Principal Named for Gorman Fort Banks

By Adam Swift

An Arlington elementary school principal will take over as the new principal of the Gorman Fort Banks school. Mark McAneny has most recently served as the principal of the Bishop Elementary School in Arlington. “The superintendent (Lisa Howard), after a long process, and with an incredible amount of well-qualified candidates, selected Mark McAneny,” said Town Council President James Letterie at Tuesday night’s Town Council meeting. “He will be taking over for our current principal, Ilene Pearson, who is retiring. Ilene has been here over a decade, and has made incredible strides at the Gorman Fort Banks and will be missed very much by the community and by the Winthrop public schools students.” In other business, the council approved sending out letters of acquisition for the approximately 60 properties that will be impacted by permanent or temporary easements for the Revere Street reconstruction project. Most of the easements will be for small portions of property near the roadway. “This just allows the letters to go out and to negotiate with people in regard to the amounts of money the appraiser gave us for what those easements are worth for both the temporary and permanent,” said Town Manager Tony Marino. Once the negotiations are completed, there will be an order of taking that will come before the council for those easements. Marino said the letters needed to go out by Friday, March 24 in order for the project to stay on track for a potential June bid date. Letterie also introduced a motion seeking to increase the size of the Zoning Board of Appeals from six to seven members to make it easier to vote on appeals and conduct business. “Right now, we have a six member board of appeals with two alternates and four (full) members,” said Letterie. When three members handle an appeal, it needs a unanimous vote to pass. “What we are trying to do here, and it leads to an inordinate amount of time sometimes, because they are just inundated by requests, and if you have three certain people on one hearing and the hearing is continued, and those three people aren’t available (at the next hearing), it has to be continued again and it is making the process harder,” said Letterie. “What we would like to do is add another member to make it seven and have five full and associate members.” This would allow the board to have five members on a hearing with four votes needed to approve an appeal, giving it more flexibility. The request will be discussed further at a future meeting of the council’s rules subcommittee.