If so, look for the knot of mayoral candidates and camera crews: Michael Flaherty, Sam Yoon and Kevin McCrea are holding a press conference to call for criminal investigations into the way top city officials allegedly deleted massive amounts of e-mail, which is against the law (right out front).

As the Outraged Liberal reminds us, there's a certain irony in Flaherty teaming up with McCrea on the issue (which the Globe follows up on today - one guy was going into his deleted folder and deleting stuff there). McCrea won a lawsuit against the City Council - Michael Flaherty, president - for violations of the Open Meeting Law (Flaherty acknowledged the issue in announcing his run for mayor).

Meanwhile, if any probes do get launched, Michael Pahre has volunteered 19 pieces of e-mail that he or people he knows either sent or received from Menino aides Michael Kinneavy and Tom Tinlin.

Sam Yoon, speaking to a group of bloggers tonight, says he would start a formal process to changing the city's current strong-mayor system.

Yoon says city government under the control of a "strong" mayor is not working and that after 100 years of the system, it's time for a more democratically run city.

A charter commission would take 12 to 18 months to recommend changes to the city charter - essentially, its constitution.

Charter reform "is something I'm really excited about," he says. "We haven't had a real debate about our charter since 1909. ... I think it's worth absolutely working on. Does [the current system] really fit way our city is in the 21st century. No other city works like this."

Boston.com
September 8, 2009 11AM to Noon

Readers pose questions and Sam Yoon answers them.

Jim alerts us there'll be a mayoral debate on Wednesday, Sept. 16, 6:30 p.m. at the East Boston Social Center, 68 Central Sq. Three candidates have agreed to participate.

The mayoral campaigns organized standouts outside WBZ studios in advance of tonight's debate.

Menino and Flaherty supporters were out in force along both sides of Soldiers Field Road. Scores of them and they just kept coming.

Some Yoon kids and grandparents showed up relatively late and never tried to muscle into the fray - maybe the beefy union workers for the Flaherty and Menino campaigns scared them, so they stayed clumped together more than a block away. They did have cute little maraca-like shaker things - which were completely inaudible to anybody driving by, unlike the air horns that a number of Flaherty men blared.

McCrea people? When we left, around 5:20, we hadn't seen a single one (and we walked up and down the road a couple of times). Maybe they got stuck in traffic on the way over from the South End.

Press Pass TV looks into the Mayor's controversial "brownout" policy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=itLvZFGYZl4

Mayoral candidate Sam Yoon wants City Hall to take a page from banks and stay open past normal business hours at least once a week so people who work for a living could have a chance to conduct city business. In a statement, he says:

One of the most appealing solutions is to shift hours to offer later services on Wednesday and close earlier on Fridays. We would stay open until 8:30 p.m. on Wednesdays and close at 2:30 p.m. on Fridays. We would also be able to move the regular City Council meetings to Wednesday evening to allow more people to attend.

A couple weeks ago, somebody sliced up a Flaherty sign at Baker and Centre streets in West Roxbury (but, gosh, left the Menino signs across the street alone). The Flaherty campaign replaced the sign. Based on what we saw yesterday, above, the vandal didn't waste any time returning.

Around the same time, somebody defaced a Yoon sign on Poplar Street in Roslindale. The Yoon campaign replaced the sign. Based on what Daniel Farnkoff saw last week, below, the vandal didn't waste any time returning.

What's interesting is that the spray pattern on both signs is very similar - look at the swirls on the left. So we're probably dealing with somebody from the Parkway area - who knows how to get from Poplar to Baker. And given which signs got hit, we're probably dealing with somebody who supports one of the other candidates, specifically one who isn't Kevin McCrea, I'm thinking.

Sam Yoon was tearing into the city's Elderly Commission (for handing out shwag with prominent "Mayor Thomas M. Menino imprints") at a campaign stop in Mattapan when three Menino functionaries (including his chief of staff) rose to object. The Dorchester Reporter chronicles the interchange.