Planning Boston’s Future
By: Sam Yoon
For a city to thrive and grow it needs an economic development and planning strategy that is focused on the future, that seeks out innovative ideas – and acts on them. And as the old proverb goes: “Without a vision, the people perish.”
The planning process in Boston is not working – and it is not working because there is no long-term vision coming from City Hall.
Internal squabbling, a lack of new ideas and stale leadership are choking the city’s development.
Let’s look at just some of what is happening in Boston:
Downtown Crossing – which should be the thriving center of our city – is a contradictory compilation of half-baked, half-finished, and half-thought-out plans.
Billions of tax dollars have been invested in the Big Dig in our city, yet the Menino administration is only now examining how to best use the reclaimed city land. Because of an absence of ideas from City Hall, developers are making the decisions on what the Greenway should look like, and we are squandering the opportunity to re-unite downtown and the harbor in the best possible way.
We have one shot at fixing one of the most important avenues in the state – Massachusetts Avenue – but the administration has mismanaged this effort so badly that they are locked in a bitter lawsuit with the very people whose input in this project is badly needed.
This is not because Boston lacks talent or know-how. Many of the world’s leading urban designers, planning experts, architects, and engineers are concentrated within a few miles of City Hall. Boston should be a shining star of new ideas and new energy. Instead it has become a black hole: talent and dedication goes in – but concrete results never emerge.
Our public works department is in the dark ages. Our transportation department is still more focused on moving cars than people. We have two separate agencies responsible for planning. One has accountability, but no power. The other – controlled by the Mayor and the developers who pay for it – has power, but no accountability.
Here is what we need to fix it:
Eliminate the BRA and create a real Community Development & Planning agency
Boston is the only city in the United States without a planning department separate from its redevelopment authority. The Boston Redevelopment Authority has outlived its usefulness and it should be disbanded. In its place, we need a comprehensive city planning agency which is accountable to the public, not just the developers and the Mayor. Boston’s development should benefit the entire city and that requires a public process, not a political one.
It is high time to stop being defensive and secretive – let’s open the doors and invite in people with fresh ideas to participate in planning for a new, forward-looking Boston.
Leadership with Vision
Not only do we need the right structure and people in government, we need a mayor with a guiding vision. Smart growth, clean technology, energy efficiency, green jobs, and sustainable design – these are not just campaign slogans. They are the principles that will guide the rebirth of a vibrant, new Boston. Over the last 16 years, cities from Europe to Asia embraced these ideas enthusiastically, but Boston mostly slept. We need to wake up – and wake up now.
We have so much pent up creativity in this city – from citizens and developers; planners and architects; housing experts and labor activists. We cannot wait any longer to put them all to work. We have the talent, we have the people and – as the economy strengthens – we will have the resources. We need to be ready. And we need new leadership.
Transportation isn’t just cars
The Menino administration has finally started to introduce limited measures that will make the city more bike-friendly. But gestures are not enough. The real problem is that we have an outdated transportation department and mixed up planning. If we want to be the cleanest, greenest, 21st century city in America, then we must get this right. Street design that moves people – on bike, on foot and on rapid public transit should be the focus. Cars are just one part of the breadth of transportation solutions and Boston should be leading the way.
Real Teamwork brings real change
Lack of cooperation remains our greatest stumbling block. Right now city government acts in isolation. City agencies don’t talk to each other. The city doesn’t coordinate closely enough with the state. Even though Boston itself is intricately linked to other cities and towns, we don’t coordinate with our neighbors – and we suffer as a result.
When you visit forward-thinking cities around the country and the world, you can clearly see that Boston is at risk of being left behind.
We are behind in affordable housing. We are behind in swift, efficient and modern transportation. We are behind in spreading the benefits of information technology. We are behind other cities that are leaping into the world of clean, green design.
It’s time for Boston to stop meandering along. We need to encourage innovation and reward cooperation. Fresh ideas and new leadership will build a 21st century city. And we cannot afford to wait another four years to get started.
*For more information, visit my website at www.samyoon.com
Four years ago when Sam and I were running for City Council I was talking about eliminating the BRA and putting in a proper planning agency. Sam absolutely refused to think this was a good idea, and engaged in back room deals involving land and money with the Mayor and the BRA. Now that he would like to be Mayor he thinks these are bad things.
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p>I applaud him for coming to this conclusion, as imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. However, the follow through is the important thing.
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p>Back in December Councilor Yoon held a hearing on Transparency and promised to put together a transparency committee. Here it is 6 months later and no transparency committee.
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p>I agree with Sam that this year is a good chance to have a real discussion about the issues. It is a shame that he has wasted the last 4 years of his time on the City Council being complicit in the very things he says we need to change.
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p>I look forward to an open discussion about the issues helping to move the City forward.
or, perhaps better stated, put up or shut up.
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p>Care to back with facts? I don’t have a dog in this hunt, but I don’t take kindly to claims like yours without evidence in my reality-based community.
It’s time Kevin. Serious times require serious people. It’s time to step away from the table and let the big kids do the talking. You are only hurting the serious challengers.
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p>Every vote you take helps support the status quo.
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p>Step aside Kevin McCrea
or, “the candidate is too lowly to want big financial deals between the city and developers” — and so I won’t get my cut.
Look what happened 4 years ago. One challenger meant no one cared and the voter turnout was horrible. Last year, there was record voter turnout because people cared about the race. The best way to drive up voter turnout is to make people care about the race. We cannot just have it handed over to the “heir apparent”.
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p>I don’t believe every vote for Kevin is one taken away from Sam, it is one taken away from “None of the above”/”Why should I even bother to vote” group.
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p>Please remember that both Barack and Hillary became much better campaigners when there was no frontrunner.
I’m sure he’s quite capable of defending himself. Would it be so awful for two politicians to get involved in a slightly heated back-and-forth on the site, rather than talking past eachother or seeming somehow to be talking in a vacuum? Besides, as suggested above in David’s OCPF post, Menino’s got the warchest so this things as good as done already anyway. At the very least it could be entertaining- and “good manners” can make for boring debates.
That said: Mr.McCrea- can you point us to the first instance in which you suggested that the BRA be eliminated, thus proving that Sam seems to have co-opted your idea? (Allegation 1) Then could you point out a specific case where Mr.Yoon was involved in a sketchy or inappropriately clandestine real-estate development scheme during his time on the city council? (Allegation 2)
but I believe evidence-free allegations like Mr. McCrea’s harm everyone here. You might say I’m not defending Mr. Yoon, but instead defending decorum.
The 2005 New Majority candidate survey shows Kevin’s answers to several questions. One of them includes this statement:
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p>He has advocated for this as long as I have known him.
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p>Sam came to this position slowly and reluctantly. I asked him, at a fund-raiser for his first Council term in 2005, if he would support Felix’s Home Rule Petition to re-establish a real City planning board (outside the BRA) if he were elected. He said he would not, because it had no chance of passing and he wouldn’t waste his political capital on it. I asked him if that’s how he’d make his choices in office — by what’s easy rather than by what’s right. He didn’t answer, and called my question unfair. He did not immediately support Felix’s petition when elected, but he eventually, though reluctantly, did.
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p>I am very happy that Sam has now come around to this position, and I hope he will next fulfill my second request to him, which is to file for reversal of the Council’s foolish vote, in 2004, perpetuating the BRA’s urban renewal plans, which are the core of the BRA’s powers and will keep it in existence forever. Since the BRA has failed to meet the reporting requirements on which that vote was conditioned, it would be a very legitimate rescission. When I asked him to do that, some time in his first term, he told me to go ask Felix Arroyo to do it. Maybe he will now find the courage to take this next step.
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p>I do think it would be honorable of Sam to acknowledge that Kevin was the leader in advocating for this reform, long before it became fashionable.
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p>I have been writing and speaking publicly about the need for the elimination of the BRA and the re-establishment of a genuine planning board for Boston for many years; see “BRA Lacks a Vision for the City,” The Boston Globe, June 8, l998, and my many South End News columns. I know how hard it has been to be the messenger for this, so I appreciated the courage of Felix and Kevin. Now, finally, it’s gone from ridiculous and impossible to common — well, widespread — wisdom, and it’s safe enough for Sam. (Maybe even Mike Flaherty will join in.) But: it’s the walk that counts, not the talk. I’m waiting to see how far he takes it. His big Transparency Revolution of December 2008 didn’t get very far.
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p>I will post about Sam’s “sketchy” activities in another reply.
What is this secret deal that Kevin McRea is alluding to? Just because The Weekly Dig is willing to print whatever you tell them, doesn’t mean that it is true. If you do a cursory search on the matter you can see that Sam Yoon actually had an op-ed published in the Boston Herald on June 23, 2007 about the whole Winthrop Square affair. Here is the link:
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p>http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/bo…
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p>Sam fought to make sure that the public heard about this issue. Why would he write an op-ed for the Herald that publicized that if there was a secret deal? When a City Councilor goes to bat for the people like Sam Yoon did here – that is not “a secret deal” … it’s called leadership.
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Yes, he wrote a Herald op-ed on June 3, 2007. That looked very nice, about the need for “public dialogue” and being “fiscally responsible.” But it was Yoon who had deprived the citizens of their public dialogue. On May 7, he wrote a memo, which was also disclosed by the Weekly Dig reporter, Paul McMorrow, summarizing his deal. I can’t attach or link to it, so I will type out the text, addressed to Michael Kineavy at the Mayor’s Office and Harry Collings and Paul McCann at the BRA, cc’d to Council President Maureen Feeney:
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p>So: He buried a public hearing about Menino’s giveaway of many, many millions of dollars of City property rights to the BRA, in return for getting to say where the cash would go (to the federal BHA project). But this was City money; it should have come in as revenue and been appropriated through the public budget process. He indicated that it should remain secret (“discretion”). He thought he was blackmailing the BRA to do his will. Instead, he let Menino and the BRA continue their usual game of abusing the BRA’s urban renewal powers to take our property without compensation, so he could play the power broker that saved the poor. Update: He never did get that public hearing, though he promised to do so. He never did find out what money came into the BRA and where it went; I asked him several times. There were no “regular financial reports to the City Council.” McCrea finally put in a Public Record Request, and got some BRA documents; it seems the BRA gave the BHA a couple of million dollars, but it was settlement money from the garage operator for property damages and would have gone to the City, not the BRA; and then the BHA got some other sums that don’t compute with the income, which the BRA refused to explain. It’s all a mystery, millions and millions of dollars, right in the middle of our big budget crisis. He never did anything about Hayward Place, either, although that was in his Herald op-ed too. When the teacher lay-offs were being threatened and he went to public meetings where the kids were begging for their education, he never brought these up; he never said to his fellow councilors or the mayor, hey you guys, where the heck is the five million dollars a year we’re losing on these two City properties? How many teachers could that pay?
albeit an unusual one. Sounds like Yoon was trying to advocate for his constituents at first, but made a deal with the devil that went awry. The BRA and the mayor had it their way, in the end, and were able to hide the losses from the public. Yoon was eventually relegated back to his proper place as an impotent member of a rubber-stamp body. At least the city saw some of the money.
That is a good question, but I don’t in general like the idea of using the one-time sale of assets to fund operating expenses. It is like selling your car to pay your credit car bill.
This kind of rhetoric is not going change anyone’s minds about you. If you really want to win, please try to moderate your tone.
I’m not a big fan of the BRA, but it didn’t develop the way it did for no reason. Right now there is a restrictive zoning code with outs if you pay. The ZBA is notorious for clamping down on small projects while it accepts legalized graft from developers to board members. Is the ZBA going to take over responsibility from the BRA?
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p>The BRA has made many decisions over the years for the financial benefit of the Catholic Archdiocese and other large institutions, such as the hospitals and the universities. These institutions collude with the planners to hand out jobs and other goodies to favored politicians and businessmen in return for screwing local communities. Why won’t a city planning agency face the same financial and political pressure that the BRA does?
The Cambridge city councilors have the power to stop any project, and yes, this has slowed development, however they also collect thousands of dollars from developers in campaign contributions, and I’m sure the total give-and-take in terms of influence peddling, jobs etc is higher.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but you may be familiar with the following saying:
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p>”A camel is a horse designed by committee.”
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p>Great design rarely arises out of group decisions. Group input – desires, concerns, etc. is very important as an input to a solid design process – however solid design is usually only accomplished by a small, focused team or individual.
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p>Clearly we do need a steering committee, otherwise a hodgepodge of projects will result in exactly what we have now – a mish-mash of development without any real eye towards where we want to arrive as an urban center.
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p>Some of my chiefest complaints stem from a lack of attention to detail on multimillion dollar developments for the public. Take the Arlington station renovation for instance. Overtime and over budget – one half of the station has completed renovations. However, for all the time that it was closed, nobody thought to widen the egress points, resulting in entrance and exit stairwells that are single file?!?
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p>All that money and time spent to give the station a new coat of tiles, some fresh stonework, and elevators? That sort of waste of effort is emblematic across the city. Such projects should not be used as just hand-outs to out of work contractors, and builders – they should serve to actually improve, not just maintain, our city infrastructure.
soft hoofed dromedaries are also better for soil erosion than horses… but I agree with your point.
I should back up my accusations. The deal I talk about is the giveaway of the revenues at Winthrop Square Garage.
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p>I requested information from Councilor Yoon’s office about this last year and they said they were being stonewalled by the BRA. I did a FOIA request to the BRA and received the information. The citizens of Boston have given away millions of our revenue to the BHA (an independent agency not supposed to be funded from City of Boston revenue). This was negotiated by Yoon and Menino in a back door deal which they refused to release to the press or public.
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p>Read the Paul McMorrow article here:
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p>Big building won’t stop making big waves
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p>* by Paul McMorrow
* Issue 9.20
* Wed, May 16, 2007
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p>Good news, everybody! Tom Menino’s 1,000-foot Winthrop Square tower-the one that’s going to look like a big middle finger on the skyline-isn’t a force for evil anymore! Menino and City Councilor Sam Yoon struck a deal last week that turns the city-owned Winthrop Square parcel into an instrument of the people.
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p>There’s a decrepit garage sitting on the land now. Starting in July, the Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA) will take the garage’s revenue and use it to pay for the Boston Housing Authority (BHA) police force. When the BRA eventually sells the garage to make way for developer Steve Belkin’s wicked big tower, money from the land sale will go toward fixing up decrepit BHA buildings.
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p>Menino and Yoon make for an odd pairing. But forget, for a moment, the seeming absurdity of a vocal good-government advocate cutting a hush-hush deal with the mayor and the BRA behind closed doors (the BRA being the very same agency that Yoon and his Team Unity colleagues are currently pillorying because it refuses to abide by recent agreements it has struck with the City Council.) There are far larger questions in play here.
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p>It’s no surprise that Menino’s looking for assets to liquefy. The war in Iraq has monopolized federal budget writers’ attention, and the feds have left Boston’s mayor holding the tab for a number of line items that they used to bankroll-public housing and community policing chief among them.
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p>Along comes the Winthrop Square garage. It just so happens that with the amount of money the garage should generate, Menino could pay for the BHA’s cops for the next two years. Menino takes his oval peg, pounds away at it until it’s lodged into a circular hole, and calls it a nice fit.
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p>Born of necessity, the arrangement is far from ideal, and certainly untenable-two years from now, we’ll be looking around Boston for something else to pawn. But it’s not like the mayor had a lot of other options.
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p>Still, the deal came together disconcertingly quietly. And while Menino was working to identify creative revenue streams for public housing, most of the city assumed he was cooking up a way to hand the Winthrop parcel to the BRA, so the imageagency could take all that money for themselves.
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p>Three months ago, the Boston Finance Commission (FinCom)-an agency appointed by the governor to watch over city finances-issued a scathing report, warning that the BRA was preparing to seize Winthrop Square by eminent domain, and pocketing the substantial windfall that will follow the parcel’s sale. It implied that whenever Menino sees a chance to leverage public assets to satisfy personal desires, he takes it, and Winthrop Square presented just such an opportunity.
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p>”But for that Finance Commission report, and the city council, the BRA would already be collecting that $2.5 million a year,” says one City Hall official.
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p>Still, as Menino works to get ground broken on the tower, things will only get tougher-and, potentially, more embarrassing.
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p>”The city’s already at a disadvantage,” says a second City Hall official. “The fact that, after a worldwide search, nobody else stepped up and bid probably tells you it’s a bad idea.”
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p>This official suspects that Belkin is having trouble making his profit margins fall into place, and that when the developer begins seeking every tax break and give-back in the book in order to break ground, the city will “wind up taking a bath to get it done.”
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p>Indeed, most observers now take it for granted that the tower’s property tax bills will wind up being significantly lower than once promised; the larger question now is whether the BRA will wind up chopping the sale price of the parcel-and, in the process, devalue the compact between Yoon, the BRA and the BHA.
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p>On the other hand, observers also believe Menino is likely to squeeze Belkin for every community benefit he can extract.
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p>”Belkin has been designated as the developer by the BRA, but he hasn’t made any payments,” says Councilor Jerry McDermott. “And you’ve got 12 council members sitting here scratching their heads, looking for money for street workers, police and basic city services.” As the requests for handouts pile up, the developer’s tab climbs, making it harder for him to work within his margins. Last week’s BHA compact will only increase these pressures, as interest groups frozen out of the deal cry out for a piece of the action.
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p>Add to that the fact that tower plans call for a block of Devonshire Street to be seized, ripped up and converted into a park-a significant alteration of downtown traffic patterns that, when noticed at all, hasn’t sat well with the city councilors who have to approve the transaction. It could prove to be a significant sticking point.
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p>”My focus is not on the tower; it’s on what we do with the garage when it’s not a tower, which will be for a while,” Yoon said last week.
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p>How long will that while last? It may be a long while, indeed.
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p>http://www.weeklydig.com/image…
Link (http://www.weeklydig.com/news_opinions/articles/taking_a_bath)
For the Dig column would significantly improve the above entry. As is, it is confusing.
Nothing wrong with issuing your reply directly to the person, as it were, rather than as a “post new comment”, which causes your answer to appear way at the bottom and sort of messes up the continuity, if that makes any sense. Using “reply” instead of “post new comment” just makes the conversation easier to follow, in my opinion.
If I remember Yoon’s response, it was to point out that he steered the money towards housing.
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p>The results of this episode indict the operating procedure of progressives in this city.
1. A big payoff is engineered between the city which holds the land or the rights to violate zoning, and a developer who has the cash (note that the payoff may take place in a project entirely unrelated to the current scheme).
2. A progressive is induced to protest the project on behalf of neighbors.
3. The progressive is sucked into the system by gaining a slice of the money and handing it out to the do-good agencies of his choice (or maybe handing it along to Arthur Winn).
4. Enough of the neighbors are bought off, or they are split with the principled side looking like NIMBYs. The suburban progressives who are often allied with interested parties say “this is the best you’re going to get, city people.”
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p>In a sense, it is a sort of business taxation and funding, in a city economy that doesn’t function to provide good employment for the residents.
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p>As long as the only route for good in this city is to steer money to institutional agencies or straight public works, then this kind of thing will keep happening. The greedsters are plugged into this system and soak out the profit, and every year we are expected to yammer at the state and demand full funding for a city that doesn’t add up anymore.
Isn’t that copyrighted material? Surely you know you can’t just cut and paste anything you want?
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The article is on the web. Whether Kevin provides a link to that site, or presents the text with the proper reference to the site that it came from and the author of the site, it is the same thing. Why are you trying to create controversy where none exists?
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p>Oh and by the way, when are you going to start posting who you are supporting in this race? I believe it has something to do with a pot, a kettle and a color. Or is the one about glass houses?
a) Sam Yoon has always been fighting for transparency and accountability from the BRA. As a fan of Arroyo’s work on the BRA, I recall Sam as one of his only allies. Sam has always voted in the public’s interest, not developers. I’m so excited that he know has the bullhorn to make people listen.
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p>b) Kevin, what’s up man? Why do you keep attacking Sam and not the Mayor? Its weird. Being a real progressive means you work hard for change and build allies. You seem to be only out for yourself.
Menino is the behemoth here- if all the other candidates do is attack eachother then he’ll win by default. Which is cool if you think Boston cannot be much improved, that service delivery from City Hall is at an optimal level, that the BRA has done an excellent job and has promoted the public welfare, etc.
Full disclosure: I don’t like Menino.
My point up-thread. I’m glad you changed your mind.
I think he’s the bravest and perhaps the smartest candidate in the race- he’s been criticizing Menino and the BRA for years.
Do you work for Yoon in any paid capacity, or are you just a vocal supporter?
No connection…… paid or otherwise.
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p>I completely buy into your point that if the challengers attack each other it only benefits the mayor.
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p>Kevin McCrea has every right to run.
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p>I don’t believe he is well financed, I don’t believe he has city wide support, I don’t believe he can keep up with the “big 3” and I don’t believe that Mike Flaherty is the change agent the city of Boston needs.
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p>Any other questions today?
Gray sky – I’m not a fan of Menino and I agree that Flaherty is not the change agent we need. I am a supporter of Kevin’s. I like Sam personally – but anyone that has worked with him knows Sam sits on the middle of the fence on every topic – trying not to anger anyone. He would be a great college professor but a horrible mayor. Like too many politicians his answer is always more money (more taxes for housing, more taxes for public safety etc. etc. etc.)- not harder work. I don’t agree with Kevin on every topic (charter schools and casinos to name a couple of big issues) – but I respect the amazing research he does to establish his positions and back up his arguments. I’ve seen this work first hand. He doesn’t have a staff or an inside track to government information which city hall withholds every chance they get. What he is doing on a paper thin budget in my opinion is amazing and if people would stop saying “he has no chance” or “he has no money” and listen this is what they’d see/hear:
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p>- McCrea’s been arguing against the BRA and the stunts this city pulls on development for years-Yoon is only now reacting to a political opportunity
– McCrea called the mayor’s bluff on firing hundreds of teachers and cops in January (as it stands we have about 25 teachers on the block that will probably get rehired in September as older teachers retire)-even without the wage freeze the mayor demanded – amazing that only the guy who DOESN’T work in city hall figured out that Menino wanted the wage freeze so he could afford to keep his hacks on the budget instead of the teachers (who also called his bluff and won)
– McCrea and a small cohort of non-lawyers pulled off a huge coup against the entire city council and the city’s lawyers in their open meeting lawsuit resulting in a substantial victory for the people of Boston
– despite some differences of opinion we have on the issue, his businessman’s instincts boil down the success of charters to the three main ingredients – a lot more hours of instruction, discipline and high expectations – it’s not much more complicated than that-if we get this in the public schools – we don’t need charters
– all three of the other candidates feel that there’s a fiscal crisis and that $3 billion and 20,000 employees are somehow not enough to service the needs of a 600,000 person city even though the budget has increased at twice the rate of inflation over the past 10 years and residential property taxes have doubled in that time. Kevin’s the only candidate saying we can’t tax our residents back to the stone age to support the bloated bureaucracy.
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p>There are three politicians running and one guy who wants change and is willing to work for it on his own time and his own dime. I think the problem here is that some people don’t want a real leader willing to take real stands on issues. Whether I agree with his issues or not, I have come to have tremendous respect for the source – please do challenge his information – I assure you that you’ll find every t crossed and every i dotted with lots of independent sourcing.
Kevin is only telling the truth about Sam. When the truth is about Menino, he tells it about Menino. The fact is simply that Sam has not been fighting for transparency and accountability from the BRA. On Winthrop Square, Yoon buried a public hearing on Menino’s giveaway of millions of dollars to the BRA so he (Yoon) could make a deal that let the BRA continue to confiscate City property rights, just so he could come out looking like a hero for affordable housing; it was all unnecessary — as I told him, he could have worked to get that money directed to the housing as a City budget appropriation without letting the BRA take control of it. He has never concerned himself with BRA accountability. And he was not really one of Felix’s allies, although that was always assumed…Team Unity and all that. He wouldn’t even sign Felix’s Home Rule Petition to create a real out-of-BRA city planning department until many months had passed; he didn’t want to endanger his political career. Sam never has stood up to the BRA in any way. This announcement is the first time…. and I haven’t seen his filing yet.
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p>Being a real progressive means, first of all, championing and practicing honest, clean, open, fair government. It’s hard to build alliances when the progressives are playing politics. If Sam were doing what you think he’s been doing, Kevin wouldn’t need to run, and I wouldn’t need to support him.
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p>You should take a closer look at Kevin; you might find that you respect what he is doing.
Shirley, Kevin – I’ve lost all respect for your work. I’m sorry to say that after admiring from a far, but it is the case.
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p>You are stuck in a bubble of your own creating. It seems like what you are saying is that because Sam didn’t do every single thing the way you and Kevin wanted him to, that he isn’t for real. Guess what? Your insistence on moving YOUR agenda YOUR way, killed Felix Arroyo. As someone who actually believes in this movement – I won’t stand by and watch you tear down another one of the good guys. There is too much at stake. That is what thousands of people who support Sam know. Your arrogance and tunnel vision is actually damaging.
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p>We need real, fundamental change in this city – and it ain’t just about the BRA. There is only one candidate in this race who can deliver it and that is Sam Yoon. I was excited that Kevin was in the race – I thought it would make things entertaining and lively from the left. And yet all I see from Kevin and his supporters is venom, jealousy and obsession.
I have know all four candidates for over four years, and I have worked with Kevin on several issues, including police staffing levels. For every comment he makes about Sam Yoon, he makes 25 comments about Menino and the waste and the give aways and the abuse of power.
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p>Neither Kevin nor Shirley had anything to do with Felix loosing, it was the 13% voter turnout. Lay responsibility for killing voter turnout where it belongs, with Stephen Murphy and the city council.
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p>Whether you agree or disagree with the Kevin, the best way to build voter turnout is to have a vigorous debate. That is the only way we are going to get the kind of turnout needed to end this pathetic “Mayor for Life” nonsense. Sam doesn’t need to be pampered, he needs to answer the questions.
Grace – per my post above I see Kevin getting things done and he’s not even in office. – either by doing them directly (like the open meeting lawsuit) or indirectly by calling the mayor out on his threats (like he was going to fire hundreds of teachers until the teachers found out – thanks to Kevin – that the city a) had a huge pile of cash and b) hired 900 non-essential people in the past 5 years leaving the mayor little wiggle room to fire teachers and cops before the other 900 and counting people on the payroll that are responsible for far less vital services).
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p>Not a single city councilor spoke out on this budget issue – including Flaherty and Yoon – who should be far more familiar with the city budget than Kevin since they vote on it every year. In fact they toed the party line that we had some kind of crisis on our hands (which we don’t). That in my mind is a failure of leadership of all 13 councilors actually – but particularly those that were contemplating a run for mayor.
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p>Sam has a lot of ideas for reform – all the candidates do. Can you point out some of Sam’s accomplishments (not things he worked on with others) but things he personally took the lead on that actually came to fruition? Sam’s a very bright person – but personally I want a doer – not a thinker – in office.
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p>Thanks
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