There isn’t any reason for a picture of former mayor Michael Sullivan to be excluded from a City Hall gallery of portraits of previous chief executives of Lawrence.
No reason, of course, other than the pettiness of the Lantigua administration.
Sullivan has been out of office nearly four years. But the two-term mayor’s portrait has yet to be included among the row of 52 images of former mayors dating back to Charles Storrow in 1853 that hang in the City Council chambers.
“I went to City Hall to order a frame,” Sullivan told reporter Keith Eddings. “The mayor said, ‘Go to the clerk.’ The clerk said, ‘The building falls under the mayor. You have to go through his office.’ It’s getting to be a running joke that three and a half years later, they’re stalemated on what the protocol is. You’d think that would be pretty easy, once an elected mayor leaves.”
Sullivan is not popular around City Hall these days. Mayor William Lantigua has blamed him for the city’s financial woes that led to borrowing to balance budget deficits and the state appointment of a fiscal overseer.
But none of that should matter. Sullivan is a former mayor of Lawrence and ought to receive the same tokens of respect afforded the city’s other past leaders. The Lantigua administration’s failure to do so is simply a petty lack of common courtesy.
