PEABODY — A Peabody attorney is demanding the city take immediate action to clean up conditions behind her clients’ homes on Berry Street and Endicott Street near the site of a proposed 40B project at 40-42 Endicott St.
Attorney Mary Ellen Manning also claims her clients have received “threatening” messages from the project developer, Pasquale Todisco, in retaliation for the clients’ decision to appeal the issuance of a comprehensive permit for the project.
Manning represents several abuttors who filed the appeal contesting the decision of the Zoning Board of Appeals to issue the permit for the project. The lawsuit is in the process of discovery with an expected trial date set for the spring of 2023.
Manning says there are multiple issues that need to be rectified, starting with the threatening and intimidating messages and graffiti directed towards neighbors. She conveyed that the graffiti appeared on the same day she sent out notices of depositions to 13 people.
“Discovery in the case was heating up. The neighbors are clearly being retaliated against,” she said. “I am informed that someone in a Todisco truck graffitied the buildings located at 40-42 Endicott St. right after I noted several depositions. The messages in the forms of warnings and admonitions are quite threatening, intentionally creating a despicable eyesore.”
Photos clearly show the graffiti displaying the following messages, spray painted in neon orange paint: STAY OUT, NO PARKING, DANGER, NO TRESPASSING.
“I suppose property owners have the right to desecrate their own property, but I suggest the owner should not be allowed to write “NO PARKING” along the length of two very large buildings,” Manning said. “The messages are improperly forbidding neighbors from parking (on the street).”
Manning also says the “city itself is contributing to the neighbors’ decreased quality of life” by creating an “illegal junkyard by placing dozens of abandoned vehicles including abandoned school buses) right up against two plaintiffs’ backyards.” The junkyard is located on city property behind 40-42 Endicott St.
Manning said that several of the vehicles have broken windows and “the homeless and others have sought refuge in them.
“I have personally toured my clients’ properties and am aghast at the conditions to which they are being subjected,” Manning wrote in an email to City Solicitor Donald Conn and several city officials on Wednesday. “The neighbors on Berry Street and Endicott Street have suffered enough. It is clear that the City of Peabody, in addition to being willfully blind to the living conditions it creates for neighbors, is a terrible neighbor.”
Mayor Edward A. Bettencourt, Jr. did not take issue with the neighbors’ position that the area needs to be cleaned up.
“They’re right, the area has fallen into disrepair, there’s been vandalism and overgrowth and these vehicles need to be removed,” he said. “Nobody wants to live in those conditions and nobody should have to. We’re received calls from neighbors and we should have gotten this done and will get this taken care of.”
Manning stated that while she acknowledges the city code exempts the city from storing junked and abandoned city-owned cars without a junkyard license, “the city is not exempt from DEP laws regarding groundwater pollution from abandoned vehicles, nor is it exempt from its own zoning ordinances,’ pointing out that the area in question is zoned R2 (residential) and “only operational vehicles are allowed. Junk is prohibited.”
In addition to failing to enforce its zoning regulations, Manning said the city is also not enforcing the health code, citing increased rat infestation. She attached a video from one of the neighbors showing a rat attacking a dog belonging to an abuttor whose home abuts the graffitied building and the illegal junkyard. The dog’s injuries were severe enough to require an emergency visit to a veterinarian.
Manning explained that she reached out to Conn last weekend to inform him about the deplorable living conditions and request relief, but Conn did not respond. Manning sent a second email to Conn, this one also addressed to Health Director Sharon Cameron and several other city officials on Wednesday.
Manning is asking the city to enforce city codes and state and federal statutes and regulations, remove the abandoned vehicles and junk from 5 Berry St, eliminate the rat infestation, install signage in front of 40-42 Endicott street indicating that parking is permitted, clean up the pollution to the land and groundwater caused by the junked vehicles, remove the graffiti and cite the offending parties.
Conn told her on Thursday that the city had already started removing vehicles from the property following Manning’s initial email and that Cameron claimed the city regularly exterminates on a monthly basis.
“The only thing I am aware of that has been removed is a boat,” Manning said.
Police Chief Tom Griffin explained that his department has been working closely with City Hall for a “few weeks on getting those vehicles cleaned out” and that some of the police vehicles will likely be traded in for credit.
Bettencourt claimed that, starting next week, the vehicles will be moved to other locations until they can be sold at a November auction.
“These things have been stored there for years and there are simply way too many vehicles,” he said. “We are working on that and will have them removed.”
Anne Marie Tobin can be reached at [email protected].
