Today is the day voters will pick Tito Jackson or Cornell Mills to replace future inmate Chuck Turner as the City Councilor for District 7. As of 9 a.m. today, 434 voters (1%) had already voted. WBUR has some information on both candidates. Polls close at 8 p.m. [Globe]
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Revere City Council freaks out after teens swarmed the beach last Tuesday. [Boston Herald]
A Massachusetts sailor has been in killed in Iraq. [South Coast Today]
Filene's Basement files for bankruptcy, and some stores will remain open. [Boston Business Journal]
This year's "Most Influential People" included New Englanders like...
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Gothamist found New Yorkers are proud of their subway system, even if it's got rats in it. Austinist unveiled their special SXSW coverage minisite, with artist interviews, day party previews, and festival news.
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Results tagged “citycouncil”
Boston Mayor Tom Menino thinks City Councilor Chuck Turner, 77, should resign from the council because of his conviction for taking a bribe and lying about it in October during a corruption probe. Menino said he'd miss Turner "challenging" him.
Something stinks in Cambridge. On Monday, City Manager Bob Healy told the City Council why Cambridge Street had an unpleasant odor. Catch basins were the cause. Sounds simple. It never is.
The Fire Fighters Local 718 contract saga won't end. Last week, the firefighters offered to delay their 2.5% raise for a year. The Menino administration was reflexively skeptical of this seemingly reasonable offer. Menino suggested the raise might work if applied only to current firefighters. The City Council is apparently sick of this and arranged for Menino and the firefighters to meet today, and even supplied calculators. Representatives of the Menino administration and Local 718 met today from 10-10:45 a.m. in the Curley Room. No word on what was said in the meeting, or if they simply stared at each other.
The Massachusetts arbitration panel voted 2-1 to possibly solve a three-year contract dispute between Mayor Thomas M. Menino and Boston Firefighters Local 718. The new contract includes a 19% raise over four years and mandatory drug and alcohol testing, which had been a sticking point in negotiations since two firefighters, one reportedly with cocaine in his system and the other allegedly with alcohol in his system, were killed in a West Roxbury fire in 2007. Menino said the award will cost an extra $74 million, and that he is "required by law" to submit the arbitration award to the City Council on Tuesday. Both sides return to arbitration if the City Council refuses to fund the raise. It's the biggest pay increase in any union contract with Boston. [Boston Globe, WHDH, WickedLocal Allston-Brighton]
Tonight, Mayor Thomas Menino was reelected to a historic fifth term, which, if served, will make him the longest serving mayor in Boston history. He beat Michael Flaherty by a wide margin of 57 percent of the vote to 42 percent, according to unofficial results. Incumbent City Councilors at large John Connolly and Stephen Murphy also retained their seats by hefty margins. Felix Arroyo and Ayanna Pressley will join city council with 16 and 15 percent of the vote, respectively. Pressley will be the first African American woman to serve on city council in Boston's history. In District 7, Chuck Turner blew away his competition despite a cloud of legal troubles, and Sal Lamattina, Michael Ross, and Mark Ciommo each held off challenges in their respective districts. [City of Boston]
During yesterday's municipal primary, 81,641 Bostonians, an impressive 24 percent of eligible voters, cast ballots, according to the City of Boston. Most of them voted for mayor—only 439 voters didn't—but a lot of people didn't use all of their votes for city councilor at-large. Each voter could choose 4 candidates for the at-large seats, but most probably didn't. In fact, of a possible 326,564 votes for city councilor at-large, only 194,247 were cast. That's only 60 percent! What gives, Boston?
Something... like cars! Boston mayoral candidate Sam Yoon is proposing a Zipcar-like car sharing program that would allow government employees to make better use of city vehicles and help save the environment at the same time. Technology would allow city workers to schedule specific times to use vehicles, and enable unused vehicles to see some action rather than sit around all day. The city currently maintains 1125 vehicles at an average cost of $10,000 per year, meaning Boston spends over $11 million annually on employee transport alone. The program would focus on the city's 871 passenger vehicles. In addition to sharing technology, GPS units in the cars will also enable the practice of "geo-fencing," setting off alarms when cars go outside specific areas. No more side trips to Ikea, city workers! Yoon will propose the sharing program at the City Council tomorrow.
In a sensible move, the city council has finally voted to unregulate things that don't really need regulating, okaying sidewalk dining year-round (though why anyone would want to be outside in Boston for the cold half of the year remains uncertain). Next thing you know, maybe there will be beer in 7-Eleven! Or items sold without price stickers! It's almost unthinkable! Anyway, to accompany the announcement of the new outdoor dining anarchy, the Globe assembled a gallery of outdoor dining spots, which actually does a decent job of pointing out places not on Newbury. What it doesn't do, however, is show a knowledge of how to spell Wisconsin, thus earning the gallery a place in the typo of the week hall of fame/shame/spellcheck.
Yesterday, City Council President Maureen Feeney's civic summit brought about 400 people together to get people more involved in city government. Mayor Menino even showed up, although Michael Pahre noted, "Mayor Thomas Menino breezed in -- and out -- of the convention center probably feeling a little bit unwelcome" since it wasn't his idea. Adam Gaffin at Universal Hub live-blogged the event and summed up the takeaways, with education and crime high on the list of concerns.
http://seattlest.com/2008/02/28/foo_fighters_da.php">announced his presidential bid.
Well, City Councilor John Tobin has a solution for low voter turnout, and it's not a MoFee Style Public Kvetch-Fest. If Mayor Tom Menino thought he didn't like the idea of Kvetch-Fest 2008, he must have blown his stack when he heard what Councilor Tobin proposed.
City Council president Maureen Feeney (aka "MoFee") had plans to host a big gathering--or kvetch-fest, if you will--at the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center. At the time it was originally announced, it was seen as a potential irritant to Mayor Menino and a possible traffic nightmare.
So, the first anniversary of Aqua Teen Hunger Force's attack on Boston falls close to the Super Bowl. The creative minds behind Aqua Teen merge both ATHF and the Super Bowl in one clip, which Bostonist stumbled across on the Best Week Ever blog. However, they're rooting for the wrong team:
The fight over the mayor's pet project of moving City Hall to South Boston is about to fire up again. Mayor Menino has been dreaming of escaping the concrete confines of the current City Hall and its depressing plaza. Hence, the City Council is putting up a fight by launching an exploratory committee. (That's how American politicians do things--they don't get into a fistfight. They form opposing committees.)
--Dr. Judah Folkman, who found a new way of fighting cancer by cutting off blood supply to tumors, died yesterday. [Boston Globe]
Peter Berdovsky--VJ, artist, and one of the men behind last year's "Mooninite Menace"--and the city of Boston better learn to live with each other because Berdovsky isn't going away anytime soon.
While the idea of living with seven or so people in an apartment that should only hold four sounds disgusting, it's kind of fun and a reasonable option for cash-strapped college students. However, Boston City Councilor Michael Ross wants to put an end to it.
Update: WBZ has pictures of an SUV crashing into the bus. Another car plowed into the back of the car that hit the bus. The people involved were lucky--only three people on the bus and four in the SUV were hit.
--What would happen if you threw a Christmas mass and the priest never came? [Boston Herald]
Some City Councilors have complained about the mayor's blame game regarding the snowstorm, but one city councilor might be contributing to the problem. WBZ sent cameras to Chuck Turner's house in Roxbury, where his sidewalk wasn't shoveled.
After a brief flash of clarity in which City Councilor Marjorie Decker suggested things might be getting a bit out of hand, Cambridge has up and banned the leafblowers, for five months of the year, anyway.
--Maybe Fung Wah isn't so bad after all. The local press picked up on a b0st0n LiveJournal story that a Peter Pan bus driver felt that his passengers on a trip to Boston should be punished and forced to stay on the bus in Framingham because one of them called the company about his poor driving. The driver's sorry ass is about to get fired. [WBZ, b0st0n Live Journal]
In Cambridge, some residents are irritated by the sound of leaf blowers--as opposed to all the other noises one can hear in Cambridge. So, the City Council is spending its valuable time debating when and where the dastardly leaf blowers can be used. According to Matt Dunning at the Cambridge Chronicle, the City Council spent the "better part of two hours" discussing how strong bans on leaf blowers should be. Exceptions to the ban kept...
After all the sturm und drang of a recount, Watertown City Councilor Marilyn Devaney has reclaimed her hotly contested seat following a recount. Initially, tallies showed that challenger John Donohue barely beat her. Then came the recount, which was a wild ride documented by the Watertown Wicked Local Blog and H2oTown. Devaney won that, and now the town's local scribes are waiting to find out if Donohue will challenge the initial challenge. Here's Jillian Fennimore...
Blue Velvet and The Twin Peaks Pilot Brattle Theatre, 40 Brattle Street, Cambridge Monday, December 3 Tickets and showtimes It's not on any wall calendars, but December 3rd is David Lynch Day in Cambridge, at least according to the Brattle Theatre. Last year, Lynch debuted Inland Empire at the Brattle, and the Cambridge city council honored the director by giving him his own day. This year, the Brattle will celebrate by offering theatergoers a pair...