City Councilor Jeff Worthley has made his name by portraying himself as an affable figure, transparent and available to “get things done” to his fans. He seems to be more popular with residents than he was during his first two mayoral runs and first city council experience.
However, the Jeff behind closed doors, in his financial dealings, and in personal communications has shown himself a much more worrisome figure. One who, in our opinion, is not fit to be mayor when there are two other options. While we won’t tell you who to vote for, we do have some concerns about this option in particular.
Let’s take a look at what we know of from readily available public documents and on-the-record statements.
Finances
One of the most important jobs of a mayor is setting a city budget. It’s a big responsibility, and it relies on prudent decision-making skills. It’s critical that when we vote, we’re voting for someone we can trust who has experience making sound financial decisions in their personal or professional life. Gloucester faces some serious financial issues that are structural with no easy fixes. As we reported earlier this year, we’re pretty much a sensible mid-sized sedan away from the brink. We all know what it’s like to be facing financial issues. You could argue that everyone reading this has had struggles at times paying the bills, or even making required payments on a loan, a credit card, or something else we owe money for. Unfortunately, Jeff has a long list of public financial issues that are far beyond someone running into temporary money trouble, and are chronic and show utter disregard for creditors and taxpayers alike.
Firstly, taxes. Jeff has had multiple tax liens on his home for unpaid MA income tax reported to the Essex County Registry of Deeds, which makes these available to the public. The liens add up to over $25,000 and are as follows:
- On May 18, 2022 a total of $18,298.67 is owed for 2014, 2015, 2016, 2019 and 2020.
- On March 6, 2024, a total of $3374.16 is owed for 2021.
- On June 10, 2025, a total of $4,153.76 is owed for 2022 and 2023.
While full payment status at this time is unknown, the amounts and multiple years show disregard for paying taxes to fund state and municipal services in a timely manner. This is one of the more difficult things to understand coming from someone who says he believes in the community, who has kids in our school system, and who takes taxpayer money for his work as city councilor. I’m sure most of us would find it somewhat understandable and forgive if any candidate for public office had a lien for a year they didn’t calculate correctly, found out they owed taxes, and needed time to pay them off. This is a different situation, and runs nearly an entire decade. It matters that a candidate pays taxes to the Commonwealth where they receive services.
Jeff has also faced two foreclosures in 2021 and 2025. One of these foreclosure documents seems to somehow state he did not pay his mortgage for ten full years. This document is available on the Essex County Registry of Deeds and/or MA Court websites for anyone to read. Another document from 2021 shows him 6 months behind in payments.
Lastly, public records show two small claims cases for unpaid debts owed to collections services, with several other small claims debt cases with Jeff Worthley as a defendant settled or dismissed before a judgement was issued.
- On 10/25/18, a judgement for $1,792.49 was issued against Jeff in favor of Portfolio Recovery Services. This appears to have been paid in 2021.
- On 8/26/2024, a judgement for $1879.21 was issued against Jeff in favor of Midland Credit Management after he defaulted on debt. A Capias warrant was issued for his arrest as he did not appear in court in October of 2024.
- Jeff’s FINRA broker disclosures also mention, in addition to his taxes, a judgement of $8,826.17 on 7/2/2019
- His broker disclosures also mention a civil judgement for unpaid child support order on 4/30/2019 .
Interpersonal
Finances aren’t the only concerns we have with Worthley as a candidate. There are issues with Jeff’s relationships with others that are unsettling.
Divorces and custody are messy situations all around. However, the publicly available civil documents regarding Jeff’s custody battle a few years after his 2nd divorce was final paint a worrisome picture. While we are not sharing all of it in respect for his kids, who are lovely people, it provides insight into Jeff’s personality and importantly puts on record to the world how he treats those in his world who he is at odds with. The highlights include the following text, taken directly from the judge’s ruling report in the public record (while removing some identifying information about his children and their school):
- The Guardian Ad Litem reported, “Mr. Worthley made serious attempts to manipulate me in order obtain a favorable outcome for himself in this evaluation – e.g. he asked to read my report before I submitted to the Court and he asked if he could pay me to testify on his behalf… Many times Mr. Worthley seriously distorted (and these distortions often verged on outright falsehoods) what I said to him.”
- The principal and teachers at the elementary school his children attended told the GAL that Father has tried to talk to them negatively about Mother and tries to involve them in the dramatics of this case. Ms. Morgan stated to the GAL, “He is always looking for us to find something wrong with mom. It gets very uncomfortable.”
- After asking Father about the children’s attendance issues, Father wrote the GAL an email accusing the school principal of lying about the children’s attendance records.
- The GAL credibly found Father as manipulative and that he questions the children repeatedly about Mother, coaches the children to say negative things about Mother, and disparages Mother to the children.
- The GAL did not find Father to be a credible reporter and found that he did not know how to deal with the children’s problems in a constructive manner.
- As found by the GAL, Father’s filing of the complaint for no harassment order (discussed hereafter), on almost eight year old son’s behalf, against his son’s best friend, was an unusual and concerning step for a parent to take on behalf of the child. In her twenty-three (23) years of juvenile experience, the GAL has never seen such a drastic response to conflict between two young children who are friends.
- Father is unable to effectively communicate with Mother regarding the children. Admittedly, he sends hundreds of emails and text messages to Mother. His communications often contains inflammatory and egregious allegations. Father berates Mother and sends messages to provoke Mother. Often times, to avoid conflict, Mother will not respond which causes Father to send additional messages. Father continues to file 51a reports against Mother and involve the local police alleging Mother is abusive and neglectful, yet no allegations have ever been supported. Father continues to insist Mother abuses the children and has even stated Mother is attempting to kill him.
- Father uses doctor’s appointments and meetings with the children’s educational providers as an opportunity to speak negatively about Mother. Father tries to involve others, including known mandated reporters. When individuals, such as the children’s teachers and principal, do not file 51a reports, or tell him not to speak negatively about Mother in front of them, Father has accused them of wrongdoing or inappropriate conduct. It is noted that Dr. Carbone and the Gloucester Mayor filed 51a reports against Mother and both were screened out.
This is not the behavior of someone I’d trust to be mayor.
There are other stories of odd personal behavior as well. With the recent GDT article, Jeff told the police as well as the paper that Janessa Williams was an intern that worked for him, and it was not him sending the messages to Kiley Davis through a fake profile. However, when Kiley came forward, a former longtime friend of Jeff’s, Vanessa McKenzie, asserted that Jeff and Vanessa had made the profile together. She corroborated this with a screenshot of an email of a Facebook message sent by “Janessa Williams” in 2022.
Vanessa’s statement was intriguing, to say the least. We here at The Clam specialize in digging, and dig we did. We were unable to find any Janessa Williams in Massachusetts using public records searches. At first, we thought Janessa Williams was British pop singer Tali Jackson because that’s what Google AI thought. But that seemed far too simple, and we dug in further using our human brains. That brings us to the conclusion that it is not actually Tali Jackson. Google AI just thinks that because a profile with her name uses it.
In various places around the Internet, the photo goes by many names: Tali Jackson on SoundCloud, CDMixedBaby and Giselle on Twitter (we’re not calling it X), Karolina Protsenko on Pinterest, and Kelsey4447 on a booty call website that we will spare directing you to. TinEye, an image search website, first indexed the image in 2013. Whoever this poor girl is, her picture has been co-opted by all sorts of seedy backwater Internet sites. Don’t navigate your way to these sites without antiviral protection, kids. In fact, maybe just stay away from them altogether. Suffice to say: We don’t know where “Janessa Williams” downloaded this picture, and we might not actually want to know.
Jeff attempted to explain away Vanessa’s intentions by telling another city councilor she owed him a whopping $50,000 and never paid him back. However, Vanessa denied owing such an amount and provided Cashapp and Venmo transactions that show Jeff routinely paid her small amounts “just because,” many during the same time period that his mortgage went unpaid for months and his unpaid child support obligations were reported to FINRA.
We’ll end with one more odd message, sent to a then-19 year old. While we aren’t claiming any of it is illegal – it’s still not acceptable and unbecoming of anyone representing Gloucester.
We’ve heard a lot of rumors of women who may have had similar experiences, but we are only sharing here what can actually be corroborated. We aren’t here to spread rumors, just verifiable truth. And while Jeff has rabid fans who claim anything negative about him is a smear, we believe every candidate for public office needs to take responsibility for their own actions and words when they ask for our votes.
In our opinion, Gloucester deserves a Mayor who can keep his or her own house in order to keep Gloucester in order and out of the news for some salacious scandal.
We want and deserve a Mayor we can trust, even a little bit. Based on the evidence, that is not what we’re seeing from Jeff Worthley. We hope that next week, you cast a vote for either of the other two candidates, based on your preference.