Recount for mayoral race begins Friday at City Hall

$30K appropriation to cover recount approved by City Council

By Barbara Taormina

REVERE – The process begins for the recount for Revere’s mayoral election which will begin Friday at 9:00 a.m. at City Hall.

Councillor-at-Large Dan Rizzo, who lost to Mayor-elect Patrick Keefe by 367 votes, filed for the recount, which will take place over a two-day period. Rizzo has said he has some concerns about how votes were tabulated, particularly mail-in ballots and those cast during early voting. He said a recount is the only way to get all the answers.

On Monday evening, the City Council unanimously approved a supplemental appropriation of $30,000 for the Election Department to cover the cost of the recount.

On Friday morning, the Elections Department will sort the 9,660 ballots cast into blocks of 50 to prepare them to be counted. The actual recount begins at 9 a.m. at the Revere High School gym. There will be 24 tally clerks hand counting ballots and recording the count results. Attorneys for Rizzo and Keefe will be present as well as an attorney for the Board of Election Commissioners. There can be challenges to the way each vote is counted. Challenged ballots are reviewed by Election Commissioner Paul Fahey and the Election Commission, who will decide which candidate receives the vote.

Fahey said any recount has the potential to change the final number of votes for each candidate. But the changes are typically small, and even Rizzo said he doesn’t expect the recount to overturn the election.

There have been some stories and gossip making the rounds that there were batches of suspicious ballots found. But Fahey said there are no credible reports or complaints about voting or votes. “If there is anything people are concerned about, they should call the Elections Department,” said Fahey.

Both days of the recount are open to the public.

In other City Council news:

The City Council moved forward this week with some common-sense issues related to the city’s workforce. Ward 3 Councillor Anthony Cogliandro, who chairs the council’s subcommittee on appointments, explained that the Zoning Board of Appeals Clerk had not received a salary upgrade for 25 years. The assistant city clerk, who has worked for Revere since 2006, is in a similar position because her job is classified as an administrative assistant.

“We’re just trying to make this right,” Cogliandro told fellow councillors, who agreed and approved making the corrections.

Cogliandro asked the council to approve Acting Mayor Keefe’s temporary appointments of Savanah Carlson and Joseph Heafitz to the Cultural Council. Earlier this year, the council voted to limit the acting mayor’s ability to hire or appoint personnel to cases of extreme need or emergency. Cogliandro explained that the Cultural Council presently doesn’t have a quorum. The council controls the distribution and use of state funding, some of which is earmarked for the library. The appointments would allow the council to get the funding to the library. Carlson’s and Heafitz’s appointments run through Jan. 1, 2024, at which time the mayor can reappoint them.