Bad news for Chelsea and good news for the Town of Reading came this week with the announcement that Chelsea DPW Commissioner Fidel Maltez is leaving our city to become the Town Manager of Reading.
Fidel has done a tremendous job in his five years as head of the Chelsea DPW and has been a great asset to City Manager Tom Ambrosino, assisting Tom with the annual capital plan and city budget.
During Fidel’s tenure, the streets in Chelsea have been very clean and the city looks great. Infrastructure projects on various streets have been successful.
Maltez grew up in Managua, Nicaragua, where he met his wife, Maria Belen Power, a well-known leader in the Chelsea community who recently was named by President Joe Biden as an appointee to a national environmental justice advisory council.
They both came here for college and decided to raise their family in Chelsea (with their two young daughters) and will continue to reside here. Maria has worked at GreenRoots, a local agency dedicated to environmental justice and environmental issues.
Fidel Maltez has an impressive background — he is a graduate of Lafayette College, has a Master’s Degree in Public Policy from Tufts, and recently was accepted as a Senior Fellow at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Executive Education.
We know we join with all of our fellow residents in thanking Fidel for his service to the Chelsea community and wishing him congratulations and the best of luck upon his new position.