Published in the January 4, 2018 edition

By MAUREEN DOHERTY

NORTH READING — In the Transcript’s highly unscientific online poll, the North Reading School Committee was the victor in the Ugly Christmas Sweater Contest between the school board and the Board of Selectmen.

Claims of voter fraud and hanging chads aside, when all the votes were tallied after the polling closed on New Year’s Eve, the School Committee had garnered 1,066 online votes as the “ugliest” team while votes favoring the Selectmen totaled 1,046, a margin of victory of 50.5% to 49.5%.

For good measure, two votes were cast off-line and even those were split down the middle. An anonymous emailer sent in a vote in favor of Town Administrator Michael Gilleberto. Since he was part of the Selectmen’s “team” this vote pushed the board’s tally to 1,047.

Not to be outdone, one fan telephoned in her vote on Friday afternoon that favored the School Committee. It was the sweater worn by the school board’s Vice Chairman, Jerry Venezia, that tipped the scales in his board’s favor for Gloria Mastro who observed that he was standing so stiffly in the group photograph that it appeared he had been “poured into” his ugly sweater.

By far the winner of the popular vote, judging by the comment he garnered online, was School Committee rookie Scott Buckley who not only wore an ugly sweater, he wasn’t afraid to show a little leg with his matching green Bermuda shorts, Christmas-themed knee high socks and dress shoes to complete the ugly look.

It was all done in good fun for a great cause — to raise funds for the Transcript’s 28th annual Neighbor Helping Neighbor Fund that benefits the year-round good works of Christian Community Service (CCS).

“It was fun. The School Committee wore it well. They definitely wore it uglier than we did!” Selectmen Chairman Mike Prisco told the Transcript in his concession speech Wednesday morning.

“We work on a lot of challenging subjects together between the two committees throughout the year, and it is nice to see that we can have some fun and keep it light. We work together well and it was a nice distraction as we went into the holidays to have a little fun with each other,” Prisco said.

“And it was wonderful, I thought, the way the community responded to it, clearly by the number of votes,” Prisco added.

Given this overwhelming response by the community, Prisco said he wanted to “up his game” by tripling the pledge he made to the Neighbor Helping Neighbor Fund on behalf of his board to $300.

And even though the School Committee was officially declared the winner, school board Chairman Mel Webster has also donated $100 to the fund on behalf of his board.

Prisco said it was their pleasure to help raise awareness of the Transcript’s Christmas fund and hoped their contest helped to boost donations to the fund, which was closed out this week (see related story).

We can hardly wait to see how these two boards will out-do themselves next year. Prisco said he has an idea in mind, but wasn’t revealing more than that. So stay tuned next year and thanks to the Transcript’s readers and the community at large for joining in the fun to help keep CCS the vibrant resource it has been for decades for local residents in need year-round.