“I was angry. I wish that I hadn’t lost my cool, ”said Mr. Hardy, , a former middle school civics teacher elected to the commission three years ago. “I felt strongly that I needed to say the things I said, and the public needed to know how wrong this is. But I wish I hadn’t been yelling. ” Mr. Hardy, who describes himself as a progressive Democrat, insisted that the city was on its way to creating its own crisis by taking away utilities from some of the poorest residents because they could not pay their bills.
“This is a banana republic is what you’re turning this place into with your so-called leadership,” Mr. Hardy shouted at Ms. Triolo in the meeting, his voice booming. “We should have been talking about this last week. We cut off people’s utilities this week and made them pay what could have been their last check – to us – to turn their lights on in a global health pandemic. But you don’t care about that. You didn’t want to meet. ”
Ms. Triolo did not sit idly by. She repeatedly slammed the gavel to recess the meeting and quiet Mr. Hardy. And she yelled right back at him. “Point of order! You are done. You’re done. You’re done. Disrespectful, ”she said, marching out of the meeting and into a back room of City Hall. But social distance did nothing to slow the argument; it continued from two separate rooms as other commissioners sat quietly. Ms. Triolo, 59, a moderate Republican in her fourth term as mayor, suggested that Mr. Hardy’s rant was intentional grandstanding for attention – he is running for a seat in the State House. She said that his actions amounted to bullying and that the issue of utility shut-offs had been inaccurately portrayed.
“He hijacked this meeting to talk about something that was not even on the budget,” she said. “He was aggressive and completely out of order. That snippet was taken out of context. It was damaging and gave our city a black eye. ”
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