"Hackers cut red tape of city’s permit operation" by Oliver Ortega | Globe Correspondent August 10, 2014
Armed with laptops, whiteboards, and enough snacks and beverages to keep them humming through the day, a group of about 60 computer programmers began a hackathon Saturday to improve Boston’s permitting process.
“None of this is sexy,” said Blair Caple, a 55-year-old programmer sitting at a table with another programmer inside District Hall, a steel-clad, one-story building billed as the social hub of the new Innovation District when it opened last year under Mayor Thomas M. Menino. “But the point is that government exists for a reason, to provide these services, and you want these programs to be helpful to citizens.”
Given all the problems Walsh is confronting, Menino's legacy is getting more and more tarnished by the day.
At least the elite section of Bo$ton is doing well.
Around him, programmers and bureaucrats, including several responsible for reviewing permits, sat huddled in groups throughout the lounge and in meeting rooms down the hall, putting their heads and computers together to solve kinks in the application process. They scribbled notes on the nearly ubiquitous whiteboards that give District Hall a start-up feel.
We all know what $tart-ups are.
Time was short: The programmers had 26 hours, until 2 p.m. Sunday, to come up with proposals.
The HubHacks Permitting Challenge, as the city-sponsored event is called, was organized by the city’s Department of Innovation and Technology and the Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics.
The weekend event is part of a wave of civic-minded hacking events in which developers, programmers, data miners, and others with computer expertise work with local governments to bolster their digital programs, said Harlan Weber, a “brigade captain” for the nonprofit Code for Boston.
Yeah, turns out the biggest hackers on planet earth -- and those behind mo$t of the $elf-$erving problem -- work for the United States government.
“We’re able to contribute back to our community, municipal, state governments and nonprofits to make things better,” said Weber, who is serving as a judge at the HubHacks event. “As we go forward, the worlds of software development and government are going to overlap more and more.”
This nation can't lose the wars fast enough. This empire needs to crumble quick.
Weber helped run the Boston site for the National Day of Civic Hacking, a hackathon held in May in more than 100 cities across the country. It is now in its second year.
I thought hacking was done by bad guys.
In Boston, about 100,000 applications for more than 40 different permits are filed annually through the city’s permitting software system, city officials said. But a host of issues hobble it, they say.
Sometimes property addresses on applications don’t match up with those on other city records, or a single project might require multiple permits, unbeknownst to the applicant. Building developers can find it difficult to track their applications process, complicating long-term plans. And some permits, such as the one required to park a moving truck, can’t be filed online, adding weeks to the wait in some cases.
On Saturday, the hackers worked to solve these four issues, specifically as they relate to permits filed with the Boston Fire Department, the Public Works Department, the Boston Transportation Department, and the Inspectional Services Department.
Mayor Martin J. Walsh kicked the day off with a speech on government’s responsibility to use new technology to meet its citizens’ needs.
The current permit process, he said, creates a “system of winners and losers” in which small business owners and home owners are at a disadvantage compared with wealthier and more experienced companies.
“These are resources we need to remake the way citizens interact with their government,” he said.
Throughout the day, city workers walked around and offered their ideas as the groups conferred.
“The one problem everyone is asking is ‘Where?’ ” Paul Taylor, a systems analyst with the Public Works Department, told the group of five programmers tackling the issue of inconsistent addresses.
On the whiteboard behind him, Taylor had drawn a map and a stick figure of a hypothetical Bostonian, John, who couldn’t figure out his correct address.
The programmers agreed that Boston poses particular challenges when it comes to getting addresses right because street names are sometimes repeated throughout its 23 neighborhoods.
Participants will demonstrate their solutions Sunday afternoon, and a winner will be chosen by a panel of judges.
The weekend’s prizes only include HubHacks paraphernalia and bragging rights, but what really matters to these programmers and organizers is to get ideas percolating as the city prepares to request formal proposals for the city’s new online permitting tool on Tuesday.
“The point is to get more people in Boston’s tech community familiar with the issues,” said Matt Mayrl, the city’s deputy chief information officer. “If you get the same people again and again, you’ll get the same results.”
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If you are looking to help you might just end up in Silicon Valley.
The agenda-pu$hing paper is more entwined with the interests of militarism than meets the eye. It's a total war-promoting paper.
Also see: BRA Has $mall Cup
What a lame-a$$ excuse for lost loot.
"Most BRA small-business loans overdue, audit finds; Agency says policies aid small businesses" by Edward Mason | Globe Correspondent August 04, 2014
The small-business lending arm of the Boston Redevelopment Authority has allowed hundreds of thousands of dollars in loans to go uncollected, with more than half of its loans seriously delinquent, according to an internal audit.
Then it was a gift, wasn't it?
The audit, obtained by The Boston Globe through a public records request, found that 51 percent of the total amount borrowed has been delinquent for 90 days or longer. That rate is more then 50 times greater than that of banks, which average less than 1 percent on similar loans, according to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.
“At some point it’s no longer a loan,” said Matthew A. Cahill, executive director of the Boston Finance Commission, the city’s fiscal watchdog. “If the loan isn’t getting paid back, you’re giving someone money.”
The delinquent loans averaged more than $100,000 each.
The audit of the BRA lending arm, a taxpayer-funded nonprofit called the Boston Local Development Corporation, comes on the heels of a broader audit of the BRA, which found that the authority failed to collect millions of dollars in fees and lease payments from developers.
Looks like you have been took, Boston taxpayers.
Now about all those service cuts in transportation and teaching.
In addition to the high loan delinquency rate, Boston Local Development says it has written off nearly $700,000 in bad loans since 2011. In one example, checks collected from a borrower and totaling $235,000 sat uncashed for six months, according to the audit, which covered the fiscal year that ended June 2013.
“These are taxpayer dollars,” Cahill said. “This is not private industry.”
Lenient collection practices not only put public money at risk but reduce capital available to help other businesses, analysts said.
The loan program is set up as a revolving fund, so as money is paid back, it is re-loaned to others. If it’s not paid back, then there’s less to lend — unless the fund is replenished by taxpayers or other sources.
What "other sources?"
“No bank would be around with those levels of delinquencies,” said Brett Theodos, a senior research associate at the Urban Institute, a Washington think tank. “Any capital that is pumped into a business and that isn’t repaid quickly or won’t be repaid is capital that won’t be deployed elsewhere.”
Don't be putting government on the same level and pedestal as the banks!
But William Nickerson, the chief financial manager at Boston Local Development, defended the agency’s collection policy, noting that the recession and a sluggish economic recovery have hampered borrowers’ ability to repay.
Nickerson, a former banking executive, said the agency exists to create jobs by helping businesses succeed, so he is willing to give more time to companies that have a chance at success.
That's a catch-all they throw out there every time. Unemployed Americans or anyone else can't argue with that.
As an example, he cited HDM Systems Corp., an Allston battery technology company. In 2008, it received a $250,000, a loan at 5 percent interest that was due in October. Rather than call the loan, Nickerson gave HDM room to secure new contracts.
HDM recently paid $10,000 — on top of more than $49,000 in principal and interest it has already paid — and agreed to make interest payments over the next year, a BRA spokeswoman said. Once the new contracts start generating revenue, the authority will review HDM’s finances with the goal of moving the company to principal and interest payments.
“We’re not in the business of closing someone down,” Nickerson said.
Okay, that's the lone $ucce$$ story. What else you got?
The agency was founded in 1979 to promote economic development by providing business loans, typically between $25,000 and $150,000. Since 1996, it has approved $14 million in loans to 139 businesses and created 2,800 jobs — an average of 165 new jobs a year.
Doesn't $eem worth it, does it?
The program currently has about $2 million available to lend through grants from local and federal agencies.
Companies submit financial statements, balance sheets, profit-and-loss statements, and three years of tax returns. Borrowers put up real estate owned by their business as collateral and make a personal guaranty the loan will be repaid, Nickerson said.
Nickerson said that making loans during the recession — when many banks wouldn’t — explains the high delinquency rate.
Perhaps the best known case of loan delinquency involved the minority-owned Bay State Banner newspaper.
Related: Remembering Menino
Try waving that banner as a legacy.
In August 2009, Thomas M. Menino, the mayor at the time, urged the agency to approve loans to help the Banner avoid closing. But the Banner did not repay the loans when they came due in November 2011.
A monthly interest-payment plan was established in January 2012, but the Banner made only the first payment. Nearly a year passed before the Banner was declared in default. The Boston Local Development Corporation did not ask the Banner’s publisher, Melvin B. Miller, to commit to a new payment schedule until three days before a Globe article about the loan appeared in January.
The Banner has made all interest payments since Feb. 1, according to the BRA.
Neither Menino nor members of his administration ever interfered with the loan agency’s operations or approval process, Nickerson said.
A spokeswoman for Menino, Dot Joyce, said, “The mayor’s only job was doing what was right for the city, helping businesses grow and creating some of the strongest neighborhoods the city has ever seen.”
Nickerson noted successes in nurturing businesses. In September 2008, Cogito Health Inc., a developer of behavioral voice analysis for health care, received a $150,000 loan through a fund administered by the agency to lure life sciences companies to Boston.
Cogito did not have to make payments in the first few years as it grew, but recently it agreed to a 24-month plan to pay interest. At the end of that period, Nickerson said, his agency can demand the balance or put the company into a plan to pay principal and interest.
Joshua Feast, Cogito’s chief executive, said the initial loan structure encouraged him to move to Boston from Cambridge. Today, the company has 25 employees, up from two.
“We turned into a successful company and put millions of dollars into the local economy,” Feast said.
Nickerson added that he has restructured or plans to restructure eight loans totalling nearly $1 million to get borrowers paying on time. So far, he said, they are doing that.
Meanwhile, the administration of Mayor Martin J. Walsh is considering putting more money into Boston Local Development to expand the lending program.
The administration hopes to reduce delinquencies by pairing small-business owners with services provided by the Department of Neighborhood Development, where entrepreneurs can get help building businesses.
“We believe if we can better support small businesses and coordinate the way, more people will do better and be able to pay back,” said John Barros, the city’s economic development chief.
“We want to expand the ability of the BLDC to do more of these loans.”
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Also see: City Council to review BRA lending agency
NEXT DAY UPDATE:
"Two years after Harlem Street triple slaying, pain and fear persist; Answers still elusive to shootings" by Evan Allen | Globe Staff August 12, 2014
Agabus Lartey thinks about the night of Aug. 12, 2012, when bullets that tore through the car where Kristen, 22, sat with three high school friends on Harlem Street. Kristen died almost instantly; Sharrice Perkins, 22, died within minutes; Genevieve Phillip, 22, was hit at least seven times, and died hours later. Their killer has never been caught. The fourth woman in the car was hit in the leg, and lived.
Boston police are still investigating the triple killing. They have said that one of the women shot was targeted, but have declined to say which one. The name of the survivor has not been released out of consideration for her safety. Last year, around the first anniversary of the killings, officials said they had “several persons of interest” and a “good foundation of evidence.”
Why do they have to lie? If that statement were true, they would have arrested someone by now. They are never shy about arresting the first, "best" suspect, are they?
This year, police said the case remains a top priority but did not provide new details on the investigation.
“The investigation continues, and is active and ongoing,” said Officer James Kenneally, a Boston police spokesman. “Investigators continue to encourage people who may have information as it relates to this case to share that information with police.”
Lartey, a deeply religious man who was born in Ghana, said he prays for police to make an arrest, but not out of bitterness or spite: God is good, he said. God has given him grace.
“For the safety of the people in the Boston community, I would want them to be arrested,” said Lartey. “When people feel they can do something with impunity, and they feel invisible, then they might be inclined to repeat that thing again.”
Exhibit A: bankers
Exhibit B: Israel
He prays, as well, for his daughter....
Not trying to be coy, but God help us all in these frighteningly perilous times.
He calls his daughter’s killing simply “the event.” It happened on his 55th birthday. They went to church together that morning, and Kristen, who had just graduated from St. John’s University, told Lartey that she wanted to join the youth ministry at their church. He was so proud....
That is tragic and terrible and I know it is horrible to say but I have been over saturated with my -- sorry to say this, but it's so true and is validated even more every day -- agenda-pushing, war-promoting, Zionist War Daily waving women and children at me.
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"Wage gap rising, but less so in Boston; Walsh, other mayors seek strategy to aid poor" by Katie Johnston | Globe Staff August 11, 2014
Across the country, the rich keep getting richer while middle- and low-income households fall further behind. But in Boston, the growing income divide has not been as severe as in other cities, according to a report released Monday.
It's fourth, but damage control lies and the illu$ions that follow are standard for the propaganda pre$$ $chills. It is simply the world in which we live.
The report, compiled for the United States Conference of Mayors, details the increasing distribution of income to top earners and projects an even greater wage gap in years to come....
That is why this empire and the banking $y$tem it enforces upon the world must collapse as quick as possible.
Jim Diffley, the report author and economist at IHS Global Insight, an information and analytics firm based in Lexington. “Boston has done relatively better than other metros.”
Yeah, whatever.
The wealth gap increases every month, week, day, minute, second, and yet the intervening months in-between and things have leveled out. There is less water going into the pool, so to $peak, but you are still be drained of loot, citizenry.
Related: The 1% May Be Richer Than You Think, Research Shows
I'll bet that blows your $ocks off.
The wage gap is a focus for Mayor Martin J. Walsh, whose administration is working on ways to lift people out of poverty and strengthen the middle class in Boston. Walsh is vice chairman of the Conference of Mayors’ task force on income inequality, which held its inaugural meeting in New York on Monday. The task force plans to tackle issues related to early-childhood education, access to technology, and benefits such as sick time, as well as housing, transportation, and workforce development....
As he works for the 1% in Bo$ton with his BRA and his tax breaks for bu$ine$$.
In Boston, Walsh has established a task force with the goal of ensuring that every 4-year-old in Boston can attend a prekindergarten program, noting that these programs lead to improved success in academics and, eventually, the job market. An office of financial empowerment also is in the works to train residents in financial literacy and wealth-building.
Looks like BRAINWA$HING to me!
In addition, city officials are talking to teachers and industry executives about creating a better pathway from high school into the workforce, working to beef up apprenticeship programs, and looking to build affordable and workforce housing.
Back to the gilded age of tenements and aristocracy, 'eh?
What's beyond that, serfs and lords?
'course, that is all here already.
“If we follow this road map, we will actually close that divide,” Walsh said at the Conference of Mayors meeting. “We won’t be talking about the haves and have-nots. We’ll be talking about Americans who are able to make it: families who are able to make some money, earn some money, they will afford where they live, they will have good access to health care, good access to education, good access to housing, good access to transportation.”
A rising tide, a trickle of urine, a ripple of sh.... sigh.
The average median income in Boston was $72,700 last year, the sixth-highest in the country, according to the Conference of Mayors report, and is projected to grow to $84,400 in 2017.
That means half above, half below.
The city has one of the highest shares of families making $75,000 or more a year, at nearly 48 percent, and one of the smaller percentages of low-wage households, with 26 percent making less than $35,000 a year. The rate at which wealth shifted to higher-income households was roughly equivalent to the national average.
Boston has not fared as well in other income inequality reports. A study by the Brookings Institution earlier this year showed that Boston has the fourth-largest income divide between rich and poor among the country’s 50 biggest cities — behind Atlanta, San Francisco, and Miami. These results are more extreme than the Conference of Mayors report, study author Diffley said, because the Brookings Institution compared the top 5 percent to the bottom 20 percent, whereas the mayors’ report looked at a broader swath of incomes.
The mayors wanted to make themselves look better to all those struggling city citizens as the places come apart and have "good" $ections and "bad" sections.
The nation’s growing income divide is increasingly being seen as a drag on economic growth. Last week, the credit rating agency Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services released research stating that the unequal distribution of wealth is hurting the postrecession recovery. Rising income equality leads to a less educated and less competitive workforce, reduced hiring, and fewer investments, according to the report.
First of all, what recovery? The second thing is it obviou$ly $hows that concentration of wealth into greedy fi$ts can't carry an economy.
Related: S&P: Wealth gap is slowing US economic growth
$ee what their an$wers are?
Didn't they mislabel all the bad mortgage-backed securities AAA so pension funds could buy them?
The Conference of Mayors’ report showed that from 1975 to 2012 only one group experienced an increase in its share of the nation’s total income: the highest-earning 20 percent of households, which rose from bringing in 43.6 of the country’s income to 51 percent. The biggest increase of all was in the top 5 percent, which increased from 16.5 to 22.3 percent.
And as you lower that percentage the scale of the numbers is mind-boggling. It's MOSTLY GOING UP, UP, UP, with the thin 4% given $craps to keep them in line and oppre$$ing the other 95% of us.
The bottom 40 percent of households, on the other hand, brought in just 11.5 percent of the nation’s income, down from 14.7 percent in 1975.
With the middle stretched into one of the two, mostly lower.
One of the major factors contributing to the growing income divide is the high-wage jobs lost during the recession and the lower-wage positions that have taken their place, according to the report....
Even people who have not changed professions have seen their earnings decline. Maria Barros, 62, has been working at Logan Airport for the past 16 years. During that time, her wages have slid from a high of $16 an hour, when she was a security supervisor in 2002, to $12, then $10, and now $9 an hour for her job as a passenger service representative, checking people’s tickets and helping them with the self-service kiosks. Things have gotten so bad that her son, Kevin, leaves money on her bedroom bureau to help her pay bills. “He puts it there because he knows that I’ll refuse to take it if he were to try to hand it to me,” she said in a report put out last year by Community Labor United, a Boston advocacy group for working families.
Hey, if the 1% are $wimming in loot why you can't you ju$t be happy?
Related: Airport workers ramp up union fight
They are even letting terrorists bring guns on board. Damn unions!
In several Boston neighborhoods, including Roxbury, Mattapan, and Dorchester, inflation-adjusted yearly wages fell by more than 20 percent between 1999 and 2011, according to Community Labor United.
In an attempt to shrink the growing wage gap, Community Labor United is proposing a city ordinance to curb wage theft among Boston business owners. To deter unscrupulous employers from paying workers below the minimum wage or withholding overtime, every business that applied for a license to operate in the city would undergo an investigation for wage and hour violations. The message, said executive director Darlene Lombos, would be: “The city won’t stand for having employers in the city that engage in wage theft.”
Depends on who is the employer.
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Also see: Report paints bleak picture of Boston animal shelter
Related: Boston Globe Animal Shelter
Mayor notes progress in tour of animal shelter
(Blog editor just shakes head)
East Boston Y finding success with online classes
