Carlo DeMaria Jr., Everett's mayor-elect, isn't wasting any time.
Barely 12 hours after DeMaria, the city's alderman at large, captured the top job in Tuesday's general election, he said he'd already set up meetings for this week with area mayors to get a feel for how they are handling several key issues.
"I just want to talk about working together as area mayors on development in the city, just making the city as safe as possible and talking about their issues with public safety, and what policies they have instituted to save taxpayers' money," DeMaria said.
One big-ticket item DeMaria said he would especially like to explore with other mayors is whether to join the Group Insurance Commission, a state-run health insur ance program that can save cities and towns significant sums on their insurance coverage for municipal employees. He said he also intends to pursue "aggressive" recycling campaigns to reduce hefty trash disposal fees and, additionally, will encourage "clean" development plans by Wood Waste of Boston owner William Thibeault for roughly 30 acres near his property on Revere Beach Parkway.
Thibeault, who is suing the city, was a DeMaria campaign supporter.
"He's got a master plan to develop it all and in that plan is tax dollars and it's clean development," DeMaria said. "He has an idea to bring in retail outlets like Lowe's and Loews Theaters, and he has had a major hotel chain contact him about moving down there."
DeMaria, 34, defeated his Board of Alderman colleague and president, Joseph McGonagle, 48, by 313 votes, winning 13 of 18 precincts. The final tally was almost a mirror opposite of September's preliminary election, when McGonagle captured 13 precincts and bested DeMaria by 385 votes in a four-way race that ousted Mayor John Hanlon.
Now, DeMaria, who chided Hanlon during the primary for bloated budgets and payrolls, says Hanlon's support in the general election gave him the winning edge.
"It was huge," Demaria said. "Yeah, people were upset with him for taxes going up, but that wasn't all his fault. He paid off a lot of debt from the prior administration and . . . he funded the pension system that was neglected for years."
Hanlon, who came in third in September's election, said he sent out letters to the roughly 1,700 people who supported him in that race, urging them to back DeMaria. And, he said, he spent all Election Day on the phone, reminding them to vote. Just 44 percent of the city's roughly 17,700 voters went to the polls. DeMaria captured 51 percent of the vote, to McGonagle's 47 percent.
"I thought Carlo would win," Hanlon said. "But I thought he would win by more."
City Clerk Michael Matarazzo, who served 18 years on the city's council and has been involved in politics for 30 years, said this election was anything but textbook.
"There was no political feel out there about exactly what was going to happen or where the momentum was," Matarazzo said. "It changed daily."
Matarazzo said the last time he was so stumped about the outcome of a race was in 1990, when he worked as a field director in William Weld's 1990 gubernatorial campaign.
In Everett, where politics can be a bruising sport, this mayoral race was marked by allegations of foul play.
In the closing weeks of the campaign, McGonagle said his tires were slashed, a campaign worker's windshield was smashed, and that two young women who were canvassing neighborhoods in late October were intimidated and "harassed" by a male who grabbed their clipboard and demanded to know what they were doing.
A police report filed by McGonagle and the two women on Oct. 23 identifies that man as DeMaria.
Two hours after that report was filed, police records show that DeMaria came into police headquarters to file a "rebuttal," denying the allegations and stating that he was accompanied at the time of the alleged incident by two people who would "attest that he didn't do what was alleged."
Asked about the alleged incident after the election, DeMaria declined comment.
"I think it was them who played dirty from day one," he said. "I want to move on. I have been preaching a new beginning for the city."
Kay Lazar can be reached at klazar@globe.com.
