Following complaints filed with police from senior citizens who assert they have been intimidated and harassed, leadership at Park City Communities that manages multiple public housing properties in the city has banned City Councilwoman Maria Pereira from entering any of its properties, according to multiple sources.
Pereira is mayoral candidate John Gomes’ preeminent excavator of absentee ballots working her heavy senior citizen constituency in the Upper East Side. Pereira lost her council seat with the walk-in vote but survived via a heavy barrage of absentee ballots.
Roxann Lafountain, a resident at Fireside Apartments, posted this on her Facebook page.
Lafountain added:
Peek a boo !!!!! WE ALL SEE YOU!!! Guess who ????yours truly Maria pereira stuffing the ballot boxes with absentee ballots!!!!!! I want u to know I’m going around fireside and show all the Spanish people your video stuffing ballots!!!! U come here showing Wanda Geters video well I’m sure gonna show this to all the tenants!!!! How many ballots u stuffing!!!!! You though u was getting away !!!! You have bashed every black that’s with Wanda and joe !!!! The mess y’all pulling I never saw nobody do the grimmy stuff you have done!!!!! Did y’all really think that the people in bpt got Wanda’s back she did so much for the community she went above and beyond doing her job!!!! Y’all so jealous and angry over the power this young black woman has in the community!!!!!
Multiple senior citizens, who feared retribution for publishing names, have also told OIB about Pereira’s intimidation tactics. A surveillance camera last month also captured Pereira entering the vacant Fireside Apartments home of a senior citizen in search of her absentee ballot. Pereira claimed she had permission. She is also on video placing absentee ballots into one of the four city drops boxes that have become the central evidence of Gomes challenge of Mayor Joe Ganim’s 251 primary win before state court.
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District Leader Wanda Geter-Pataky is one of the focal points of Gomes’ court challenge. Gomes’ lawyer Bill Bloss rested his case on Thursday. Defense lawyers also rested without rebuttal.
The Park City Communities board of directors is expected to be briefed on the Pereira matter Thursday afternoon.
Only in Bridgeport – November 19, 2023
Today I am writing on OIB as a citizen who has been an observer of City Hall lack of attention to Boards and Commissions by a series of mayors including Ganim1, Fabrizi, Finch and Ganim2 as directed by the City Charter. Regular and timely appointments of diverse, qualified, residents who are registered to vote are anticipated. The record discloses something less than that, much less. A glance at the City website today would attest to that, a subject for another day.
Today we read that a City Council member has been banned from all properties managed in some way or other by Federal funds through HUD. Is it the manager of the more than 4300 vouchers who has broadly banned a City Council person or the Park City Communities commission that meets tonight? What are the allegations that have resulted in this formal and divisive order, keeping a local legislator from her constituents? What are the normal rules adopted by Section 8 managing authority for admission or denial, keeping in mind the overall safety and security of residents? What rights are held as highest priority by Park City Communities management and Commission?
As an apolitical volunteer to public service, who asks many questions about governance in Bridgeport and have done so for many years, calling for OPEN, ACCOUNTABLE, TRANSPARENT and HONEST values to be constantly observed on behalf of all persons, I have served for two years at one HUD housing location where 190 units provide an open window to view lack of response or concern for the rights or problems, raised by individual residents. With two local Council persons I have met monthly as a recording secretary for residents pursuing the creation of a tenant authority to provide voice for their issues on a regular basis.
In public speaking sessions to the City Council, I have on multiple occasions noted the death of Fair Rent and Fair Housing bodies in Bridgeport. This is intentional homicide by Mayors who likely read the Charter and then ignored their duty to Bridgeport residents about “Fair treatment”, leaving no governance bodies operating in each “high rise neighborhood” or routinely operating on behalf of the City either. Where are PCC records of such? The Fair Rent Commission and Fair Housing board members do not appear on Bridgeport website at this moment. Power over people? Or power to the people? Democratic values or not? Time will tell.
In light of things going on with AB, shouldn’t all of them be banned? that’s Fair
My Bad, more hockey. 🙂
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHMi-j7W2gM
It would make more sense to limit AB applications to residents of an address, and the number of registered voters at that address. Banning AB Voting is disenfranchising legitimate voters. The last thing Bridgeport needs is fewer people voting.
Elections should also be more than one day long and include at least one weekend of voting.
Eric,
You are correct. Eliminating ABs would be an act of vote suppression affecting a specifically vulnerable group of citizen-voters. In a poor urban City like Bridgeport that would portend significant suppression of civil rights.
The CT Post carried an article this morning about Connecticut communities where a task force will look at the operation of local voter personnel to provide, carryout, and instruct their communities in the specific handling of absentee ballots where 20 or more are eligible to vote by absentee ballots. I wonder how and why the City of Bridgeport was ignored by the task force article. Any thoughts? Time will tell.