"Walsh raised $1.5m in first year, setting high bar for rivals; Mayor set to break mark on donations" by Andrew RyanGlobe Staff December 19, 2014
Mayor Martin J. Walsh, maximizing his new power and influence in his first year in office, is poised to break the annual fund-raising record for an incumbent Boston mayor.
Campaign finance records show Walsh has already raised more than $1.5 million, an amount that nearly eclipses the high mark for his predecessor, Thomas M. Menino, whose top year was 2009, when he faced his toughest reelection campaign.
So who has bought him off? The u$ual $u$pects.
The new mayor’s fund-raising prowess sends a clear message to potential challengers by underscoring the power of incumbency in Boston, where a sitting mayor has not lost an election in 65 years.
“The idea of taking up all the oxygen in the room so nobody else can breathe is not a bad strategy. Money is like oxygen,” said Paul Watanabe, a political science professor at the University of Massachusetts Boston who served on Walsh’s transition team.
Since January, Walsh has raised more than twice what all 13 councilors have received, combined. He may be three years from an election, but Walsh has vastly outraised any other elected official who lives in Boston.
**********
Campaign contributions have poured in from a variety of donors: real estate moguls, firefighters, developers, police, restaurant owners, teachers, executives, plumbers, physicians, bankers, and dentists, records show.
Municipal employees who work for Walsh have contributed. Donors who identified themselves as lawyers have given. Owners of construction companies, car dealerships, bakeries, and other businesses have donated.
“It’s no surprise,” and raising $1.5 million is impressive, as “he’s building a fortress.”
He has also paid off several hundred thousand dollars in debt from last year’s mayoral race.
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Ed Jesser, a longtime Boston political consultant who worked with unsuccessful challengers and City Hall’s longest serving chief executive, said, “The one thing I learned is the mayor is the king.”
Related: Year One of His Majesty's Reign
Your stuck with him now.
And who is the lucky lottery winner?
"Boston housing lottery offers luxury at low cost; Lotteries are a big draw for residents, despite the long odds" by Beth Teitell, Globe Staff December 15, 2014
Apartments at the Ink Block and other high-end developments go for thousands of dollars a month — even the studios. But thanks to a city housing program, a lucky few can qualify to live large, at a much lower price. All they have to do is win a little-known city lottery.
Nearly 15 years old, Boston’s inclusionary development policy has created 1,163 affordable on-site condos and apartments in some of Boston’s most luxurious buildings, including the Mandarin Oriental. An additional 555 units have been approved or are under construction. Most people have no idea that a few moderate earners live in these buildings. Or that winning a spot starts with having your name drawn out of a box, the housing version of Mega Millions.
Some hit it their first time; others never do.
So who got lucky?
Saul Flambury did (are you kidding me?)!
****************
Moderate earners are living among, if not quite like, the city’s wealthier residents, but with rents for the affordable units starting at $1,020 per month (one-bedroom condos are currently priced at $162,500), this month hundreds of people showed up at the Brighton offices of the firm running the housing lottery.
Related: Vouching For the Boston Globe
Also see:
Survey finds acute homelessness in Boston
Boston real estate assessments eclipse $100 billion for first time
That's $obering!
****************
The goal is to avoid situations like the one that incited a backlash in New York City this year.
There, a developer made news when he successfully sought permission for separate entrances for the market rate and the affordable units. As the New York Post put it: “City OKs . . . ‘poor door.’ ”
Opening a new door on a deal that stinks.
A similar scandal hasn’t broken out here, but there has been controversy. In 2013, a Globe investigation found that the Boston Redevelopment Authority was cutting deals at the expense of affordable housing, and that the agency collected far less than it should have if it had followed the rules.
Related: $tuffed BRA
Kind of a small cup of a lame-a$$ excuse, huh?
Earlier this year, an audit ordered by Walsh found that the BRA didn’t collect millions of dollars in lease payments and fees owed by developers for affordable housing. The housing funds are now administered by a different city agency, the Department of Neighborhood Development.
Ted Tye, managing partner of Newton-based National Development, which is developing Ink Block, says building affordable condos can be a challenge. Financing can be more difficult, and the units are less likely to meet the city’s long-term housing goals than affordable apartments or cash contributions, he said.
“You can have a 23-year-old who buys an affordable condo and then gets promoted, starts to earn more money, has a family, and wants to move out,” he said. “The sale is deed restricted” — to a qualified buyer — “but that is difficult to track over time.” (Affordable condos are required to remain affordable from 50 years from the date of the original affordable housing agreement, as are most affordable rentals.)
Meanwhile, as high-end buildings tout their amenities, moderate earners say they are frustrated trying to find a place — anyplace — in the city.
It's a city for millionaires now.
“People are asking you to put down first month’s rent, last month’s rent, a security deposit, and a rental agent’s fee,” said James Eddy, 27, a community field coordinator for the Boston Public Schools, who was applying to live in the Ink Block.
Eddy and his girlfriend have been looking for a while, but even in outlying neighborhoods, he said, renting requires a big upfront payment. He unhappily did the math on a $1,200-per-month apartment. “That’s almost $5,000 — it’s like a down payment on a house.”
I'm sure somebody cares.
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So what is the $olution for those who were not so lucky?
"Abrupt closing of Long Island Bridge was slow to arrive" by Meghan E. Irons and Nicole Dungca, Globe Staff December 14, 2014
With less than five hours to evacuate Long Island, about 300 people, including homeless and recovering addicts, were rushed over the dangerously decayed and newly condemned Long Island Bridge in early October. Medications, journals, and plates of food that had just been warmed were all left behind. There seemed no time to waste.
But there had been plenty of time — days, months, years, decades, in fact — in which the structural hazards of the bridge grew increasingly obvious, and city officials did little beyond patchwork fixes to address them, a Globe review has found.
The unfortunate things is this has become standard across all levels of government. That's what happens when you have money-junkies running things.
Inspection reports as early as 2007 had identified corrosion that was eating away at large sections of the structure and weakening its gusset plates — the key joint connectors that ultimately triggered the closure. In 2010, another inspection of the plates found “advanced deterioration including loss of section and corrosion holes.” Just this summer, an e-mail sent among some city officials reported that the bridge had begun to buckle.
Starting to cast a shadow on the legacy.
Yet, when the bridge was finally deemed unsafe for travel on the afternoon of Oct. 8, the city had no emergency evacuation plan in place — and no plan for where to house those who relied on the island’s shelter.
The Globe review also found that some city officials had known for days that the bridge faced the likelihood of imminent closure but did not pass on warnings to the mayor’s office or the organizations operating on the island. Given more time, city leaders and advocates for the homeless could have arranged a more orderly exit and identified alternative shelters for the vulnerable population as winter’s chill closed in.
Winter, right. In this age of global warming?
**********
Seeking bids for demolition work
Now the question is what comes next.
On Friday, the city began soliciting bids from contractors to demolish the top portion of the bridge, down to the supports, which will remain. Work will include disconnecting the utility lines that carry water and power to the island. Demolition is expected to be completed by the end of April, city officials said.
Related: City begins soliciting bids to demolish Long Island Bridge
Walsh’s administration has put aside about $35 million in a five-year capital plan for the bridge but has not explained how the city will raise the other $45 million needed to reconstruct it.
The city has also allocated $9 million for a new bridge design, with half of the money coming from the state’s Transportation Department. The design process could take about 12 months, officials said.
But Walsh still faces a critical question: “Is the bridge worth saving?”
The mayor has said he is committed to keeping the homeless shelter and recovery programs on the island.
Philanthropist Jack Connors on Friday renewed his pledge to continue Camp Harbor View, a program for Boston children, on the island next summer. He said he hopes to get the same number of children — 450 in July and 450 in August — and the camp’s 90-member staff onto the island using the Bay State Cruises ferry service.
Honestly, I view all such programs with suspicion now.
The camp will also have access to the Police Department’s Harbor Patrol speedboats in case of emergencies, said Sharon McNally, executive director of the Camp Harbor View Foundation.
Meanwhile, social services agencies that serve vulnerable clients are seeking alternative locations. The city is exploring several options for a temporary facility to serve as a long-term shelter. It plans to restore two Mattapan buildings as sites for some of the recovery programs.
Walsh said he is doing what he can to address the crisis and return a sense of normalcy to the displaced.
“I know that people are angry and that people are upset,’’ Walsh said.
“I’m certainly upset [about] displacing the programs. I’ve spent my whole career fighting for these programs as a legislator. And certainly as mayor of the city of Boston, I am more passionate now because I have a little more say in it.”
Menino really left you a mess (that you had to know about).
At least the campaign ca$h is rolling in.
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And about that plan:
"City set to scrap top plan for shelter for Long Island homeless" by David Abel, Globe Staff December 13, 2014
After weeks of tense meetings and protests by neighbors, city officials have decided they are likely to scrap their leading plan to house hundreds of homeless people who have remained in limbo since Mayor Martin J. Walsh ordered the bridge to their Long Island shelter closed in October.
City officials on Friday said they’re now considering a new location in a city building with fewer neighbors, but they declined to say where.
The decision, which homeless advocates say raises new concerns about the city’s long-term plans, comes after city officials this week also rejected a separate site in Roxbury to house many of the recovery programs that had been based on the island in Boston Harbor.
I'm wondering how many empty rooms are there in those elite hotels.
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City officials said there has been intense pushback from neighborhood groups in the South End and others who didn’t want to see an infusion of more homeless into their community.
What a scandal!
They also considered concerns that a shelter on Frontage Road would interfere with a proposal by the family of Robert Kraft to build a soccer stadium for the New England Revolution in the same area.
OMG!
The true king of Boston and beyond!
The South End is already home to hundreds of homeless people who stay at the Pine Street Inn, on the other side of Interstate 93 from the Frontage Road city lot. The city used to run a methadone clinic on the property.
Related: Bain Capitalizing on Heroin Crisis
Further injection to follow below.
But the booming neighborhood in recent years has also become home to hundreds of high-end condominiums and a new Whole Foods....
Liz Cahill, co-executive of the Old Dover Neighborhood Association in the South End, and other neighbors met with Walsh and other high-ranking officials last week to express their concerns. She worries her neighborhood is becoming a “dumping ground for Boston’s homeless.”
Another neighbor, Northeastern University professor James Alan Fox, president of the Union Park Neighborhood Association, said he was “relieved that they’re not going to put 450 homeless people in our neighborhood.”
Also see: South Carolina City Hates Its Homeless
Bo$ton is better!
When city officials announced their plans last month for housing the homeless, they said they had been also considering a renovated Boston Redevelopment Authority building near the Black Falcon Cruise Terminal in South Boston, but the space, once used to repair ships, wouldn’t be available until August. They also had considered another South Boston spot in a slightly smaller Massachusetts Port Authority building, which has been used as a garage and for container fumigation. But that space lacks bathrooms and showers and would have to be vacated by June.
City officials said the Frontage Road site had a number of advantages, including that it’s on city-owned land, doesn’t abut any residential buildings, and is secured by fences. They estimated it would cost about $250,000 to build and that it would have been easy to service with buses.
“It’s the best option right now,” said Jerome Smith, the city’s chief of civic engagement, last month.
Advocates for the homeless said they’re concerned that the decision could lead to even longer stays for the displaced at the city’s improvised shelters, where hundreds of men and women are now sleeping in cramped conditions on cots and floor mats.
They said they hope the city’s new plan is better than its proposal to house more than 200 recovering addicts from shuttered programs on Long Island at the Radius Specialty Hospital in Roxbury, which recently closed. City officials eliminated that proposal this week after a backlash from neighbors.
“I’m appalled and disappointed that it has already taken this long,” said Michael Kane, executive director of the Mass Alliance of HUD Tenants and a member of the Boston Homeless Solidarity Committee. “The governor and mayor should be treating this as the emergency that it has been since day one.”
Look, there is a list of priorities and you are the bottom.
Among those struggling since Long Island closed is Cleve Rae, a 58-year-old unemployed software developer, who has been living with 250 men packed into the South End Fitness Center, where they have just two toilets.
“The conditions we’re living in is an outrage,” he said. “The city says this is high on their priority list, but it seems to us that they’re not really doing anything.”
But at least they look like they are doing something.
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I mean, the homeless shelter site is “going to be fast-tracked,” and maybe even permanent after concerns were raised even if as winter begins, “The whole system is in chaos,” already under strain during the busy holiday season, and the city’s network of shelters is facing unusual pressure this year. “There’s not a whole lot more room at the inn,” but it “should get us through the winter.”
Yeah, no need to hurry. It's not like people are not getting on top of the situation and making sure everyone is covered.
Related:
"In closing the Old Northern Bridge on Wednesday, city officials said they were acting in an “abundance of caution,” according to Bonnie McGilpin, a spokeswoman for the mayor’s office. Former mayor Thomas M. Menino had once proposed rebuilding the span in 2008. But money never materialized for a massive reconstruction. Now the city has closed the Old Northern Avenue Bridge, citing “deterioration beyond repair,” raising fears that it may not be returned to service."
Yeah, somehow they couldn't find the money amidst such wealth.
Also see:
Northern Avenue Bridge belongs in Boston’s future
What will Boston do with Northern Avenue Bridge?
Who knows, and who cares?
Walsh to stress energy efficiency
Allston Esplanade could emerge from Pike project
Yeah, more bikes are the answer! Just don't ride them over any bridges.
Maybs the Olympics will $ave you:
Boston’s Olympic bid must clear hurdle today
Boston still in hunt for 2024 Summer Olympics
Some labor unions reluctant to back ’24 Olympics effort
Olympics opponent becomes a believer
Boston 2024 adds up to an Olympic leap of faith
Transit a key in Boston’s 2024 Olympics bid
Mayor Walsh’s plan links housing to transit
Golden selected to lead BRA
Marty Walsh gets his man at the BRA
"The Boston Redevelopment Authority said Tuesday that 2014 will go down as one of the most active years for real estate development in city history and predicted the tide that is reshaping the urban landscape will continue into next year. The audit painted a portrait of an inept bureaucracy fumbling its way through basic operations, such as collecting rent, tracking payments, and ensuring that developers follow through on promises to improve public land."
As will the wealth inequality, then.
Related:
Audit questions city loan agency’s collection tactics
Dutch architect’s design brings light to Dudley Square
Alewife building boom spurs worry among residents
Many concerned about getting pushed out.
Be lucky to find a place, too:
"Boston zeroes in on overcrowded student housing; Will check 580 addresses, look for safety violations" by Todd Wallack, Globe Staff January 02, 2015
Boston housing officials have identified roughly 580 potentially overcrowded student apartments across the city, based on a first-ever analysis of university data, and plan to dispatch inspectors to each address to look for possible safety violations in coming months.
Just in time for the new school year.
The city recently obtained the addresses for tens of thousands of college students living off campus after a Globe Spotlight report last spring found widespread overcrowding and substandard living conditions in Boston’s college neighborhoods. The Spotlight series found significant problems including rodents, broken windows, and malfunctioning smoke detectors.
Boston housing inspectors plan to confirm whether renters at the properties it flagged are actually violating a 2008 zoning rule barring more than four full-time undergraduate students from sharing the same apartment. They will also examine whether the units have unsafe living conditions, such as a lack of exits, that could pose an immediate hazard.
“For the first time, we have the data,” said William Christopher, the architect who took over Boston’s Inspectional Services Department last May. “It’s a great beginning.”
***********
City officials acknowledged the new information isn’t perfect.
Sigh. I'm tired of the governmental public relations firm posing as a newspaper.
Boston hasn’t received addresses for every student. Many addresses it did obtain omitted unit numbers, making it difficult to tell whether some students in large buildings with multiple apartments were violating the occupancy limit rules.
Some universities may list a parent’s address, where grades and tuition bills are sent, instead of the student’s. And some addresses were repeated, listed in different formats, forcing city officials to spend three weeks cleaning up the data.
Even so, city officials believe the data will allow them for the first time to zero in on properties packed with the most students to try to identify overcrowding or potentially dangerous living conditions.
Yeah, who cares as long as the image and illusion remain in place?
Even so....
Boston University student Binland Lee died in Allston two years ago after a fire trapped her in an illegal attic apartment with only one way out, while another student was nearly killed in a separate fire on the same street three years ago.
If city officials confirm there are unsafe apartments or too many students living together in one unit, they said they plan to work with students, landlords and universities to find alternative housing for the occupants.
“We are not about hurting students here,” Christopher said, explaining that the city will only evict students as a last resort. “It is a cooperative approach.”
A life lesson for future foreclosure.
Boston officials also hope to use the off-campus student addresses to figure out whether any apartments are missing from the city’s new database of rental properties.
Starting in 2013, the city required landlords to register their properties with the city, laying the groundwork for regular inspections.
Ultimately, city officials hope to inspect all of Boston’s roughly 150,000 rental units over five years to make sure they comply with housing codes, but they are still finalizing the details on how to accomplish that task.
A local community activist praised the city’s efforts.
************
Because of the limited amount of housing stock in Boston, landlords and tenants have long been tempted to carve up old buildings and pack in as many residents as possible, potentially creating unsafe conditions.
And many local schools haven’t built enough on-campus dorms to keep up with their surging enrollment, which has exacerbated the housing shortage....
To afford the rent, many students have openly flouted city occupancy rules, while landlords have faced little pressure to maintain apartments because cash-starved students have few other options.
All that is changing, or haven't you heard?
For years, some schools such as Boston College resisted providing specific addresses where students live, citing restrictions on releasing personal information about students.
Yeah, right, they care about your privacy.
After Lee’s 2013 death in an overcrowded apartment, community activists called on local universities to release the addresses to help the city detect other unsafe units. Only Boston University initially complied.
But after the Globe spotlight series, Mayor Martin J. Walsh persuaded other schools in the city to provide the data as well.
Northeastern University spokesman Michael Armini said the school did not resist the request, but “simply needed to make sure that the submission did not conflict with federal laws on student privacy.”
Boston has not yet collected data from every school. The city said it did not request data from two prominent public colleges, Bunker Hill Community College and Roxbury Community College, because they serve mostly part-time or nontraditional students.
But the city has collected the bulk of student addresses from private four-year colleges with a presence in Boston, including Boston College, BU, Harvard, Northeastern, and hopes to obtain data from the largest public university in Boston, University of Massachusetts Boston, in coming weeks....
In addition, city officials say they have upgraded their computer systems to better keep track of problem landlords and track complaints.
Oh, really? I hope it wasn't done by the same people that did healthcare.gov or the state unemployment health and websites.
They have also tried to share more information among departments and encouraged some of the biggest student landlords to do more to address complaints on their own.
“We have worked with some of the problem landlords and they have become much better,” said Christopher, the Inspectional Services chief.
Separately, Northeastern University said it is still reviewing its relationship with Anwar Faisal, one of the city’s most controversial student landlords, who has been the target of dozens of civil or criminal housing complaints over the past decade.
Northeastern has historically referred students to several landlords, including Faisal, on an internal website and leased buildings from Faisal’s firm to use as dorms.
Armini said the university expects the review to be concluded in the spring, but downplayed the relationship.
He said Northeastern leases only 600 beds from Faisal’s firm and other private property owners, compared to more than 8,000 traditional dorm beds it oversees on campus. In addition, Northeastern plans to open a new dorm with 720 more beds in a few weeks, he said.
What a slum, huh?
--more--"
Now onto matters of life and death:
Hard-to-solve gang killings push down city clearance rate
They are only "solving" 45% of the cases? With all the forensic tech, all the weaponry, all the surveillance, all the fusion centers, all the data collection? WTF??
Death rate just jumped again:
"Heroin overdoses kill 3 in Boston; officials fear bad batch; Death investigation underway" by Nestor Ramos and John R. Ellement, Globe Staff January 02, 2015
Two men were found dead in a cemetery’s parking lot in Jamaica Plain Friday morning, and a third person died soon after in Dorchester — all apparent victims of drug overdoses, law enforcement officials briefed on the case said.
Strangely odd and appropriate. I guess they were just cutting down on travel time.
The deaths shut down the sprawling Forest Hills Cemetery after the bodies were discovered around 11 a.m., and together with a third apparent fatal overdose within a few hours and a few miles of each other fed ongoing concern that a particularly dangerous batch of heroin is making its way through Boston.
Been through this before, and the relevant questions will never be asked.
“We are almost certain that the increase in overdoses, and recent deaths, are a result of heroin that is extremely potent,” said Mayor Martin J. Walsh in a statement Friday evening, while also noting that tests on drugs acquired by officers in recent weeks are not yet complete.
Police released few details about Friday’s deaths.
**************
Walsh said he called an emergency meeting with public safety and health officials, along with other elected leaders, “to discuss how to combat this crisis.”
“Right now, we believe the most impactful step is sounding the alarm and getting the word out that there is heroin in our community that is potentially fatal,” Walsh said.
Yeah, just accept its presence throughout the city.
Jonathan Scott, president of Victory Programs, said the notion of a so-called “bad batch” of heroin obscures heroin’s inherent dangers. Victory Programs is a Boston-based nonprofit aimed at helping people facing homelessness, drug and alcohol addiction, and chronic illnesses.
“Any time you take heroin, you’re taking your life in your hands,” Scott said.
Overdoses in Boston have become routine — officials counted more than 30 over the course of two days last month — though most are not lethal....
Yeah, it's really no big deal. Pot clinics, big deal.
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I suppose it is fitting that we end this post in the gutter.
Unexpected words led to yes on parade
A welcome fresh start for Southie’s St. Patrick’s Day parade
Thought I would try to end on a happy note.
