Boston City Councilor Kendra Lara smashing her car into a Jamaica Plain house is the latest bizarre mishap on a council historically full of embarrassments and legal trouble.
Lara was behind the wheel in a Friday car crash that left her child, Zaire, with a laceration on the left eyebrow and a home on Jamaica Plain’s Centre Street damaged, according to police.
The city councilor is due in West Roxbury Court on charges of operating a motor vehicle after suspension, operating an unregistered motor vehicle and operating an uninsured motor vehicle.
The Herald has reported that Lara’s driving record features multiple violations and sanctions, including failing to appear in court in Connecticut.
A spokesperson for Lara did not respond to a request for comment Saturday afternoon but her office said in a Friday statement that the crash was a “scary situation for everyone involved.”
“Thankfully Councilor Lara and Zaire are expected to make a full recovery. She asks for privacy at this time,” the statement said.
Lara has recently butted heads with several other councilors over their reaction to an apparent overdose of a transgender person in a South Boston housing project, accusing them of inciting homophobic hate crimes.
Lara said remarks made by three members of the City Council, Michael Flaherty, Ed Flynn and Erin Murphy, “lacked empathy and respect for the facts and stoked the kind of homophobic and transgender rhetoric that puts our most vulnerable residents at risk.”
It was just the latest show of disunity and chaos on the council, which is led by Flynn but really controlled by far left members of the council. Mayor Michelle Wu recently was forced to veto budget cuts made by more liberal councilors to police and veteran services departments. You know it’s bad when Wu is the one who has to restore sanity on the council.
While the council seats have little power – except over the budget – they are well compensated.
Last year the council voted to give themselves a 20% pay raise, which will push their annual $103,500 salary to $125,000 in 2026.
The pay raise occurred shortly after a bizarre scuffle occurred in City Hall after a council meeting led by President Ed Flynn devolved into shouts and chaos.
The fight and raucous debate centered around a report that City Councilor Ricardo Arroyo was the subject of two past sexual assault investigations dating back to 2005 and 2007 when Arroyo was in school.
Arroyo has denied the allegations and is suing the City of Boston to release the files from the investigations.
But largely because of the scandal, Arroyo was defeated in his bid for Suffolk County District Attorney. He kept his job on the council, though.
The late former City Councilor Chuck Turner was convicted by a federal jury for taking a $1,000 bribe from an informant who said he wanted to open a nightclub.
Turner served 28 months in federal prison and died in 2019 at age 79.
The late former Councilor David Scondras, Boston’s first openly gay city councilor who served five terms, pled guilty to a sex crime in 2007 arising from allegations that he tried to lure a teenage boy into having sex in Lawrence.
Scondras’ conviction followed his ouster from office. He lost re-election in 1993 after making a series of rambling phone calls to police.
Lara’s accident and its aftermath will surely take its place on the council’s present and past dishonor roll and voters need to keep that in mind this fall.
