Tobin’s new JP Liaison tells all


David Taber


Courtesy Photo Alex Gordillo is City Councilor John Tobin’s new JP liaison.

The third Friday of each month will find City Councillor John Tobin’s new JP liaison cleaning up the Peace Garden in Egleston Square.

Tobin’s office signed on for the responsibility, but it is likely everyone else in the office will be busy, said Alex Gordillo, who took over as Tobin’s “eyes and ears in JP” on June 4.

Gordillo said he is pretty sure everyone else in the office will be busy. “I’ll probably be down there by myself,” he said.

This is not to say his new job does not carry plenty of responsibility of its own. When contacted by the Gazette, Gordillo said he was working on getting a trash can installed at the bus stop at the corner of Perkins Street and S. Huntington Avenue. He had also been in touch with the city’d public works department, the E-13 police station and the city’s graffiti busters unit about fixing a broken light, cleaning up graffiti and reducing crime along the Hampstead footway, which runs between Hampstead Road and South Street.

It’s all in a day’s work striving to provide constituent services.

He is also looking into complaints about speeding motorists on Green and Boylston Streets, drug dealing on Boylston Street and a rash of break-ins on Orchard Hill Street.

“The general rule is things come up quicker than we are able to resolve them,” he said.

But Gordillo who is bilingual and formerly worked as a City of Boston Street Worker in the Hyde-Jackson Square area, developing relationships with “quote, unquote at-risk youth,” and helping them connect to city services, said he is happy about his new position.

“I was a front-line worker with limited possibilities. Now I have broader responsibilities and that experience as a backdrop,” he said.

Along with his boss, Gordillo also attended the first meeting of the city task force charged with defining the role of and selecting Boston’s first poet laureate. Tobin sponsored a council resolution to create of the new position.

The task force is currently working, with the support of the Mayor’s Office, to develop a job description that will allow Boston’s Laureate liberty but outline expectations at the same time, Gordillo said.

Gordillo can be reached at Tobin’s Office at 635-4220 or at [email protected].

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