"Mayor Martin Walsh fills his first full day; Faces a pile of tasks, plus a brief detour" by Andrew Ryan and Wesley Lowery | Globe staff, January 08, 2014
It used to be that Martin J. Walsh could pump out a press release and watch it disappear into the ether, unnoticed.
That was Martin J. Walsh, state representative. On his first full day as mayor of Boston on Tuesday, Walsh called a press conference, and dozens of journalists flocked to City Hall. Television cameras had already greeted Walsh as he arrived for work in the morning. Others stalked him at home in Savin Hill.
“I walked out to a Boston newspaper reporter and camera person taking pictures of me on my first day,” Walsh said later in an interview, describing what he found when he stepped out of his home. “I felt like it was my first day of school.”
We will be getting to that.
In many ways, Tuesday was like school, a crash course in being a big city mayor. Walsh’s day was a whirlwind of disparate tasks. He signed a flurry of documents to keep the bureaucracy grinding forward; announced six appointments to his administration, including two top staff members; got briefed on regulations for medical marijuana; heard about vacancies on the Public Health Commission board; and managed to give his security detail the slip as he explored the concrete corridors of City Hall.
That was all before lunch. By the end of the day, he would have another string of meetings and a dinner date with all 13 members of the City Council (significant others included) at Ruth’s Chris Steak House. at Old City Hall.
Between meetings, Walsh acknowledged that one of his biggest challenges will be getting used to the furious pace, especially the first few months, as he assembles his team and restructures his Cabinet….
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Related:
Walsh proposes revamping city Cabinet
Mayor Martin J. Walsh tweaks, reorganizes his Cabinet
Mayor Martin J. Walsh chooses City Hall veteran as communications chief
Minority officers back staff changes
"Chief of staff hits a chord with Mayor Walsh" by Andrew Ryan | Globe Staff, January 20, 2014
Daniel Arrigg Koh has the lineage and resume of a luminary on the rise. The chief of staff to Mayor Martin J. Walsh holds two degrees from Harvard and hails from a family that includes a diplomat, influential medical doctors, legal scholars, and advisers to the powerful.
Koh interned for the late senator Edward M. Kennedy and advised former mayor Thomas M. Menino. He can sing, play guitar, and act on stage. He can field a baseball and has run 13 marathons. For a charity fund-raiser in his last job, Koh was Mr. August in a men’s pin-up calendar, nibbling seductively on the earpiece of pair of eyeglasses.
Related: Mirren Mimics Miley
Oh, and he’s 29 years old….
The inner circle of Walsh’s budding administration is stocked with political warhorses and longtime confidants….
Koh’s path to City Hall began with Menino’s last chief of staff, Mitchell B. Weiss, who floated Koh’s name….
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Also see: Remembering Menino
I mi$$ him already:
"Walsh vows ‘era of transparency’ in pursuing growth" by Casey Ross | Globe Staff, January 17, 2014
Also see: Remembering Menino
I mi$$ him already:
"Walsh vows ‘era of transparency’ in pursuing growth" by Casey Ross | Globe Staff, January 17, 2014
Mayor Martin J. Walsh said Thursday that he will introduce a “new era of transparency” in pursuing business growth in Boston that will require a major overhaul of the city’s primary economic development agencies in the months ahead.
In remarks before hundreds of real estate executives, Walsh promised that his planned reforms will not interfere with a period of strong construction activity in the city. He said he will aggressively recruit new businesses and building projects.
“We will keep our economy growing,” Walsh said. “We will make Boston a leader in streamlined, transparent and effective job and business growth -- from Seaport Square to Dudley Square.”
Shortly after his remarks, the Boston Redevelopment Authority approved its first massive development under Walsh -- an expansion of the Landmark Center complex near Fenway Park that will bring in a Wegmans supermarket, 550 apartments, and a new public park.
See:
BRA’s first Walsh-era vote is a major one
Fenway Center developer asks for $7.8m tax break
The approval extends the string of large-scale developments approved in the waning months of former Mayor Thomas M. Menino’s final term in office. Without mentioning Menino by name, Walsh lauded the city’s economic growth, noting that it ranks fourth nationally in the amount of commercial space under construction downtown.
“Our economy is growing faster and more jobs are being added here in Boston than almost anywhere else in the country,” he said in a speech at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center. “Overall we have $4.8 billion worth of projects under construction right now . . . and another $2.2 billion under review, showing that the BRA is continuing to review projects and moving our city and the economy forward.”
For $ome anyway.
In a light-hearted aside, he even said he hopes to double the current amount of construction activity during the next few years.
As he lauded the growth under Menino, Walsh made clear he would overhaul the development agency that many have criticized as too powerful and too secretive under the former mayor.
Menino was often accused of giving tax breaks and other special advantages to a select group of developers and builders. Critics said projects proposed by those out of favor with the mayor often languished before the BRA.
Related: Sunday Globe Special: $tuffed BRA
During the mayoral campaign, Walsh was by far the most aggressive candidate in promising to reform the BRA. He argued that the authority’s process of reviewing developments needed to become more open and predictable for developers and ordinary residents alike.
Yeah, but he backed off that pretty quick.
Many developers had been concerned Walsh’s plans would interrupt a robust period of real estate activity and economic growth. But the mayor’s comments Thursday were greeted with enthusiastic applause….
With Partner's applauding the loudest.
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Related:
Walsh eyes regional approach on biotech
Walsh sets outlines for deal on Revere casino
State Getting Cut of Your Casino Pot
At least Walsh is a union guy:
"Union makes pitch to city of Boston workers" by Meghan E. Irons | Globe Staff, January 17, 2014
Less than two weeks after Boston’s pro-union mayor took office, one of the country’s fastest-growing labor confederations made a pitch to nonunion city employees Thursday to join its ranks….
The sessions raised eyebrows among longtime labor observers at City Hall, who said they could not recall a time when a union made such an overt push for nonunion city workers when Thomas M. Menino was mayor.
“I’ve never heard about this before in my 12 years as a city councilor,’’ said Rob Consalvo, the former district councilor from Hyde Park who ran unsuccessfully for mayor. “But that doesn’t mean that it didn’t happen. We worked with existing unions all the time, but I can’t recall a time when anyone has ever approached my staff and asked them to join a union.”
Consalvo and others questioned why the union would target a small part of the city’s workforce. Ninety-one percent of the city’s 19,000 employees belong to one of 40 unions, according to city data.
The 9 percent of nonunion workers include the mayor’s political appointees, Cabinet chiefs, and department heads, officials in City Hall said.
An executives and administrators union?
“Many of these are people who work in the mayor’s office and who work at the pleasure of the mayor,’’ said Samuel Tyler, president of the Boston Municipal Research Bureau, a business-funded financial watchdog group. “Being a part of a union would not make much sense.”
Nonunion employees also work in public information, the office of neighborhood services, and eight other offices, including arts and tourism, labor relations, the law department, and the women’s commission.
The city’s middle managers have their own union.
Mayor Martin J. Walsh, who left the leadership of the Building and Construction Trades Council of the Metropolitan District to run for mayor, was heavily backed by local unions in his bid. SEIU members were among the union workers who hoisted posters and campaigned for Walsh….
You are going to have to take 'em on, Marty.
SEIU made a pitch to city workers two days after Walsh took office in an e-mail bouncing between the union and city employees.
The e-mail was obtained by the Globe.
“Dear City of Boston employee,’’ the e-mail began. “Are you working for the City of Boston without a union? Are you interested in learning about the advantages of having a collective voice at work?”
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Related: Martin Walsh orders agencies to propose cuts
He's getting $chooled:
High school student decline a strain for Boston
Lagging schools in Mass. take on partners
Former top official at nonprofit indicted
Barranco Getting Back Pension
Three nonprofits to turn around schools
That's strange because I was under the impression they already were:
"The rise in college completion rates bodes well for Mayor Thomas M. Menino’s efforts to foster a more skilled workforce and lift more neighborhoods out of poverty by putting more degrees in the hands of the city’s high school graduates.... The city’s college-completion picture, however, becomes less rosy after factoring in all students who graduated from high school, instead of just those who enrolled in college.... But then there is the stark reality that socioeconomic factors are hindering the chances of many Boston students earning degrees.... Superintendent Carol R. Johnson said she never expected to see the college completion rates rise so quickly in a school system where most students live in poverty and many come from homes where another language is spoken."
Some are even homeless.
No help coming from the state, either:
"Cuts in state aid have Boston’s schools straining" by James Vaznis | Globe Staff, January 21, 2014
The Boston public school system is grappling with declining state educational aid, a trend that is forcing the district to rely more on property taxes and other revenue from the city’s general fund to pay for new initiatives and overhauls of failing schools.
Just 13 percent of the public school budget this year is covered by state aid, according to a school system analysis. Fifteen years ago, such aid covered 31 percent of the city’s school budget.
School officials anticipate that the downward trend — already more than a decade long — will continue….
The Boston public school system has long been concerned about the amount of state aid it receives. The Massachusetts funding formula, developed under the 1993 Education Reform Act, works against Boston and many affluent suburbs that spend above state minimum requirements. Instead, it gives priority to districts that have fewer resources to fund education, such as those with small property-tax bases.
But the funding formula explains only one part of the issue for Boston’s public schools. Compounding matters is the proliferation of charter schools in Boston, which operate independently of the school system but are funded almost entirely through state school aid designated for the city.
That means that even though state aid has increased slightly for Boston, less of the money is actually going to the traditional school system….
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Related: $261m facility for 2 Boston schools could set state record
But we have no money!
"Union’s secretive ad brings Citizens United to Boston" January 04, 2014
This is local politics in the post-Citizens United era: A group that nobody had ever heard of showed up at end of the recent mayoral campaign and dropped $480,000 on a TV commercial for one of the candidates.
Last week, the veil came off: The money spent on behalf of Marty Walsh by a previously unknown outfit called One Boston came from the American Federation of Teachers, the parent organization of the Boston Teachers Union.
Oh, for a minute there I thought it was terrorist money.
The revelation wasn’t exactly shocking, since Walsh’s campaign had attracted strong support from both public- and private-sector unions, and other labor-affiliated groups had made independent expenditures on his behalf.
Related: Teacher Trickery Put Walsh Over Top
I'm $hocked!
But the situation validates the worst fears about federal courts’ recent assault on campaign finance limits: A patchwork of weak federal and state rules opens up ways for special interests to evade disclosure requirements. And the groups most likely to make vast, disguised election expenditures are the ones with agendas that, if revealed, would turn off voters….
(Blog editor raises hand)
Related:
Six Zionist Companies Own 96% of the World's Media
Declassified: Massive Israeli manipulation of US media exposed
Operation Mockingbird
Why Am I No Longer Reading the Newspaper?
Now you know why I'm so sour on you-know-whose agenda!
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At least Boston's schools are going to get fixed:
"Officials in Boston seeking black teachers; More diversity is recruitment goal; imbalance could bring litigation" by James Vaznis | Globe Staff, January 20, 2014
A decline in the number of black teachers in Boston public schools has put the city in violation of a federal court order, prompting officials to step up efforts to recruit and retain teachers of color.
For the first time in years, school officials are launching an aggressive marketing campaign that includes posting advertisements on the T, in national education publications, and on a new website that will go online soon.
Let's hope it is better than the Health Connector or unemployment sites.
They plan to tap alumni networks of current employees who graduated from historically black colleges or other campuses with diverse student populations.
The goal, school officials say, is to establish a teaching force whose demographics reflect the student population.
“It’s simply the right thing to do,” said interim Superintendent John McDonough.
It is also a legal requirement.
The school system’s largely white teaching force — instructing a student population that is 87 percent black, Latino, or Asian — has been a sensitive issue and subject of litigation that dates back to the tumultuous days of desegregation in the 1970s….
Except now it is the teachers that need desegregation.
Related: Teachers Do Not Understand the Language
Yeah, you definitely have to get rid of all those teachers.
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Looks like you need to find yourself a tutor:
"Define tutors as what they are: volunteers" by Lawrence Harmon | Globe Staff, January 04, 2014
The first thing to know about the Match charter schools in Boston is that they are highly successful at raising the academic achievement of urban students from low-income backgrounds. The next thing to know is that Match is a favorite target of critics who see corporate conspiracies behind charter schools that operate free of union rules….
That said, Match shot itself in the foot recently….
The situation escalated recently when a former Match tutor wrote a provocative post on the “EduShyster” blog known for its dyspeptic attitude toward charter schools.
I call it the Ejewkhazional $y$tem.
He decried the system for “flooding the local market with cheap labor’’ and dishonoring labor rights built on the “blood, sweat, tears, and bones of American workers.’’ It was clearly over the top. But it was Match officials, not the author, who had decided to recast the tutors as low-wage workers instead of idealistic young men and women engaged in a year of community service….
This is not a good match for me, folks. Sorry.
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Things taking a turn for the worse for Walsh:
"Rate of fatal shootings in Boston sparks alarm; City points to gang strife" by Maria Cramer | Globe staff, January 27, 2014
Three shooting deaths within six hours late Sunday and early Monday brought the total number of homicides in Boston so far this year to nine, a dramatic spike that pushes the January death toll higher than any time in the last several years....
It's gang-related they tell me.
That several of the January homicides occurred on freezing nights, when most people are indoors, is especially worrisome, said Emmett Folgert, head of the Dorchester Youth Collaborative, which mentors young people....
“A terrible start of the year.”
Responding to the shootings, Mayor Martin J. Walsh reiterated his plan to meet with community leaders and law enforcement officials to try to stem the violence. “This kind of violence cannot become commonplace; we should be shocked every time we hear of another shooting, of another death in our community,” Walsh said in a statement.
See: Evans seeks ideas from clergy to get guns off Boston streets
The number of killings in January, seven more than last year at the same time, is alarming, but not surprising, say community leaders who have studied the pattern of shootings in the city....
Blaming illegal guns while the legal guns belong to the biggest gang in the city.
--more--"
Related: Fear gripping neighborhoods after fatal shootings
Diversity groups apply to march in South Boston parade
That will be his biggest challenge.
NEXT DAY UPDATES:
Boston is now Martin Walsh’s neighborhood
At rally, Walsh urged to support fired school bus drivers
Better slap down those troublemakers.
"A group of about 20 members of Mothers for Justice and Equality, a Roxbury-based organization that aims to end neighborhood violence, to create a plan of action to present to Mayor Martin J. Walsh at a meeting this month. Several in the group talked about the pain of reading media accounts of their loved one’s deaths that painted them simply as criminals, or got basic facts about their lives wrong. The effect, the women said, was dehumanizing. A major part of their campaign, the women agreed, would be to reach out to the media....
Oh, you mean these guys?
It's the regional flag$hit, but reading it as long as I have you become jaded at such things and then just buy into it all. Boston is a violent pit of depravity according to what I see in my Globe (other than all the bu$ine$$ promotions and $elf-$erving back-$lapping about how great a "f***ing city" it is, to quote a local hero).
As for the end of gun violence, you can start here:
The Biggest Gun Dealers on Planet Earth
Looks like you need to find yourself a tutor:
"Define tutors as what they are: volunteers" by Lawrence Harmon | Globe Staff, January 04, 2014
The first thing to know about the Match charter schools in Boston is that they are highly successful at raising the academic achievement of urban students from low-income backgrounds. The next thing to know is that Match is a favorite target of critics who see corporate conspiracies behind charter schools that operate free of union rules….
That said, Match shot itself in the foot recently….
The situation escalated recently when a former Match tutor wrote a provocative post on the “EduShyster” blog known for its dyspeptic attitude toward charter schools.
I call it the Ejewkhazional $y$tem.
He decried the system for “flooding the local market with cheap labor’’ and dishonoring labor rights built on the “blood, sweat, tears, and bones of American workers.’’ It was clearly over the top. But it was Match officials, not the author, who had decided to recast the tutors as low-wage workers instead of idealistic young men and women engaged in a year of community service….
This is not a good match for me, folks. Sorry.
--more--"
Things taking a turn for the worse for Walsh:
"Rate of fatal shootings in Boston sparks alarm; City points to gang strife" by Maria Cramer | Globe staff, January 27, 2014
Three shooting deaths within six hours late Sunday and early Monday brought the total number of homicides in Boston so far this year to nine, a dramatic spike that pushes the January death toll higher than any time in the last several years....
It's gang-related they tell me.
That several of the January homicides occurred on freezing nights, when most people are indoors, is especially worrisome, said Emmett Folgert, head of the Dorchester Youth Collaborative, which mentors young people....
“A terrible start of the year.”
Responding to the shootings, Mayor Martin J. Walsh reiterated his plan to meet with community leaders and law enforcement officials to try to stem the violence. “This kind of violence cannot become commonplace; we should be shocked every time we hear of another shooting, of another death in our community,” Walsh said in a statement.
See: Evans seeks ideas from clergy to get guns off Boston streets
The number of killings in January, seven more than last year at the same time, is alarming, but not surprising, say community leaders who have studied the pattern of shootings in the city....
Blaming illegal guns while the legal guns belong to the biggest gang in the city.
--more--"
Related: Fear gripping neighborhoods after fatal shootings
Diversity groups apply to march in South Boston parade
That will be his biggest challenge.
NEXT DAY UPDATES:
Boston is now Martin Walsh’s neighborhood
At rally, Walsh urged to support fired school bus drivers
Better slap down those troublemakers.
"A group of about 20 members of Mothers for Justice and Equality, a Roxbury-based organization that aims to end neighborhood violence, to create a plan of action to present to Mayor Martin J. Walsh at a meeting this month. Several in the group talked about the pain of reading media accounts of their loved one’s deaths that painted them simply as criminals, or got basic facts about their lives wrong. The effect, the women said, was dehumanizing. A major part of their campaign, the women agreed, would be to reach out to the media....
Oh, you mean these guys?
It's the regional flag$hit, but reading it as long as I have you become jaded at such things and then just buy into it all. Boston is a violent pit of depravity according to what I see in my Globe (other than all the bu$ine$$ promotions and $elf-$erving back-$lapping about how great a "f***ing city" it is, to quote a local hero).
As for the end of gun violence, you can start here:
The Biggest Gun Dealers on Planet Earth
