Who’s who in Salarygate?

By Joe Murphy
Views and opinions are his own.

Hi all,

It is said that for everything there is a season, and fighting Salarygate is turn-turn-turning into a multi-season effort. Many A Just Quincy volunteers have dedicated large chunks of their summer to this cause, and as I write this, we have reached the final day of August. It’s Labor Day weekend, and the summer is officially concluding. When Salarygate first unfolded towards the end of May, the school year was winding down, and we made signs and stood out in front of city hall ahead of the final two city council meetings of the session. Now, 89 days since the June 3rd meeting, we again find ourselves getting ready to stand out in city hall plaza before the first city council meeting of the upcoming session.

When the city council signed the ordinances raising the mayoral and council salaries, we had only 20 days to get 12% of the registered voters to sign our petition. At that time, I remarked, “This is a sprint, not a marathon.” Well, that effort concluded shy of the goal, and the sprint portion ended. Since then, we have been in marathon mode. Marathons are long and arduous, but they give you more time. You don’t have to get a good jump at the beginning to finish or perform well in these races. So, it is not too late for anyone to help make a difference and have your opinion heard.

One of the ways AJQ helps people get involved is by providing information. Information is fuel to the collective fire. So we create content and put the word out where people will hopefully find it. To that end, our latest bucket of information fuel is an infographic explaining who’s who in Salarygate. It is our hope that no one following AJQ will ever feel uninformed when speaking about this to their friends and neighbors.

The last listing in the “who’s who” is “you,” the residents of Quincy. You can end up being the most important character in this fight. It will ultimately be up to you to decide if the elected officials’ strategy of waiting out the outrage will work or whether they will be forced to backtrack or face a loss in their next election.

Let us know if there are others we should include in our character profiles.

click on the PLAYBILl to see the “who’s who” infographic.