Today the Boston Municipal Research Bureau put out a report which confirms what I have been saying throughout the campaign: City Hall is not being prudent with our money.
All three of my opponents have been complicit in this expansion of the City Payroll without being responsible about the long term financial considerations. In the last four years, the Mayor has added 1200 new jobs to the City Payroll, of which only 200 are police officers and 100 are teachers. That is 900 non-essential jobs. The City Budget has grown at twice the rate of inflation.
Councilors Flaherty and Yoon have done no better. In the past four years the City Council budget has increased by 20%. In the past two years they voted to increase City Council Central Staff by 8.5%. Now they give a reason for running for Mayor is because the City Council has little power to affect change. If the City Council has such little relevance, why did they increase the money spent on an area of government which is not essential? Michael Flaherty voted for the budget every single year until this one. Sam Yoon voted against the budget because he wanted to increase amounts spent, and he wants to implement a regressive “five cents for safety” sales tax on top of our already increased sales tax.
As I have been telling interested voters, we are facing 10 percent increases in property taxes in both fiscal year 2010 and 2011 because of the bad fiscal management at City Hall combined with the downturn in commercial real estate. Meanwhile the Mayor continues to give away our valuable assets like Hayward Place ($23 million) for free to connected developer friends. This needs to stop.
When I am elected Mayor I will:
Eliminate the BRA and reclaim the hundreds of millions of property and revenue Menino has given away
Save on health care costs by moving municipal employees to the State Plan
Sell all excess property the City owns at market rates
Make non-profits pay the suggested PILOT payments or suspend zoning and building permits
Eliminate tax breaks for rich developers such as $8 million for One Beacon Street and $2 million for JP Morgan Chase
Install zero based budgeting at City Hall to eliminate the waste, fraud and abuse of our resources
Eliminate over 4 years the $80 million spent on busing, and reinvest that into the schools
Three years ago I put together a power point presentation “Show me the Money” which I disseminated around town which the Boston Globe reported on . I outlined exactly the fiscal crisis we are in now. My three opponents ignored the warnings. “It is time to elect someone who will watch the public’s money as closely as his own.”
http://www.boston.com/news/loc… or hopefully here
As best I can tell, nobody in this race for Mayor has ever had an original idea that McCrea didn’t already think of, and nobody has written a quality report on ways the city (or state) can do better than wasn’t already blogged about by Kevin.
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p>I worry that if we don’t just elect him President tomorrow, there might never be another good idea ever.
I gave this presentation about 1.5 years ago in the Fenway – as I recall Councilor Yoon’s rep attended and I followed up with Yoon personally about some of these problems – as I had several times previously going back to almost the day he was elected – over the past 3.5 years I’ve seen lots of meetings and not a single accomplishment in making Boston more efficient nor has councilor Yoon taken any type of leadership position on any of these issues-although he seems to suddenly have lots of opinions that have emerged in the past 90 days. To the contrary – as the presentation points out – the city of Boston would be swimming in money (or at least much less in debt) if our government just spent it more prudently. Councilor Yoon’s response – there is still not enough – we need an even bigger sales tax increase that is dedicated to reducing youth violence. When I asked him once how much would be enough for the schools considering that Boston spends more per student than almost any city in the Commonwealth – he basically responded that there will never be “enough”. Haven’t spoken to Flaherty personally about this – but until this year he has rubberstamped every budget the mayor has ever put in front of him – not exactly the mark of a reformer.
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p>Full disclosure – I’m supporting Kevin because he’s the only candidate who’s been on these issues since long before he became a candidate for mayor. I think Kevin’s main point across all of these issues is that if these candidates were such champions of the people with all these new ideas – where have they been – and curiously – with one or two exceptions they suddenly have the same solutions to these problems that were identified long ago by Kevin and many others like the BMRB and ABN. These guys are a tad late to the party.
on these:
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p>* Eliminate the BRA and reclaim the hundreds of millions of property and revenue Menino has given away
* Sell all excess property the City owns at market rates
* Make non-profits pay the suggested PILOT payments or suspend zoning and building permits
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p>I think the BRA has problems, but it’s also done some good work (like LEED certifiablity requirements on buildings 50,000 sq ft+. I know exactly two people who work/have worked for the BRA, and both had deep, broad knowledge and interest in good development for communities. I’m just not willing to throw the baby out with the bathwater on this one. Does the BRA need more transparency and accountability? Yip. But, the fact that they have the LEED requirement shows me that they’re not entirely in the pockets of big developers. The BRA, working with the city, could result in appropriate high density development and appropriate mid-level development without major increases in traffic or scarring neighborhoods. Work to fix it, don’t euthanize it.
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p>Sell all city property at market rates? Now, with the real estate market down 20%+? Why not rent/lease property, allowing the city to do something later with the property (park, transit station, new school/firehouse/police station, etc) if the time comes later? Real estate fire-sales are a bad move for the people methinks.
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p>Non-profits get tax advantages precisely because they benefit their local communities. I’m not just talking about local food banks and GoodWill stores, for which the benefit is obvious. I’m also thinking about larger non-profits, which are doing important work in all sorts of fields, and universities, which pay good solid salaries and generate graduates which pump up the Boston economy. I just find the pump-up-the-PILOT game over the top.
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p>That written, I do like these:
* Save on health care costs by moving municipal employees to the State Plan
* Eliminate tax breaks for rich developers such as $8 million for One Beacon Street and $2 million for JP Morgan Chase
* Eliminate over 4 years the $80 million spent on busing, and reinvest that into the schools
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p>Of course moving muni employees to the GIC is great. Get the unions to go for it and lock in long term savings, while increasing the size of the GIC’s risk pool substantially. The tax breaks for rich developers is non-sensical. Busing should be reduced at the very least, both in the “Busing program” sense and for kids who live within a 30 minute walk/mass trans ride from their own school. It’s not just about the financial savings, it’s also about healing the local community and fostering healthier, more active kids.
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p>I’m unsure about
* Install zero based budgeting at City Hall to eliminate the waste, fraud and abuse of our resources
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p>because, frankly, that’s a lot to do in a single year. You might pick a department each year and work it, but I’m skeptical that trying for all of it at once will result in anything but chaos and resentment city-wide.
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p>You don’t mention transportation, which I think would help Boston tremendously:
* increase the number of parking meters, the price of metered parking, and the times that parking is metered. Parking is insanely cheap; why is private parking $2.50 an hour downtown but public parking is what, $1/hr? Red Sox private parking is $30, public is $0 curbside for night games. Increasing the rates will result in more people taking mass transit and cycling, and will ensure that spaces are available to those looking for them, in residential commercial areas, downtown, at event locations during events, etc. It will also capture revenue for the city of Boston from non-citizens.
* more bike lanes
* more street trees
* more sidewalks, fixed sidewalks, proper curb cuts
* more bike paths (not the same as bike lanes)
* more crosswalks, pedestrian refuges, neck downs
* wider sidewalks, even if it means reducing the number/size of travel lanes or parking lanes. In some places, encourage outdoor dining/sales to enhance local streetscape.
* work with MBTA to improve bus routes — dedicated bus lanes, bus stops on the far sides of intersections, priority signalization, strict enforcement of parking violations w.r.t. mass transit (standing/parking at bus stop, using bus-only lanes, etc)
* work with MBTA to improve subway/street car — Green E Line and B Line signal prioritization, “next train in XX minutes” at stations, getting more stores to sell Charlie Cards, etc
* more enforcement of parking/standing in bike lanes or rightmost travel lanes by private autos
* more commercial load/unload spots, in conjunction with strict enforcement of commercial double parking — allowing for the rightmost travel lane to be used for travel thereby dramatically improving throughput of autos
* increase price of resident parking sticker so that fewer people buy them, thereby allowing those who do buy them to find a spot without trolling for 20+ minutes.
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p>In all the cases where I argue for increased fees, it’s imperative that the extra revenue be spent in that specific neighborhood to implement improvements like the ones listed above, plus things like buried power/telephone lines, improved street furniture, well-engineered and aesthetically pleasing lamp posts, improved local parks, etc. This helps get neighborhood and local commercial “buy in” and will really improve the livability and shopability of those specific areas.
Is it really such a good idea to sell all excess City property? How do you plan to insure that it is not misused? And won’t you get horrible prices in this economy, especially if you flood the market. I really dislike this idea. It seems fiscally irresponsible, at least in the way you present it above.