Re-elect
Jordan H. F. "Jody"
FIORE
Taunton Municipal Council

FIRST WE NEEDED HIS EDUCATION.
THEN WE NEEDED HIS EXPERIENCE.
NOW, WE NEED HIM.

Jordan Fiore is known as the “Dean of the City Council.” With fourteen years on the city council and six years on the school committee, plus decades of service in many community organizations, he has been around the scene a long time. He has said that he has an “edifice complex,” since he has helped to build five schools, an animal shelter, a DPW complex, a fire station, and to renovate a building for a police station. He helped bring GIS mapping to city government and this past year, he used Abraham Lincoln’s 200th birthday to raise Taunton’s spirit by dedicating a square where Lincoln spoke and the home of the general who guarded him at Gettysburg, got the Taunton High African-American Club to celebrate the freedom of the Emancipation Proclamation and got the school children of Taunton to raise nearly $3000 in pennies to help the families of our troops and veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan.
You’d think with twenty years in office and a strong track record for progress, Jody Fiore would have had enough of politics and that City Hall would have had enough of him. However, since his return to the council in the last election, being “the Dean” has meant more than just serving the longest. On a council that is contentious with each other and with the mayor, Jody is the one person they all trust. He can see both sides of most issues and, if he cannot be the leader who finds common ground, he isn’t afraid to stand alone, such as when he tried to keep part of the F. B. Rogers complex standing so that the city could benefit from grandfathering in developing the site and when he voted against the firing of Joshua Acerra because he thought that the process of his firing was as incompetent as the process of his hiring.
Also, with six years as the chairman of the council’s finance and salaries committee and five years as a member of the school committee’s finance and law committee, he knows the operations of the city’s finances as few do. As chairman of the council’s public property committee, he has worked with new Building Superintendent Wayne Walkden on making our school buildings and other public facilities safe for our children, our employees, and the public that uses our buildings. As a lawyer with a master’s degree in history, he understands our city’s past and how actions in the present can play out in the future. In these troubled times, we need someone with the vision to see the consequences of our current situation and the ability to adapt to changing times. That’s Jody Fiore in a nutshell and that’s why we still need him.

AND A GRAND TIME WAS HAD BY ALL

The City of Taunton held its official observance of the 200th birthday of Abraham Lincoln at the Old Colony Historical Society on Thursday, February 12, 2009 at 7:00 p.m. Dr. Charles Thayer presented a reading and lecture on Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address to a house that included over 140 people. The African-American Club of Taunton High School did a provocative performance presentation on Lincoln, race, and the Emancipation Proclamation. The Historical Society offered door prizes, its own museum display and the display of pennies collected by Taunton's school children (see below). Dr. Thayer's wife, Paula, baked the work of art displayed above. All in all, a very satisfying conclusion to a very productive year commemorating the bicentennial of our 16th President.

Read my speech to the Taunton Rotary Club "The Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial in the Age of Obama" on my new supplementary blog http://fiorepapers.blogspot.com

ABOUT A HALF TON OF PENNIES FOR A WORTHY CAUSE

The school children of Taunton have raised over 1100 pounds of pennies and other currency, which were on display at the Old Colony Historical Society as part of the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial celebration. After the party on February 12, the pennies were brought be processed into larger denominations to purchase gift cards to local supermarkets and department stores to be donated to the city's Veterans' Services office to benefit families of veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Participating schools included Benjamin A. Friedman Middle School (over 400 pounds), Mulcahey Middle School, the Elizabeth Pole campus of Parker Middle School, East Taunton Elementary School, Barnum School, and Walker School. Many thanks to School Committee member Janis Nowak and firefighter Paul Allison for coordinating this extraordinary effort, to Jane Hennedy and the staff at the Old Colony Historical Society for displaying them, and to the Taunton Fire Department for moving them around.

OFFICIAL PORTRAIT FROM THE CITY OF TAUNTON'S WEBSITE

This frightening visage is what people are treated to when they go onto the City of Taunton's website and look up the city council. It is placed here to give you fair warning.

Lincoln-Douglas Debate, October 18, 2008

On Saturday, October 18, 2008, the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission and the Liberty and Union Weekend Committee sponsored a reenactment of the seven Lincoln-Douglas Debates to commemorate their 150th anniversary and Lincoln's upcoming bicentennial. I prepared an original copyrighted edition taken from earlier published versions of the debates and we used seven different Lincolns and seven different Douglases. They were cast as follows:

First Debate: Douglas: Steven Torres, Esq., Lincoln: Robert Funke, Esq.

Second Debate: Lincoln: Paul Allison, Douglas: Cathal O'Brien

Third Debate: Douglas: Atty. Sherry Costa Hanlon, Lincoln: David Pottier, Fourth Debate: Lincoln: Dr. Cynthia Booth Ricciardi, Douglas: Richard Shafer; Fifth Debate: Douglas: David F. Souza, Lincoln: Jonathan Souza; Sixth Debate: Lincoln: Dr. Charles Thayer, Douglas: Joseph M. Martin, Seventh Debate: Douglas: Heidi Fiore, Lincoln: Jordan Fiore, Esq. The teams from the first six debates are all pictured here.

Lincoln-Douglas Debate, October 18, 2008