More playgrounds and safer streets…
Single stream recycling citywide…
A better city website, that’s more user friendly…
More development on the waterfront…
Colleges and Universities should contribute more to this city…
Wouldn’t it be great if we could make these things happen?
This week we launched our second Good. Better. video, as well as our Good. Better. Contest.
We encourage you to watch the video, enter the contest, and find out why Michael Flaherty deserves to be the next Mayor of Boston.
Michael is running for Mayor in order to be your voice in City Hall, and make the changes necessary to improve the quality of life for every city resident. In order to do that he needs to hear from you and find out exactly what he can do to achieve that goal and ultimately make Boston a safer and more enjoyable place to live and raise a family.
-Natasha Perez, Communications Director, Michael Flaherty for Mayor Committee
As GoldsteinGoneWild suggested in the last Flaherty campaign thread, there’s a real question about whether a press release should be front-paged. Now, the last thread turned out to be somewhat interesting, and it deserved to be on the front page. I wonder, though, if it wouldn’t make sense to wait and see whether an interesting discussion follows from a press release like this one before promoting the post?
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p>TedF
At the Filene’s building, which has been a grotesque, half-demolished mess for what seems like over a year now? Besides “the economy”, of course…it seems like someone should have had more foresight or just been paying more attention before they started the demolition. How much longer is it gonna be like that?
I couldn’t agree more. There has been a lack of leadership around large scale projects across the city. The Hole in Downtown crossing is symbolic of a larger problem. Do you remember two years ago when storefronts started to go black and close their doors?
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p>What Boston lacks in Downtown Crossing, and across the city, is a smart-growth strategic development plan led by a separate planning department. Boston needs a vision for the future of development in each community within five, ten and twenty years.
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p>Right now the process of development is focused around the developer, not around the long-term goals of the neighborhood. The Mayor promised to have the developers clean up the site by June 1st. It is time to hold him accountable for these promises.
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p>-Natasha Perez, Communications Director, Flaherty for Mayor Committee
Natasha informed us that she was going to come on BMG and answer all the questions. As Goldstein noted, are we going to have front page posting for all press releases (I put them out about once or twice a week)? She still hasn’t answered many questions posed by posters. (I will repost mine down below)
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p>I do think it is great that Mr. Flaherty and Mr. Yoon are posting here, as this is an excellent place to discuss issues. I hope the BMG community will hold all of us accountable and ask the tough questions.
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p>When I ran for City Council four years ago I talked in public forums where Mr. Flaherty and Mr. Yoon were present about the poor city website, I talked about how we need to increase PILOT payments from the colleges and Universities, I filed a lawsuit along with over a dozen plaintiffs from areas impacted by the violence in our communities to put more police on the streets, so many of these issues are not new and have been known to Mr. Flaherty.
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p>What has he done about them as City Councilor? If the answer is that he has no power as City Councilor to do anything than why has he voted to raise the salaries of City Councilors from $60,000 to $87,000 (more than State Reps). Why should the citizens have to pay more money for a job that has no responsibility?
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p>To answer Bob’s query, City Hall does not have voicemail but the building department does.
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p>Here are my questions, reposted:
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p>Natasha-Please answer the questions (0.00 / 0)
Your reply did not answer the questions I posed, and your reply seems to use the excuse that ‘everyone else did it so Michael did it too.’
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p>I will try and simplify my questions in BOLD
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p>Why did Michael vote to give Paul Walkowski a 40% raise to write a report on how the City Council could evade the Open Meeting Law in an emergency late file that was so important that they couldn’t even hold a hearing on it, read it in public or have any discussion about it?
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p>1) Why did Michael vote to give Mr. Walkowski a 40% raise?
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p>2) Did Michael review the report before the City Council sent it off to the AG, the DA, the MMA and the City Law Department?
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p>This is a yes/no question I can’t figure how to make simpler.
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p>Since the City Council has received nothing back from any of these organizations, and has decided not to take up any action on any of the suggestions in Mr. Walkowski’s report thus meaning we the citizens had to pay for around $150,000 for nothing plus a 40% higher pension for the rest of Mr. Walkowski’s life, why doesn’t he move to eliminate that special position that was created immediately?
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p>3) Will Michael introduce legislation to eliminate this position? Yes/No
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p>I have some additional questions, and in the interest of fairness I will state in parenthesis where I stand on the issue.
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p>4) The Firefighters Union is also pushing for a “Well Fitness” program where firefighters are given a bonus or higher pay for being in good physical condition checked on an annual basis. Does Michael believe that firefighters should get paid more to be in shape? [I do not]
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p>5) Does Michael support the $25,000 raises put through the legislature by Dianne Wilkerson for the members of the licensing board (raising pay for the part time job from $60,000 to $85,000) [I do not]
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p>6) Michael calls for a smaller City Hall-What programs or people would he cut? [I support cutting the administrative staff in the Boston School Department for example]
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p>7) Does Michael believe that the current City Council rules regarding the Open Meeting Law are strong enough? For example, the current city council rules as explained in court by the attorney representing Michael and his fellow City Councilor’s allow for 6 councilors to meet behind closed doors to discuss a matter, and then for those 6 to go and talk to the other 7 members one on one so that a proposal can get fully vetted without the public ever knowing that a proposal was being considered. [I do not support this, and do not believe that 6 Council members should be allowed to meet behind closed doors to discuss pending matters]
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p>Thanks again for being so responsive Natasha. I should mention that if anyone has any questions on where I stand on an issue they may contact me directly at http://www.kevinmccrea.com or of course, I occasionally post here as well!
I have already answered most of these questions in an earlier post. To your new questions.
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p>Many of the things you are talking about, Michael Flaherty has already called for while on the City Council.
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p>As City Council President, Michael formed a special task force to determine how to make these PILOT payments more standardized and less arbitrary. Never once did he have the Mayor’s support. At the end of the day, PILOTs, whether they are better negotiated or not, will remain voluntary, and will therefore never be a reliable or predictable source of revenue for the city.
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p>Every year for the last five years, Michael has called upon the city of Boston to adopt the CitiStat program in order to improve the efficiency of city government, evaluate the effectiveness of city services, and formulate data-driven decisions about services and programs. He has also been an advocate for online budget transparency and web-streaming the meetings held by the Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA) and the city’s Zoning Board of Appeals (ZBA) as a way to hold elected officials accountable, make government more inclusive and earn the public’s trust and understanding with regards to how their tax dollars are being spent.
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p>Michael has also called for making the city’s website more user friendly, along with countless other proposals that have not be been supported by Mayor Menino.
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p>Boston has a strong Mayoral form of government that allows the Mayor to pick and choose which proposals he would like to support and which he would not.
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p>I personally am of two minds.
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p>One that supports the old saying, “the fish rots from the head down”. This is to suggest that if the Mayor were someone who could except and embrace the ideas of both the Council and the residents of Boston, then the system would work naturally and we would be better off because of it.
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p>My other side likes the saying that, “power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely”, and therefore we must legislate behavior.
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p>I am concerned with the legislative route because I believe that while rules are good, the more we try to legislate the bad behavior of a few, the greater the tendency to punish the many.
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p>And as I have said in an earlier comment, I am a big advocate for elections.
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p>I think it was RFK who once said we get the kind of government we deserve. Michael, you and others have put forth many ideas that Mayor Menino has rejected in favor of the status quo. This is the time to tell Menino that the status quo is not good enough.
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p>-Natasha Perez, Communications Director, Flaherty for Mayor Committee