid activities that use large amounts of water, like washing laundry or dishes, for three four-hour blocks in April.

The water filtration plant that services Worcester will undergo maintenance during the following time periods:

• April 9, from 12 AM to 4 AM
• April 16, from 12 AM to 4 AM
• April 23, from 12 AM to 4 AM

The city says the maintenance work will improve the functionality and reliability of the water filtration plant.

During each maintenance period, residents may experience reduced water pressure or no water service at all. The system should return to normal by 4 PM on all three scheduled days.

Those who require critical access to water or use large amounts of water should plan for these maintenance periods.

UMass Chan Ranks 1st in Massachusetts for Primary Care Education

WORCESTER – UMass Chan Medical School ranked first in Massachusetts for primary care education and second for research, according to U.S. News & World Report’s 2026 Best Grad School Rankings.

UMass Chan ranked ahead of the medical schools at Tufts, Boston University, and Harvard for primary care education and behind only Tufts for research.

U.S. News ranked both UMass Chan and Tufts as tier two schools for both primary care education and research nationwide. Only 16 schools received tier one designation in both the primary care education and research categories.

The Umass Chan Doctor of Nursing Practice program ranked 29th among 154 programs, while its PhD program ranked 55th among 159 doctoral programs in the biological sciences.

This year,  61 students, or 35 percent of the T.H. Chan School of Medicine’s graduating class, matched into residencies in primary care and related specialties. Those specialties include internal medicine, family medicine, and pediatrics.

Graduates of the class of 2026 are the first class to complete all four years of the school’s Vista curriculum, which UMass Chan introduced in 2022. The curriculum includes a health system science pillar, biomedical and clinical science pillars, and incorporates health equity, diversity and inclusion, population and community health, and patient and provider wellness into students’ studies.

See the full rankings from U.S. News & World Report.

Worcester Dual Language School Expands to 8th Grade

WORCESTER – Worcester Public Schools announced on Monday, April 6, that the Worcester Dual Language Magnet School will expand to serve students in grades seven and eight, starting at the beginning of the 2026-27 school year.

The school currently serves students from preschool through grade six.

“The addition of grades 7 and 8 at Worcester Dual Language Magnet School is an important step toward scaling a model that works,” said Brian E. Allen, WPS Superintendent. “We are not just embracing, but elevating this approach to ensure more students have the opportunity to graduate with multilingual and multicultural skills.”

Students at Worcester Dual Language Magnet School learn in two languages, English and Spanish. Students from across Worcester receive admission to the school through a lottery system. Those admitted to the school include both native English and native Spanish speakers.

The school operates within a framework considered optimal for multilingual education, as it treats each student’s primary language as an asset for further development, not a barrier. Research shows that both native English and native Spanish-speaking students in dual-language programs meet or exceed the academic performance of their peers.

Woodlands Academy, at 93 Woodland St., also offers a dual language program for K-6 students. Admissions at Woodland are residential-based.

Registration for the preschool and kindergarten admissions lottery at the Worcester Dual Language Magnet School is open through May 1. Enrollment forms are available online.

Worcester Man Sentenced to Life in State Prison for 2022 Home Invasion

WORCESTER – A local man received a sentence of life in prison on Friday, April 3, after being found guilty of several charges related to a home invasion in Fitchburg in 2022.

A jury convicted Concepcion Rodriguez, 39, of Worcester, of:

• Two counts of armed assault with intent to murder;
• Use of a firearm while committing a felony;
• Two counts of larceny under $1,200;
• Possession of a firearm outside his home or work; and
• Possession of ammunition without an FID card.

Rodriguez met the standards of a habitual offender based on prior convictions.

He also faced one charge of possession of a loaded firearm, was dismissed.

According to the office of Worcester County District Attorney Joe Early Jr., in March 2022, Rodriguez entered an apartment in Fitchburg in search of an individual who did not reside at that location. He discharged his weapon while in the apartment and stole items before fleeing the scene.

The apartment occupant was present at the time of the incident, but remained uninjured.

Worcester Schools Host Second District Realignment Forum April 15

WORCESTER – Worcester Public Schools (WPS) announced it will hold a public meeting on its School Boundary and Quadrant Alignment Project on Wednesday, April 15, from 5 PM to 6 PM at Doherty Memorial High School, at 299 Highland St.

The forum will share information and gather feedback from parents, caregivers, and community members to inform the project. Representatives from the non-profit data analysis firm Dillinger Research and Applied Data will facilitate the forum.

WPS is considering adjusting school boundaries and related systems for assigning students to schools based on their residential address and improve educational experiences of students.

The Worcester School Committee set the School Boundary and Quadrant Alignment project as a district improvement goal for the 2025-26 school year, with a plan completed by June 2027 for implementation in the 2027-28 school year.

The goals stated by WPS for the project are:

• Reduce the student population in schools that are over capacity
• Increase the student population at schools that are under-enrolled
• Ensure school programming aligns with each school’s building capacity, along with student and community needs
• Improve school feeder patterns
• Improve citywide/magnet school designations to best reflect the needs of the community

See more information about the phases of the project and its timeline.

WPS will share potential scenarios for the project with the school committee in June.

This forum is the second on the alignment project. WPS held the first meeting on March 23 at South High School.

WPS will also hold a virtual meeting on the project on May 5. Details about this meeting are not yet available.

Worcester Public Schools released this short video about the School Boundary and Quadrant Alignment Project.