Is it an emergency situation that you would need
an oncall animal control officer to go there?
Do you by any chance know if your parents were married at the time of your birth?
She wants to speak about food tax.
Is the control box or open or missing?
So we just got a call from Boston Fire reporting a one alarm fire at 33
Browning Ave. in Dorchester,
and there’s no displacements at this time.
Just wait one moment while I do some research for you.
I’m going to open up a case for the Parks Department. They deal with trees.
I got a call from Boston Police. The intersection of the VFW Parkway and LaGrange Street in West Roxbury.
The traffic signal is out. I just want to confirm that you had it.
I have a constituent that’s asking about road maintenance. Is it OK if I put him through?
Is it a stray dog?
She said she couldn’t see a visible cause. Like there was no down wires or anything.
But the whole block appears to be out.
Is it blocking both the roadway and the sidewalk?
Constituent’s saying her landlord turned off her electricity to her apartment.
She said that she’s going back and forth with him. They’re in court
with something and she thinks she turned it off on him.
I had a meeting with some community activists.
One of the biggest pushbacks I got was
not on the police. It’s after the police do their thing,
after an incident happens, what’s the follow up on trauma?
We have the counselors obviously and police have their counselors too I explained
in the police walks, works with the family through I think the burial.
And then what happens after that.
And what happens to the greater community. Like what happens to the group of friends and...
And I know we’re taking, I’m taking criticism for Carlos Henriquez.
Part of the role for Carlos Henriquez was going to be
to coordinate services to make sure that there’s follow up. So, for example...
Kind of like Operation and Support.
When there’s something going on in the community, whether it’s a development or street cleaning,
or whatever, Jerome’s shop O&S goes in and does their thing
and they’re working with Planning and Development and they’re working with the Housing.
With all the different departments and they’re kind of the constant in the neighborhood.
And I thought - and it hasn’t fully vetted yet - but
I thought of doing something like that around the streets.
When the police, when your work is done, what happens then?
And we’re not going in and and we have public safety doing their thing for a while
working to keep areas calm and combat violence and the street workers are out there doing their thing.
But there’s not coordination necessarily of services.
So when a person gets killed and there’s a lot of indirect concern and, wreckage of that,
we don’t have a coordinated effort per se to coordinate that.
I thought of Carlos’s work in returning citizens and working different areas
could slowly build up capacity and bring on individuals, like O&S,
that will be actually the intake coordinators in the community
and work with everyone that needs to work with.
Because I think what happens now is when we have, like we did few months ago
we had 8 people killed in 10 days,
everyone’s looking for a blame.
Police get blamed because the violence is up. Street workers get blamed because they’re not there.
Trauma councilors get blamed because they’re not there.
City gets blamed because it’s happened in the city. Everyone’s blaming.
Our thing is: can we coordinate services so there’s a better coordination of services
to follow these families through
and maybe get into a family and see that: Wow,
there’s really some difficult situations here and can we help them
individually to connect them to services as things move on.
That’s the intention behind Carlos’s role.
And that’s... whether it's Carlos, whoever it is...
He was the person that I thought of because he understands the streets
and he understands the community, and he’s done the work
both as prior to being elected and after elected.
He’s done a lot of difference at work,
that’s kind of why I think the missing link here.
I think we have a lot of great things going on,
the police department does some great programing.
It does some great programming.
I think that there’s an opportunity now through, not necessarily through Nora’s office,
but what Nora’s doing and how do we tie it in?
Because you can’t do it, and Nora needs to have a contact. "Who should I call?"
Instead of me calling Marty
and Will and Chris and Mark and
Danny and Conan and Jerome and Laurie and me,
is there one person she can contact that can actually help pull all this stuff together
and that will be a liaison in the neighborhood.
- I like that. - That’s what I’d look at.
That came out of a conversation with...
Danny put a meeting together and the room was a very honest meeting.
It was a very honest... people in the community were very... it wasn’t a bad meeting.
It was one of those direct meetings and people didn’t understand all the work that we’re doing.
And I don’t think we do
a good enough job of telling that story, what we actually do in the city
We also don’t do a good job of tying it all in together.
That’s where I think we want to go with that.
So, I’m just letting you know that I’ve got a list of people.
So, you guys, if anyone wants to come in you may just want to let me know so I can
give the Mayor the list of people
that need to see him before the weekend.
What is the budget? The budget is a set of financial documents. It’s how we spend money,
how we raise money, how we decide how to pay everyone’s salary.
But it’s also a statement of priorities.
It's one annual time a year that the city can take a pause and take stock of what’s going on,
what are the decisions we’ve made, the decisions we need to make,
how is the city changing and how do we make investments to do that.
The budget refers to both the day to day operational side of things,
so that’s everyone’s salaries, that’s what you pay for utilities, that’s what you pay for heat.
It also means the capital plan which is what we do for five years,
big projects, like roads and bridges and schools and all the big stuff that you see.
Boston’s budget parameters. By that we mean,
we can’t do everything that everybody wants all at the same time.
The reason that is, is because we live in a really
kind of constrained fiscally
tight structure. What I mean by that is we can’t run a deficit like the Federal government.
The State law requires us to have a balanced budget every year
and we are capped in what we can raise in our own revenues.
We’re capped by our property tax at 2,5 %,
we also don’t have the ability to say raise an income tax
like other cities across the country or the State.
So we’re living within a pretty tight fiscally constrained world.
Which means we have to make strategic investments. We have to make priorities,
to make tradeoffs ²between what those things are.
The reason that that is a good thing at the end of the day
is because when there is an economic downturn like there was in 2010,
we do a lot better than the State, a lot better than other cities and towns across the country.
A lot of other seasoned towns had massive layoffs in 2010 when the economy tanked.
The State obviously ran a billion dollar budget deficit.
This city, because of the way it’s run
and because of the way the history of financial management has gone,
actually came out on the other side pretty unscathed.
And frankly we avoided a lot of the pitfalls and a lot of the
negative consequences that came with the economic recession in 2010.
What do we have for revenue at the end of the day?
We collect money in different buckets as you can see here.
The FY19 budget is about 3.3 billion.
70 % of that comes from property taxes. State aide makes up of about
13 % and then we have other revenue, excises, local permits, all these other types of things
that are out there in the world.
Property tax is vital. Property tax is not only 2,5 % we grow every year on our existing property,
but also what we call new growth which is the new buildings, new residential
all the new construction that comes into the city every year,
which is a little bit harder to predict, but at the end of the day
is a lot of what we build our bread and butter on. That’s how we’ve been able to make
strategic investments over the last few years and continue to kind of push the city forward.
State aid is on there at 13 %.
Ten years ago, that used to be about 20 %.
And 20 years ago, it used to be 30 %.
So that means that the State used to represent a much bigger
portion of our budget: that’s both a decrease in what we call State aid at the end of the day,
and property taxes has been so strong in the last few years.
That actually helped increase our reliance as well.
So overall we’re in a growing environment.
We grow about 4 or 5 % every year.
both from the property tax and other strategic revenue initiatives
that we push forward in the last year.
Moving onto how we spend the $3.3 billion dollars.
It’s in basically 5 big buckets right now.
There’s obviously a lot of complexity that goes into each of those.
The first one should be familiar for everyone.
Education represents about 40 % of the budget. That’s both BPS and Charter Schools.
Obviously both of those have been increasing since the Mayor’s been in office.
$200 million more per year for public schools as a part of the last budget
and our charter assessment is up another $100 million dollars in that time.
So since the Mayor’s been in office,
education spending has increased by about $300 million which is something to be proud of.
Public safety, that’s Police and Fire. They make up about 20 % of the budget.
City departments. That’s things like streets, Public Health, Parks and everyone in this room.
We make up the smallest portion of this budget, but it’s an important part of it.
And it’s something that we tried to grow a lot more, but there are a lot of demands
on many different parts of the City budget.
Fixed costs like pensions and debt service
and then finally Healthcare that support all the other city departments
are basically how we spend the majority of that 3.3 billion on the operating budget side.
The other big piece of the budget that we have is the capital plan.
Right here is a map of what we have from a top down view ofl the different types
of projects that we have out there.
It’s a 2.4 billion dollar plan over 5 years to invest in roads and bridges
and schools and libraries and all the great things that you have.
A lot of folks, especially in the rating agency world
and people who buy our debt want to see that we’re making
investments in places that we planned for.
That’s why the Mayor committed 10 % of all new capital funding
towards climate resiliency. We have the billion dollar Public School plan
and a whole host of other things that we’re investing in. The annual capital plan
is over a 5 year period because these projects are typically bigger in scope.
We borrow money for them and we pay for it on the operating budget side for debt service.
So they’re companion piece to the operating budget,
but something that goes through the very similar process to
what we do on the operating side.
We have come to join Becka and Molly in marriage,
a wedding is a joyful celebration of the promises you make today.
Learning to love each other and live together in harmony
is one of the greatest challenges of a marriage.
But know that love, trust and loyalty are the foundation of a happy enduring marriage.
Remember to listen, respect, encourage and inspire one another.
Support each other dreams as you build your lives together.
Comfort one another during times of struggle. Laugh together during times of joy.
Now if you want to face each other we’ll do vows.
I Becka.
Take thee Molly.
To be my wedded wife.
And I promise to be.
A loving and faithful wife.
Through joy and sorrow.
Sickness and health
To love and to cherish.
From this day forward.
Now do you Becka take thee Molly here present to be your wife?
Excellent. All right Molly’s turn. I, Molly.
Now, do you Molly take thee Becka here present to be your wife?
Excellent. Now we’re going to go on to the rings.
These rings are a symbol of eternity and made by your friend.
The unbroken circle, it represents the unbroken circle of love.
Today you’ve chosen to exchange rings
as a sign of your love for one another and the seal of the promises you make today.
You’re going to repeat these vows after me
and then the last line
you’re going to put the ring on Molly’s finger when you say "with this ring".
This is my favorite part.
Just as this ring.
Encircles your finger.
So does my love.
Encircle your heart.
Now you can place it on her finger and say/: "With this ring
I thee wed.
Molly’s turn. "Just as this ring.
Now, with this ring.
I thee wed.
Perfect.
In as much as Becka and Molly have exchanged rings,
have consented to matrimony and vows,
by the authority vested in me by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts,
I now pronounce you hus...
married.
Here we go. Stand together.
Smile.
Let me show you what we got.
I want to congratulate
Alex Cora and the Boston Red Sox
and the entire organization for an incredible run. 119 wins from start to finish
I didn’t realize until last night that they had won the Spring Training Leagues
and the regular leagues and then obviously the World Series last night,
it’s exciting here in the City of Boston.
I want to congratulate Red Sox Nation for our 9th World Championship in Boston.
This is an all-time great team that we had. I think a lot of people enjoyed watching this team.
Everybody contributed.
I was talking to people on the way to work this morning
and thinking about everybody in this whole team. Everyone had a special play in this World Series.
Congratulations to the entire team for your resilience
and your positivity, and the way you carried yourself on the field and off the field.
And even last night during the interview session.
Thank you to all the players for the great work they did.
These players are role models and we want to celebrate them in Boston style.
A championship duck boat parade will take place on Wednesday,
starting at 11:00 on Boylston Street by Fenway Park.
We hope to see a big crowd out there,
but we do have a few messages out there.
Do not try to drive to the parade. Take public transportation.
They’ll be traffic and parking restrictions surrounding the route.
We’re working on a web page.
It will be up in a little bit. It will be Boston.gov/Redsoxparade.
As far as safety goes, be respectful of the City.
Be respectful of the property, of the people, of the businesses, be respectful
of the Red Sox. We are a City of champions so let’s celebrate like champions.
I’m going to turn the microphone over to Commissioner Gross.
And then we’re going to turn it over to Chief Green
and then I’ll open it up for questions that people might have.
Thank you Your Honor.
Good morning everyone.
Well, I'll say congratulations not only to the Red Sox,
but the City of Boston. We would ask everyone to act
responsibly and be respectful
of the other revelers in the parade.
Also we will have full coverage in our neighborhoods.
But for those attending the parade, no public drinking.
Alcohol will not be tolerated.
And you should know this. This should be common sense, but no weapons at all either.
So we fully expect
to have a great parade. It’s time to celebrate.
Well now I’ll turn it over to Chief Green.
Thank you Commissioner.
You know this doesn’t get old. I think this is my 11th Championship in the last 16 years?
It just doesn’t get old.
That being said, the transit police are well experienced
and prepared for special events such as Wednesday’s parade.
We encourage everyone as the Mayor says, to
come in the City of Boston, utilizing the MBTA transit system.
We will have increased coverage, both uniformed and in plain clothes
throughout the system to ensure a safe and travel by all.
We ask our riders to be respectful to one another
and especially mindful of those with young children,
the elderly and people with disabilities as you utilize the MBTA transit system.
And as the Commissioner stated, alcohol
consumption and or unruly behavior will not be tolerated at all on the MBTA.
Currently we got updates from the brick.
There are no known credible threats to this event.
With that being said, we also ask our riders to
please if you see something, say something.
Nothing’s too small. We need you to be our extra eyes out there.
Contact us immediately and we will send an officer out to investigate.
With your help
we can have a safe and enjoyable celebration.
So, the goal of the taskforce is really to focus
on eviction prevention.
We would like to meet 4 times. This is the second meeting.
And ultimately to put together a list of
recommendations for public comment by Spring of 2019.
And then to present those recommendations to the Mayor
and to the City Council.
With some sort of legislation to come out of it.
What’s the total amount for the awards, roughly?
2.5 million dollars. So put two and a half million dollars out
for tenancy stability and eviction prevention, it’s a sizable commitment.
Our office has also been working in conjunction
with the Neighborhood Housing Department here in DND.
And to put together an eviction prevention policy that is required for all landlords,
or all property
prospectors who are looking to purchase property or bid on property here in Boston.
That policy was implemented and it went out in the Request for proposals for
September of this year.
The proposals that we’ve received are now under review
and we’ll try to figure out exactly
how effective that was during the first implementation of it.
The same policy was out under our Dudley Square RFP,
and that I believe is wrapping up today.
Those proposals, the Dudley proposals are due today.
Which is very exciting and like Dominique said,
there was a very clear requirement that anyone submitting for land,
submitting proposals for the four sites in Dudley,
had to provide a proposal on how they were going to...
how their development was going to not contribute to displacement
and including, if they were going to develop housing, an eviction prevention plan.
So it was very, very, specific language
and before you leave, I’ll make sure you have a copy.
The Neighbourghood Housing proposals: if you want money from us,
you’re going to tell us how you’re going... what’s your eviction prevention plan,
and Dominique’s shop is reviewing them right now with NHD.
And if they’re not adequate
we’re going to have to make it a deficiency if we really love the proposal,
or not fund the proposal altogether.
Really asking new developers of new developments
to tell us how they’re really going to reduce evictions.
We cannot just scratch things on the surface
because they usually come back a few years later, stronger, deeper, uglier.
In the meantime those folks who are facing eviction,
they keep facing eviction all of their lives. I know someone
from the age of 12, she faced eviction.
And now she’s 39 and she’s facing eviction again. So it’s a cycle.
If we really want to fix it we should think about
community land trust also, have a site for it.
What we need is more, in my opinion, we need more housing.
More and more housing. You can’t have enough.
And everything you do short of that
and that’s just one way of thinking about it, but everything you do short of that,
is gap filling kind of thing.
Not that it’s not necessary, but I guess what I’m wondering
based on what I’ve heard so far is, it sounds like we’re...
It’s so easy to move broader than simply what are we doing about evictions.
I’m asking the question: are we focused on the eviction question or are we
morphing into, or is it part of the mandate here?
How are we going to fix the big problem?
Until we have enough of affordable housing for everyone,
we need the office of housing stability and to work on evictions
because not everybody’s safe.
But we do have a housing plan. It’s pretty robust in the City,
I can share it with you about increasing housing overall. Increasing affordable housing,
preservation, getting people to buy homes.
So, we’ve done a lot of work on more of the systemic issues.
But we still get 100 calls a week from people that are
in market rate housing that are getting their rents increased.
Or, are in subsidized housing,
but have fallen behind in their rents, et cetera.
There’s a special sort of work that we’re all doing that is not
fixing our larger housing issues. Does that make some sense?
Say there’s 30,000 notices to quit served in Boston every year.
It’s what we are estimating.
I think the challenge with early intervention
is that it’s super valuable, super necessary, probably more effective and opens up
the target population that you could serve to be large enough
that it’s impossible to even conceive of how to serve them.
1,100 households who were in subsidized housing
actually went to court, somehow didn’t get raft,
didn’t get anything else, did get evicted. In a year.
The thing that we also know is that subsidized household who were evicted
are not eligible for Emergency Assistance.
Which to me just makes them the red alarm population.
And so to some extent there is a benefit to...
I think that there is a benefit to focusing on that population
above all else if only for that reason.
If you get evicted from subsidized housing,
or you have a housing voucher and you get evicted,
you can’t access family shelter at the State. You have no safeguard.
You make the lowest income
and you’ve been evicted probably for rent arrearage, small amounts.
And you have absolutely nowhere to go because you can’t access the shelter system.
For three years.
What could we do to intervene sooner?
And what I thought was...
I guess it’s reinventing the wheel, except we haven’t invented it yet.
I think we do a particularly bad job of informing and persuading.
Maybe the small landlords in particular are informed that there are resources,
but persuading them to actually use them?
The small landlord groups seem to feel like they’re battled
and they approach everything from that point of view.
And it’s just economics.
It would make so much more sense to be able to say,
We’re not going to hit you over the head. You don’t have to do this.
But if you know somebody’s chronically late, or somebody’s not budgeting,
or somebody is falling behind, catching up every 4 to 6 months,
clearly that’s not a good business model.
Bring them to us, we’ll help them budget. You bring them to us early.
We’ll do this and it’s so much more cost efficient.
But we don’t do anything.
Because I was talking to the Citylife Group, I said,
could Citylife see its way to holding itself out to that. I’m not sure because...
But somebody should be able to say,
on a more intimate basis than simply "we’ve got a website":
Here’s what we can use.
Here’s how to do it and I think that’s the only way you’re going to get to them.
If we're really concerned about what we’re doing,
we need to also think about community land trust.
For those folks who really can’t do anything, they could go there and it will be a safe zone.
And it could go from generation to generation. Why can’t we do that? Other places have done it.
That’s good.
Everybody gets the first round. But you can only get one.
What do you want? You want pie now?
Apple, cherry... What kind do you want, sir?
Not right now. You have to come back the second time. Let everybody go through.
Let some more people get to have some. That’s all I got. Thank you.
M'am, no problem.
I don’t mean for nobody to get mad but I gotta get enough for everybody.
Please don’t take the ice. No, go on with that, go.
If you take it, the rest won’t be cold.
Any questions?
I’m a victim of PC scam.
I thought it was Microsoft and it wasn’t,
it turned out to be some scammers.
I actually gave them my name, my card. I need help.
Don’t give any information out over the phone.
If somebody says it’s your doctor: "send me a letter".
If somebody says, you’re going to shut your cable off tomorrow: send me a letter.
Don’t give them your email. Tell them to send you a letter.
Serve it. If they say you owe money, send a constable.
"Send somebody down, petition me". Don’t even bother.
You’re going to get letters in your house. If you own your home.
My mother gets them. Because I go to her house and do her bills and I get the mail
There’s always: oh, you can earn a lot of money on your home.
Or we can give you a mortgage a low interest mortgage.
Just don’t believe any of this stuff.
Unless it comes from the City, from the Counselor’s office or our office,
or something that your civic association might have talked about.
Do not give anybody any information.
The Counsel was talking about scams. Somebody might call and say to you:
we have your grandson.
We’re not going to give him back until you give us money.
Your instant reaction is: "Is it Billy or Bob?"
I got Billy.
That’s all they need
and they will frighten you into you will think that they’re kidnapped.
There are literally people that do this from other parts of the world.
They scam people and people will give them money, they’ll run around,
get money and they’ll give it to somebody. So do not, do not do that.
If Eversource calls you for a deal:
"Can I have your name and number?".
Call your City counselor, call the Mayor’s office and say does Eversource have a deal?
Does Comcast have a deal? Does RNC Cable have a deal?
Does whatever it is, make sure you follow up.
I’m going to follow up with you. Emily’s going to get your information.
And we’ll get on it today and we’ll find out, we’ll contact the authorities.
We also have a couple police officers, so if we need to take the next step we will.
From my area in Lower Mills,
those calls and those phone numbers and those people knock on the door.
They come into the station.
And they report it to the police department and they take it over to the detective department.
But the thing about it is nothing never get back to me or anybody else.
What has taken place since we reported this?
And the calls and the number thing, you could have them right there.
So how do we handle that to get some response to what we’re trying to stop?
One thing I would suggest, maybe what we’ll do is at one of the meetings coming up,
I’ll ask Nora Bastian to come in.
Nora is the new Superintendent.
Her role is community policing. Her role is, under community policing,
to follow the Elderly Department. As far as going out to districts.
So we’ll ask Nora to come to your next meeting and she can explain
and come up with a process. There might not have been a process.
My experience has been that the information flows back and forth.
But we’re going to make sure that it really does flow back and forth.
If you make a complaint at a civic association, you should get a call back
because it's reporting it into a black hole, if you’re not getting information back.
And then you can share the information with other people.
We’ll have Nora come to the next meeting.
If you live in a BHA Housing Development and you’re not getting a response,
my advice are two things.
Number one is call your complaint into 311. Because 311 is the City hotline.
And it’s a public information and it’s in my office.
I see it up on the wall.
I will follow up and say what’s going on with that?
Number two, reach out to the Elderly Commission.
There’s been times where I’ve gone to different events.
Some of you have grabbed me about situations
that might not be related to the Elderly Commission,
but the advocacy there, they will call over. And when they call over, I’m calling over.
It’s important to you to use those different steps. If you’re not getting somewhere,
and you live somewhere, you call 311 and make a public,
and when they ask you why’d you do that? The man told me to.
And if you see me in the street grab me and tell me what the problem is.
Because I guarantee you by the time I get in the car and to the next stop after this,
somebody at the BHA will be talking to me. All right?
Questions over here then I’ll come back this way.
Now I had medicine that I actually need
and they want me to pay
a co-pay of 65 dollars that I can’t afford.
And I need that medicine and I don’t know what to do about it.
We have to really think about here,
in Massachusetts, at the Legislative level and in Congress at the congressional level
to do something about pharmaceutical costs.
They’re out of control.
My father passed away in 2008, but before he passed away...
and I didn’t know what a "donut hole" was until then.
He was on a pill, once a day for prostate.
It was $500 a month, the prescription.
So for the first five months of the year,
it was covered a 100 % by his health insurance.
The next $2500 dollars as you know, the Donut Hole,
the next 5 months was out of pocket.
And then the last 2 months of the year were covered by insurance again.
What Obamacare did, what the Affordable Care Act did was close the Donut hole.
And that Donut hole now is there, but what they’ve done is...
I don’t know what the right answer is, but they’ve done something with prescriptions
that you end up paying more out of pocket.
I haven’t seen it in any of my prescriptions, but it happens to seniors all the time.
So we do have to think about legislatively how do we file something
that closes that gap for you. Because many of you,
all of us, as you get older you take prescriptions for high blood pressure,
for cholesterol, whatever it is you have.
It’s important that we understand there’s more health risk as you get older.
Because the body breaks down a little bit.
There’s more chance that you’re going to be on a prescription as you get older.
And we need to make sure that that’s covered.
The answer is we have to look legislatively fixing that.
One of the reasons why we have the Elderly Commission
is to advocate on your behalf. The people that work for the City work for you.
They’re there to service you. So take advantage
of that opportunity.
Take advantage of that office. Ask questions. They’ll get the answers.
And if we got to a point where, what I’d like to do,
I’ll have to double the size of the Elderly Commission because the amount of calls they get.
Believe it or not, we don’t get that many calls. We get a lot of calls,
but not as many as there are people in Boston that are over 60 years old.
We need a bigger budget.
We’ll get the budget there, but we need you to use the office
because I’d rather you talk to one of the specialists we have
and get a benefit than be taken advantage of.
That’s why they’re there. They’re there for you. They work for you.
Our primary purpose is to help people
with the situations you might have. So, please, call them.
As usual, it was busy night last night on Halloween
and just be aware of any kind of violence that might extend from it.
Townsend and Warren: there was a firearm recovered at 7 p.m. with an arrest.
There was a person shot and stabbed at 137 Center Street.
There was a large party, a couple hundred people.
Full notes on the person shot, but they’re probably going to survive.
The gang unit then had a car chase through H block of Bailey Associates, so be aware of that.
And around 3 a.m. this morning,
the K-car got a firearm arrest in Upham’s Corner.
And that was,
I don’t know if it’s related, but there was a violent assault up there.
That was the reason why people were up there and led to a firearm arrest.
Any issues?
Concerns? Check your assignments.
Let’s have a good day. Fall out.
I had a chance,
over the last 5 years to get to know almost every single person in this room.
And what’s amazing is that we have developers in this room
and housing developers in this room, that believe in resiliency.
And that are here month after month after month after month,
after meeting after meeting I should say.
We have developers developing buildings in town? that believe in resiliency.
We have folks that work in the area of whatever it is and you come back here.
We have Universities. We have Universities.
Boston University is one of our great partners, and we have construction companies.
And to me it’s special. This room’s a special room
in the sense of the commitment by the people in this room.
Since I’ve been Mayor, a lot of natural disasters have happened in different cities across America.
Houston kind of...
hit me a little different.
I was talking to Mayor Turner as it was going on and...
when he was talking about his City, he was a brand new Mayor,
literally brand new Mayor in his first term.
The people of Boston wanted to send things out to Houston,
we were going to send one tractor trailer down, we ended up sending 18 tractor trailers of stuff down.
And I thought to myself: what if that was Boston?
And it wasn’t the giving to Houston that struck me,
it was the need in Houston that struck me.
It was the 18 trucks going down there and that wasn’t enough.
When you think about 18 tractor trailers from Boston and other places around the country,
that wasn’t enough and I thought to myself:
where are we in our city? Where are we in the City? Not in the Green Ribbon Commission,
not on the global plans, not working with the State. Where are we in the City?
So we have, I don’t have it here with us today...
We have a plan that literally protects
the harbor, protects the shoreline, creates 47 miles of shoreline.
We talk a lot about bringing people back to the water.
This plan brings people back to the water.
This plan allows people access to the water where we have 67 acres of new open space on Boston Harbor.
It creates 122 acres of revitalized open space in the waterfront.
It’s about protections and connections.
So when people like you in this room look at what’s happening,
you know that we’re protecting
what we have to protect in our neighborhoods.
We’re protecting Charlestown and East Boston and South Boston.
We’re protecting downtown, North End, the Dorchester coastline.
We’re protecting Roxbury.
We’re protecting the South End. We’re protecting all of those different neighborhoods in our city
that it’s important for us to do.
What we’re doing here is I think important for the future.
I think it’s time for us to take this conversation beyond our walls.
I think it’s time to take this conversation to the editorial boards.
And let them understand fully what’s happening here.
Because the first editorial that came out...
in all due respect, a nice editorial, but it was: how to pay for it? Who’s going to pay for it?
The question’s not Who’s going to pay for it? How’s this going to happen?
It’s not about who’s going to pay for it. It needs to happen.
The editorial needs to say, and the press needs to start and other people need to start saying:
'This has to happen'. It’s not about the costs.
It’s not about whose going put up he biggest chunk of money,
its how do we get everyone together to put this plan together?
The Green Ribbon Commission is vital in this work.
As we continue to move forward in this work,
we need to help convey the urgency and bring diverse partners into our strategy.
We need to talk to all of our schools, not some of our schools.
We need to talk to all of our museums, not some of our museums.
We need to make sure all of our hospitals understand the importance of this, not some of the hospitals.
And more importantly we need to make business people know that this is really
important for them as well. It’s important for us,
for the health and safety of our residents are at stake.
Making sure that Houston,
Puerto Rico, Florida, New Orleans,
Louisiana, Florida again,.
New York, all of those different cities and areas had a storm.
If you talk to Mitch Landrieu the former Mayor of New Orleans who wasn’t the mayor when Katrina happened,
he said if they addressed this 20 years earlier
the outcome might have been different. It still would have been bad
because Katrina was a bad storm, but it would have been not as detrimental.
We have to think about that now and think about, how do we prevent that from happening?
We need to work with other leaders, with other elected officials. We need to let the legislature
know and the city council know the importance
of focusing on the work that we’re doing here today.
We know that mitigation is resilience.
It’s about the impacts here in Boston and it’s about the example we set for the nation and the world,
By showing that it can be done we can improve public health, create jobs
and also help people in our neighborhoods.
We can also show the way
and help rally the global community to do their part.
I know that what we wanted to do here is be a leader in the country
and a leader in the world here in Boston as far as resiliency.
And now that we have the plan it’s about, what’s the next steps
and what’s the actions? We know we don’t have a national government, at least
a leader down in Washington, a president that does understand the importance of resiliency.
We know that we don’t have the commitments right now in the EPA down in Washington
that understands the importance of resiliency and what we’re doing here.
Even if we had the greatest champion in Washington, it’s still incumbent upon cities and towns
across America to carry out the plan.
I do think it’s important first that we start
to take this conversation outside this room and have real conversations.
I would suggest that we go
to editorial boards of the news outlets.
I would suggest that we start talking to more business leaders.
I would suggest that we start thinking about how do we amp up this plan
so it’s not just the people on the inside crowd,
whether it’s the Chamber of Commerce or here at the Commission.
We need to take this conversation beyond this.
So what are we here for today?
- Fire blocking. - OK, so the rough inspection?
When are you guys looking to insulate?
Insulate next week.
Next week you have on schedule.
On schedule for Monday.
So you’re thinking Monday.
Monday, Tuesday. He said two, two and a half days he’d have it all wiped out.
- What are you doing, spray foam? - Spray foam, closed cell.
Closed cell on the exterior.
So you’re thinking that if all goes well today, you have them scheduled for Monday.
For Monday. I spoke with him earlier, he said two, two and a half days to wrap it all.
He’ll send two crews.
I’m going to be off on Thursday.
If we could get you may be, well provided he sends two crews Monday.
All right. So then you’ll just email me.
And let me know how that goes.
And if Wednesday comes around and I have time I’ll squeeze you in to keep it going.
So all the fire blocking’s done. All the penetration.
- Fire caulking. - Use the caulk and the 3M caulking?
- No foam, right? - No foam.
Now what do we do down the basement is extended living spaces as a part of this unit?
Extended living space for the first floor master suite, master bath, master shower --
- And this is fully sprinkled, right? - Fully sprinkled.
This was new underground plumbing.
We had our plumbing inspection yesterday, so we can close out.
So he got a look at it?
This is a master bedroom.
Master bedroom, master closet, master bath, laundry.
- Extended from that unit up above. - Correct.
And then you have this door here for your egress?
What are we going to do with this here? How are you going...
It’s going to be a drain here with a wet bell on the bottom.
And it’s going to be two steps up.
We’re going to get all that stuff and some flagstones or something.
Are you going to patio this?
All the way out to the back.
Fire caulking is done. All the penetrations.
And then this is all getting closed cell.
And then as I said they’ll be all batts in between.
Where’s your sprinkler head down here?
One there, there’s one over here. This is to go outside underneath the deck.
So that’s going to go out.
There’s one on each floor.
- Exterior, right? - Exterior.
Low temperature.
What are you doing for railings here?
The railings are all on the second floor.
- Iron? - It’s iron railings, the wire.
That’s not a bad view. Are these going to be sold or rentals?
These are condos.
So you’re going to put them on the market when you’re done.
- No roof deck? - There is a roof deck.
- How’s the access? - There’s going to be a spiral.
That’s on the plans?
Then this is all being spray foamed, right?
This is what you’re using, right?
Let’s get on the second floor.
And then with this over here Brendan, you’re going to box this all out.
So you’re going to come off, box out that sprinkler, right.
It will all be boxed in.
And then you have all your heads here. And then that.
You’re going to need some ledger lock on that right?
It’s not a bad view until that building gets built.
Have you seen any plans for that one yet?
It’ll probably go up just as high.
Take a picture of this, Brendan. Someone’s going to throw this out.
Take a picture and make a copy for the record.
Hold onto that.
So you’re all set Brendan. Give me a shout early next week. It’s a short week.
If 16 year old
have services at Bridge, and they’re connected to the services at Bridge,
if they’re no longer served by Bridge they don’t have a relationship with Bridge anymore.
So it’s like how do we... and I’m not sure how we do this.
This is why we need the RFP, the definition is like
it has to be not connected to the services that they’re getting.
Because once the services go away the relationship goes away,
Which is what keeps young people in the cycle because they don’t have long term relationships.
So the challenge
that the RFP’s addressing, the first one is that unfortunately,
the scope of services for youth or young adults experiencing homelessness is limited.
Not only in Boston, but across the country.
And most services around people experiencing homelessness are services for adults.
And so the adult shelter system,
unfortunately sometimes is the place where
18, 19, 20 year old find themselves if they’re homeless on the street,
dealing with behavioral health challenges, end up finding themselves in a shelter.
What we’re trying to do is to tell these shelters:
the services, the environment and the culture are created for adults
who may experience chronic homelessness, who are 40.
It's different for a 19 year old
who we know statistically - and I think this would be in the RFP -
is more likely to be LGBTQ, more likely to be people of color,
experiencing other issues.
What we want to say is the challenge here is that the gap of services
to meet the specific needs of youth and young adults experiencing homelessness is great
and multiple parts. Mayor Walsh’s plan is working on that.
However, in the meantime we know youth and young adults already find themselves in the adult shelters.
We’re trying to say is that in an ideal world we want youth and young adult shelters.
But in the meantime, the city’s plan is to not just wait until we have those shelters, or have those services.
We’re going to meet the needs of youth and young adults today.
We want these shelters to do that.
That’s the challenge or the need we’re trying to meet in that first one.
And to be fair we want the shelters to think about how they’re doing this
in a way that what do they need to do to do better? You know what I mean?
You know this better than I. Some types of shelters will say, well we have a separate space.
Like upstairs in the corner these 10 beds are meant for 18 to 24 year olds.
OK, I guess a separate space is important.
But when I have to get through all the chaos of the shelter to get to the separate space,
I still have to go downstairs to the kitchen to eat.
To go to the shared bathroom.
And at night there’s only one person upstairs, or one staff person.
How are they thinking about the fact that youth and young adults are vulnerable in these spaces?
So we want them to say we know it’s a gap.
We have to say this because we know our funders don’t agree with us. It’s not a long term solution.
But that’s where they find themselves today so we’re going to meet them where they’re at.
So this solution that you would envision...
We’re talking about physical space. We’re talking about policies and practices.
We’re talking about competencies of staff.
We’re talking about
how we do outreach and engagement and connection.
All the stuff we know about. How do you make a space youth friendly? Same thing.
How do we think about all those things that we already know? I think that’s how you would bucket it.
We’re talking about space, about policies and practices.
They're concerned about the onetime funding? I get it.
There’s a lot you can do with onetime funding in all of those buckets.
That then they have to sustain post that.
So I think that’s what that is.
And would you like for me to stay
a little bit away from programing because it’s not multiyear funding?
On the challenge that RFP’s trying to address
is that we know that young adults experiencing homelessness lack
the social capital and the personal connections with caring adults in their lives
to help them navigate the challenges that exist.
So to help them access opportunity, but avoid the challenges that are in front of them.
And that too many of the relationships and this comes from youth and young adult voices,
too many of those relationships are relationships based on the provision of service.
And what young people have told us through this process is they need more permanent connections
that are not tied to a service, not a case manager, not a clinician,
not a behavioral health specialist at the community center, whatever,
but people who just care about me and my wellbeing, separate from that.
Permanent connections,
the more relationships young adults have, the more likely they are to be successful
and overcome these challenges. And so that’s what we’re trying to address.
That youth and young adults need this especially LGBTQ
and youth of color who are more likely to experience homelessness.
Program folks, five dollars here.
Get a program for the World Series champions, folks. Five dollars here.
Program folks. Get a program for the World Series champions folks. Five dollars here.
Comes with your free bumper sticker. Best team ever.
Red Sox parade folks,
get a program, 5 dollars for the World Series champions.
119 wins, 108 during the regular season, 11 more in the post season to bring the championship home.
Thank everyone for coming herein today. I wanna thank the Red Sox, an incredible organization
starting with the ownership down to our general manager. I had the chance
to go to Puerto Rico with Alex Cora in the very beginning of the season and I saw what type of person he was.
He’s an amazing man, an amazing team, with the best fans in the world. Go Red Sox!
- Mayor Walsh, how you doing? - This is great. I’m doing good. I can’t complain.
It’s the World Series, Red Sox parade, people are happy, what else can you ask for?
This isn’t our first rodeo. As a friend of mine in LA said, didn’t you guys invent the rodeo?
I think we did. I was saying that earlier today in the car, driving to the police roll call,
Other cities are dying for one and we’ve had 11 in the last 14 years or 15 years. It’s amazing.
- Everyone’s won one too which is incredible. - So much goes into this.
What does it do for the city?
Sports is so engrained in the City of Boston.
When there’s a parade in the city, what does it do for the City,
despite all the logistics and all the issues that go into it?
When our teams are doing well, it’s good for the city,
for the restaurants, the bars, all the different venues. The excitement in the city.
The team's being part of the community, so that’s another important part of these teams.
They’re part of our neighborhoods and community.
It’s great for the city, and the parade keeps the spirit up
and I think today in the world of politics and what’s going on in the world,
the horrible incident that happened in Pittsburgh, I think something like this
makes you realize to be positive and move forward.
Thank you for being proud of who you are and where you’re from.
And as I look around the room, a lot of you are the future leaders
of the City. You might not see that, you might not understand where your pathway’s going to take you,
but it’s going to take you to amazing places.
So when you think about advancement, when you think about moving forward,
it’s about who you are as a person and the commitment you have to your own professional career
in being recognized and realized and involved and engaged and moving forward.
Whatever you do there are opportunities.
When you think about the Latino community,
when I first became the Mayor, I spent a lot of time, I still do, but I spent a lot of time
with organizations particularly Latino community organizations
that felt that they were underrepresented or not represented in a lot of different places.
And we sat down and we really started to look at
Boards and Commissions and staff and who’s around and how we’re doing, what’s going on.
And making a real concerted effort to change that reality. Not image, reality.
To make sure our people have opportunities within City government.
And as I think about you, all of you in this room,
I think about being future leaders in the business sector,
future leaders in the nonprofit sector.
This is a starting point. Some people are going to stay, come from the City, work their whole career in the City
and I commend you for that and love you for that.
Some of you will say it’s time to move to something else.
and go into the business sector.
And that's honestly what you have to start thinking about how we do things.
And how you advance yourself, number one. First and foremost.
Second piece is Latino pride.
And I think that is really important. These service projects are about education.
They’re about pride.
One of the thing that’s special about Latino community
is that you are a diverse community within your community.
Because as you we’re going around here and everyone’s introducing themselves,
every time Columbia was mentioned.
There are some Venezuelan’s here that were excited. The Mexicans seem really excited as well.
So there is a sense of pride.
And I think for us in the City, doing these service projects,
you’re doing it because you’re trying to help people,
but what you’re also doing is you’re teaching people about government.
You’re also teaching people about what can be possible.
You’re also creating opportunities to open doors.
How do you take your expertise and what you know as a person,
as your heritage and your nationality
and also what you’ve learned, whether it’s been in school, if you were born here,
if you weren’t born here, what you learned at home and take it
to the community and give people opportunities.
The day that Trump came down
with the ban, I looked up at the screen, I saw what was going on and I’m like
what’s he doing today? And Dan says: you know he’s doing a Muslin ban
and he’s banning against immigrants.
I said let’s do a press conference. When? I said in a half hour.
I said I want every single immigrant that works in the building standing behind me
and I want every first generation person
in there as well, because I didn’t think I had enough immigrant community behind me to fill the room.
We were out in the hall, out in the hallway, it was packed.
That was a proud moment
because I was standing amongst my peers
because I might be the Mayor, but I’m a public employee.
We’re no different. And I was proud of that moment.
And that has nothing to do ... So I’m proud of where my heritage is.
And I think back to comparing, maybe doing a little history of the Irish.
In the end of the 19th century Irish were called dogs,
servants, slaves, pigs, monkeys, animals.
If you look at the portrayal of Irish people back then it was completely racist.
And a group of people got together and started to think about being a power broker.
And they slowly but surely started to go into cities around America and they got elected to
town councils, city councils and then a couple legislatures.
And eventually continued to build up a brief of support and understood who they were,
and next thing they’re Mayors.
And that’s really what every community that comes to this country has done over time.
And you don’t settle at politics.
Our job is to represent and support the people of Boston.
That’s our job.
Whether it’s for, through somebody or directly for somebody, that’s what our job is.
And when you’re a public employee you have responsibility for that.
And I think that everyone in this room is more motivated than the average person at City Hall
in a lot of different ways, and take that motivation,
take that desire and keep that moving forward. Because that’s who we have to be.
This car doesn’t have an active registration.
I should have brought my passport, but that wouldn’t have been any good either.
So to get married it costs $75 cash on the date of the ceremony.
So you can only park at the meter between those times. 12 to eight.
I’m looking to get an Allston Brighton parking pass.
It doesn’t have your Boston address.
There are 3 fairly significant master plans that are happening in
city departments right now that we’re going to be a part of.
The first one is the Boston Public Library.
They’re starting a master planning process in the spring to look at the McKim Building
which is the old building of the library.
Specifically for interest to our community is looking at the front entrance.
As we know,
thanks to great advocacy of the Board and an individual Boston resident
they installed a semi-permanent ramp earlier this year
so that the front entrance is now accessible.
However, they want to build a permanent ramp,
a very nice artistic structure so they don’t have a temporary metal ramp up there for long.
So that’s going to be worked into the master plan.
And also there are two meeting rooms in the library
in the old McKim Building, that the only way you can access them right now is with a lift, a vertical lift.
That is the Map Room and the Commonwealth Salon.
We’re going to be looking at those areas to see if there’s a way to improve accessibility.
Unfortunately there was a meeting scheduled
a few weeks ago to give updates on the PCA Program,
scheduled by Mass Health and there was some communication
where the Library staff told the people at Mass Health
the room was accessible and it was one of these rooms which is technically accessible
but when you have 20 and 30 people coming in wheelchairs, trying to go up
that lift, it was not very accessible, so...
I’m working on communication with the library and looking at
different strategies to try to improve accessibility.
Another master plan that’s happening is the Parks Department
is working on a master plan for Boston Common.
There is a large barrier in the Common
that we’ve been interested in working on for a long time.
And that is the set of steps at the Shaw Memorial
which go from the Common up to Beacon Street, across from the State House.
Right now if you’re in the Common and you can’t use the steps,
there’s no way to get to the State House except to go back to Tremont Street
and walk all around up Park Street to Beacon Street.
So it’s a really long path of travel and even that path is not very accessible.
So, we had worked with the Parks Department for a few years
to try to get some measurements of slopes
and come up with some design concepts to either do a ramp or an exterior elevator in the Common.
So this will be included in the Master planning.
I heard you say on the Master Plan regarding the Boston Common
with the steps going up to the State House that input would be valuable.
I get complaints all the time as the ADA Coordinator at the State House. Would it help if I
got a letter from the State House saying that we would appreciate
those steps be made be accessible?
Yes, I definitely think a collaboration between the City and the State
because it’s definitely the State House which is part of the Freedom Trail.
When they have people with disabilities on the Freedom Trail they have to detour
and they can’t go on the standard route.
It happens almost every day.
So I think we can definitely collaborate on that.
I’ll put together a letter and have it signed by the Superintendent of the State House.
Great.
To me this is personal.
When I was seven years old I was diagnosed with cancer.
For 4 years I was treated at the Children’s Hospital in Dana Farber Cancer Institute.
And the people that were in our corner every single day, the doctors were there,
but around the clock it was the nurses.
It was the nurses who we got to know. It was the nurses who comforted my parents.
It was the nurses who helped everybody. It was the nurses that held my hand.
It was the nurses that did everything in my life and I never forgot that.
And it’s something that’s really important for all of us never to forget.
Because in a time of need in the hospital it’s the nurses that show up at your bedside.
It’s the nurses that comfort your families. It’s the nurses that are there for you.
And I want to thank you for that. And I want to let you know that that’s why I’m here today.
Because when I needed to be taken care of and my family needed to be taken care of,
it was the nurses that took care of my family.
So thank you for that.
Pedro and I have talked pretty extensively about
some of the work that’s been being done on the opioid crisis in Boston.
Pedro expressed a particular interest in that work
and in exploring how we might use public art to inform or tell a story,
or whatever it is we want to do about that particular crisis.
I told him the last time we met about a couple things in particular.
The Engagement Center and also the effort to build a Recovery Campus on Long Island.
And thought it would be a good idea to put together this particular team who are working
on arts and culture and the Recovery Campus and the whole host of other things
to have a conversation and see if there’s something we might be
thinking about doing in art and recovery.
Something small or something significant, I don’t know. But it seems there’s a great opportunity if there are
patrons around who might like to help us
tell the story of the Recovery Campus or of the Engagement Center.
So I’d like to try and figure out how to,
if that’s something that you want to explore, how to get you access to
these two places.
What’s interesting is that Long Island, if you think about being the place that is the long term,
sort of recovery place for people,
kind of completing our continuum of care that we offer as a city.
The Engagement Center is really the low end. It is the thing that starts the continuum of care.
In bureaucratic speak called a low threshold space because
even people who are kicked out of shelters, people kicked out of programs,
are allowed to be there. You can be
in any state of mind as long as you’re respecting the space.
You can come and sleep, you can come and play games.
You’ll see some pictures.
What’s interesting is that we try to make the best of what we had.
It was a storage tent basically.
Like with a structure. Like it has air conditioning and it has
things you’d find in a building, but it’s still canvas.
And so, very quickly
the most random assortment of ragtag gang of people in the City from many departments
came together and figured out what to do with this space
to make it habitable, but more importantly to make it a place that people wanted to be.
Because we really wanted this to be a place
where you’re not on the recovery spectrum yet. You’re no necessarily wanting recovery.
Maybe you are, maybe you aren’t. It’s just a place for people to go
so that they’re not on the streets,
so they’re not in danger of falling into the highway, because that’s where this is located.
And just a place where people could
be their full selves. It’s important to people. It’s home for a lot of people.
To follow up on what Sabrina said,
you were talking about your art in a way that we’ve been talking about
some of the artistic approaches here and we sort of discussed around a civic art.
It’s art that is not just public. It’s not just there to see, but rather there’s some purpose,
or the artist or the community can articulate
this is doing, this is this. This is how we’re going to put it to use.
And here it’s not just because it looks nice.
It’s the little teeny things that like push people into recovery.
The little breath of fresh air. Being able to talk to somebody that gives some meaning to your day.
And that is totally what this space could always use.
We’re year 2 into this.
We put some money in the capital budget for a permanent space at some point,
but we have no idea how long it’s going to take to actually do that.
In the meantime, this space is being very well utilized.
To the point where things are wearing out faster than we would like them to.
So very cognizant of trying to make sure that the place is
welcoming and a good place for people to be.
But the administration is committed to
keeping an engagement center in some form up and running pretty much permanently.
There are a number of people who have found their way
to recovery through the Engagement Center.
It’s like Steven said, it’s a low threshold space. These are folks who
might not have even thought about that yet.
But at least having the ability to ask for help,
makes it I think probably a little bit more likely that you might actually ask for help.
A friendly space allows you to take that first step.
- Springboard. Not even a step. - Springboard.
Because there’s no expectation of recovery.
it’s not like most other services, you don’t go there because you’re ready necessarily.
You can go there just to get your snack,
but then over enough time maybe that will be the thing that springs you forward.
You got everything from 'hey I’m looking for a coed space that I can be with my partner'
to 'I’ve been barred from all the other spaces that the City provides,
but I definitely need to access
fruit cups in order to deal with my low blood sugar.'
This space offered that opportunity to provide that for them.
And then sort of ease them back into being a part of
whatever they may have not been a part of before.
It acted like an incredibly interesting mediation space for some, a social space for other,
a living room, a pit stop,
a sort of community and again being in that meeting,
hearing everyone talk about this is like a family.
So I think we’re in a really interesting point where
yes, we’re trying to think about how to refresh the space as a city,
trying to think about what does it mean to keep the Engagement Center? What does that look like?
Does that mean more of them? Does it mean a better version of what we have right now?
All that aside, also thinking about how do we tell the story about what’s happening here?
Both on the level of the humanizing folks and meeting people where they are,
but also functionally we’ve done something here that clearly is filling a gap and a need
and really what’s the story that Boston’s trying to tell around recovery?
Being such an epicenter, regionally?
So I think there’s some interesting connections to think about.
How do we talk about this? How do we talk
about Long Island?
Obviously there’s a political side to all of this too because this exists in a neighborhood.
The South End neighborhood has been very good
about accepting the amount of social services
that have to be absorbed by that community because
the shelter is in that a neighborhood. There’s a methadone clinic in that neighborhood.
So this is the corner of Melnea Cass and Mass Ave.
People call it methadone mile. We call it Recovery Road.
We need to do a better job of telling the story,
also lifting up the neighbors in the South End who’ve been good
about absorbing all of this activity that not every neighborhood would be so open to receiving.
It goes a long way that most people have substance use disorders somewhere in their family.
Most people probably have it pretty close in their families, so that helps,
but we owe it to them to tell a story about why this is needed.
This is sort of a short term, it’s big for us, but it’s also small and short term when you...
in the context of the Recovery Campus on Long Island.
Much longer term project.
It calls for the rebuilding of a bridge and obviously there’s a
a court case that’s going to go on about that,
an argument between two municipalities about how that gets done.
But Long Island was a place where a lot of programs like this existed for many years.
And the Mayor’s made it clear that he wants to build
this Recovery Campus which will serve long term residential programs in recovery.
Where it used to be there was a homeless shelter, at least one homeless shelter, maybe two.
There was 2 shelters out there.
So where it used to be there would be a night shelter.
That’s not going to be the case anymore. It’s going to be focused on long term recovery.
It’s residential as opposed to
shuttling homeless people out at night and bringing them back into the City in the morning.
So there’s a whole, where I actually don’t know what the latest update is on
when we could even expect a bridge to be rebuilt, but it’s at least 3 or 4 years out.
In the meantime we’re thinking about programming,
assessing the viability of all the buildings that are out there
and trying to figure out how to tell the story of Long Island.
Because we definitely have a story that we need to tell because we need to build
political will to actually make the Recovery Campus happen.
So that it can serve not just Bostonians,
but people dealing with substance use disorders from around the greater Boston area.
So there’s some great opportunity there for storytelling and we’re very much in the beginning stages of that.
I think I’ve mentioned Swoon in the past.
Swoon she was actually, I mean this is public.
She was raised by... her parents were addicts.
Heroin if I remember correctly.
So it’s a topic that she’s very attuned to and I think
she’s made it clear that she wants to dedicate
maybe the rest of her career to really looking at addiction and trauma.
And how you know, trauma leads to addiction.
So the project I did with her in Philadelphia, she worked with
men at Graterford State Prison
Inmates, of the largest state prison, maximum security prison in the state of Pennsylvania.
Women in a re-entry program and...
I’m sorry.
Women in halfway house and a re-entry program.
The most important thing was the element of telling the story.
She worked with participants to teach them how to tell their story.
And we were all crying. It was so...
you know, powerful.
I think that the oral histories
are very important.
The portrayal of people who we often forget about,
disregard, are really important tools for humanization.
So much of recovery
is about story telling anyway. Who knows what tomorrow might bring
and so I think the more that we can use these stories
to put them out there, but also to really put at the center of all this work,
the idea of storytelling. Or, the idea of like owning your story
and sharing it.
I think a fan belt inside the generator
caught fire. So,
they extinguished it. I think they shut the power off. They’re on their way down now.
I just want to give a brief background of how this event came to be.
For those of you familiar with Sebastian Junger, who’s a writer, his last book was called Tribe.
In this book he explores the concept around homecoming
and belonging within the Veterans community.
And he often talks about how the best thing a community can do
for our Veterans is to listen to their stories without judgment and with full support.
And this is what this Town Hall is intended to do.
This is a community forum
aiming to establish greater understanding between local Veterans
and the friends and neighbors that they fought for.
We took care of English and American soldiers when they came back from the front.
Some of the soldier’s wounds would heal and they were able to get up,
but most of them were bed patients.
We helped the soldiers recuperate
from physical and mental injuries.
Back then we called it shell shock.
We tried to keep the soldier’s spirits up.
Many of the soldiers had lost a leg or an arm or sometimes both legs and arms.
Those men were sent to Walter Reed to receive artificial limbs and appendages.
I had a patient who wrote a letter to his wife
to tell her that he had lost his leg.
He was worried that she wouldn’t want him
when he came home.
But his wife wrote to him and told him that she was just so happy that he was alive.
He cried and I cried too.
The Street right down a few houses away from me
was named Andrew Biggio Square and as I was introduced, that’s my name.
Except that Square was not named after me. It was named after my uncle
who was killed in action in World War II.
The first Andrew Biggio.
When I was a kid I didn’t know anything about it.
I told the other kids just what my parents told me that it was named after my uncle.
It wasn’t until I was getting ready to go to my first tour in Iraq...
I was looking at that Street sign saying Andrew Biggio Square
and it was a weird feeling knowing that
I was the...
I'm the next Andrew Biggio to go to war
and the first Andrew Biggio went to war and didn’t come back,so...
I survived Iraq. I survived a tour in Afghanistan
and I came home and I was staring at that Street sign again and I said
I got to find out what happened to that first Andrew Biggio on that hill in Italy in 1944.
I went to my grandmother’s house. I asked her if she still had Andrew’s letters that he wrote home from World War II.
She said she did. I went upstairs. I pulled the shoebox out of letters and I started reading them.
I started to track down men from his company that were with him.
It went from men from his company
to different types of Veterans and I ended up covering almost the whole war on the rifle as far as
divisions, places, battles.
How did I get the rifle?
I go through Andrew’s letters and I read
on how much he enjoyed to shoot the M1 Garand.
I said I’m going to buy an M1. We should have this
in our family history, we should have it forever. He died carrying this kind of a rifle.
I purchased the M1
and I’m in my house and I’m aiming in at the wall and I’m
playing Army man again at 30 years old in my living room.
But I said, who do I bring this to?
I can’t show my family. Would they really understand? They’re not Veterans.
It’s great, but now what? I bought the rifle, now what?
How do I fit the puzzle piece together on what happened to that first Andrew Biggio?
So I thought about my neighbor. My next door neighbor, Joe.
He had fought in the Battle of Okinawa and was a grouchy prick to me my whole life.
Anytime a foul ball would land in his backyard I’d hear an earful from,
he wouldn’t crack a smile to me until I graduated Marine Corp Bootcamp.
Then I started to see him wave to me from his yard.
The relationship became different. So I said I’m going to go show this rifle to Joe.
I went to his house, opened the door and he’s sitting in the wheelchair. He was 92 at the time.
And I said hey, check what I bought.
I placed the rifle which was empty, not covered in signatures like it is now,
I put the rifle into his arms.
He was in his recliner. His legs had atrophited
to nothing after years of not being able to walk at his age and illness,
and he brightened up.
It was like a burst of energy soared through his body.
He started waving the rifle around the room, smiling like he was 18 years old again.
I said holy crap, I am holding something special.
He said go into his top drawer.
I want you to have these now.
I went into his top drawer, I pulled out a velvet Crown Royal bag.
Inside of it were Japanese gold teeth.
He said, I want you to have these now.
Now, I’m not sitting here justifying war or what happened in the 1940s, but
I figured out this is why this man was a grouch.
I finally understand what was bothering this man my whole life
and what he had seen and what he had went through.
I wanted to, this was more than just oh my God, let me hear a war story.
He began to pass on the advice,
life advice and suggestions on how to live a long successful life after combat.
I was 28
when I had this conversation with him and he was 92.
I said, I want to remember this forever. I said Joe sign the rifle.
He was the first signature on it.
I left his house and I said I’m going to go around
and get as many World War II Veteran signatures as possible.
I want to be able to pass on to the younger Veterans how to live a long successful life,
to have a career, have a job
If these men could do it, what they saw in Okinawa, Iwo Jima, Normandy, Burma,
France, Belgium, Germany, Saipan, Tarawa, Tinian,
that our generation could do it too.
And that is the story of the rifle.
We come out
of the factory, and for you Ramadi vets,
we’re out on Route Michigan
and we stop two possible VBEDs.
They’re both coming down Michigan to the point that we have
I believe two Humvees.
We stop. Everyone dismounts to get more guns down range to back off the vehicles.
While that happened about 450 to 600 meters out
I look at what would be known as the White Apartments for anybody that served in Ramadi.
There’s three military aged males or...
At that time because I’m old in comparison to these new kids, Al-Qaeda,
on a roof and they’re tactically observing us.
So I go to take the shot
and then its Ramadi, it’s the middle of the day. Everyone’s getting sniped, everyone’s getting killed.
I’m going to tell the Lieutenant I’m making the shot so guys don’t think its incoming fire.
When I go to take the shot, the whole thing was a setup.
It was a sniper from my three.
So I turned at the last second before I took the shot to tell the Lieutenant.
The round actually blew through my holographic sight
and into the side of my chest.
But I didn’t know that at the time.
So, I said I’m hit.
I get in the Humvee and then I said no, I said I’m good.
I said it’s not being top. I said your adrenalin goes through the roof. Anybody that’s been shot here,
my man over there knows to say the least. And I said no, I’m good.
They stop the Humvee, I go to get back out of it,
I open the door and my platoon sergeant reaches over and grabs me
because blood's coming out of the side of my chest.
And I know at that point
he hit me exactly where he wanted to hit me,
they were shooting through the side of the pectoral into the heart.
We believe that same sniper killed a couple of my friends the same exact way.
They rushed me into the forward operating base and on the operating table.
I think OK, maybe a piece of plate got me. I feel good. I’m feeling fine.
I get out of the Humvee and that’s always a big thing. Everybody knows
if you can walk in the hospital, even if you die on the floor,
if you walk into the hospital, that’s how it goes. So I said don’t touch me.
Take my clothes off
and one of the baddest guys I’ve ever met in my entire life
that had survived a battle over there with a handful of our guys getting killed
and you know he was...
one of two survivors out of like seven guys.
He looks at me and he’s mortified.
And I have a big gaping hole on the side of my chest.
What happened was because it shot through my holographic sight,
it created like buckshot.
So now at this point I’m like, I know I’m going to die. It is what it is.
I believe in the cause, I feel good, you know, in terms of like
hey this is what it’s going to be, I’m a true believer.
They get me on the operating table
I’m saying, no but I, you know, I feel good.
They tell me the bullet’s still inside so everyone’s just waiting for me to bleed out on the table,
bleed out internally and die.
My Commanding Officer’s holding my hand and he said,
hey you know Kurt, hang in there buddy. Do you know what the date is?
Do you know what’s going on? And I said I know what you’re doing.
I said today’s October 10th.
I said I’m a lifelong Patriot’s fan.
Adam Vinatieri just kicked the game winning field goal. Best kicker in football.
I looked around the operating room and everyone was mortified,
but they knew I was going to survive.
I make it through surgery
and they said you know son,
thank you for your service, you’re going to go from Ramadi to Bagdad, Bagdad to Germany,
Germany back to the United States.
I said with all due respect, everyone’s dying, I’m not going anywhere.
And they said, you’re stupid. They said
the bullet’s still in there, your chest isn’t going to close.
No granulation. You need skin grafts.
You’re going to get infected and you’re going to die over here.
And I said like it is what it is.
I’m staying. And I checked myself out of the hospital.
I talked to my father via Sat phone and then always one of my biggest supporters,
I called my Aunt. She’s a former nun who then went onto be
very successful on Wall Street,
a no nonsense kind of woman who grew up here in the City of Boston.
And I said, you know, I need you to grab my back in this. I said I got shot.
And I’m staying. And she said, well I wouldn’t expect anything differently.
I continued to fight on the ground for eight more months
and you know, it was heavy. We lost guys
but I wouldn’t have done it any differently.
I’m an open book and I tell everyone:
listen, war is war and it's tough, but honestly the hardest part was coming home.
I said I actually know Tommy because I went through the home base program
and same thing, not to get too organization specific.
But it was the best thing I ever did.
Because I said I wasn’t scared.
I wasn’t scared when I hit IEDs. I wasn’t scared when I was shot
I knew I was going to die, but I said when I came home
and I’m on the side of 93C and my family
and Local 103 has Welcome Home from Iraq, Sergeant Kurt Power. I said it hit me.
What am I doing back here? I don’t belong here anymore.
I had never thought I would have to prepare for it because I never thought I was going to survive.
And there was a...
for guys and gals that were over
there’s a certain comfort level to that.
Listen we’re all going to die someday right?
You know it’s sooner than later over there, well then why sweat it?
That’s the reality of it. The best way to honor the guys
that didn’t make it home is to do what you can to make the world a better place
That’s how I live my life every day and I just want everyone to know
that our coming home and our going through things that you’re not alone.
We’re all in this together. Because
we’re losing 22 Veterans a day
because everyone thinks they’re the only one that ever went through anything.
Nightmares and cold sweats and anxiety, that’s all part of the process.
The only way we’re going to get people to get help
and to continue to live another day
is by being open and talking about it. So keep fighting.
Keep fighting for the guys that didn’t make it. Keep fighting for the gals that didn’t make it.
We’re proud of all of you. Thank you so much for your service and God bless America.
We went further north. In Ai Quoc.
You can see it in Ken Burns’ documentary. He focuses on Con Thien.
But we were at Con Thien. We were at Geo Lin, at Camp Caroll
and almost every time we went to one of those places we were under siege.
And they were shooting rockets.
We could literally look right into North Vietnam. We could see the little sparks from the artillery guns.
And they’d usually fire three at a time. They’d fire them every hour.
Some of you have seen the Boston Marathon bombing.
Remember the panic when the first bomb went off and folks started running one way
and another bomb went off and folks didn’t know what to do?
That’s what was happening to us every hour.
Three artillery rounds would come in and guys were literally getting blown to bits.
It was clear
that we were being sacrificed. We were at the most northern outpost that the Marines had.
It was almost like we were a pawn in somebody’s chess game.
And I had the opportunity to call home.
I called my mother
and the first thing I said to her was Ma, I want to just
apologize to you for all the problems I caused you when I was in high school.
She said why are you talking to me like this?
I said because you’ll probably never see me again.
She said what do you mean? I said everybody in my unit’s dying.
We’re the most northern outpost that the Marines have. We’re surrounded.
They’re bombarding us every day. Sometimes they don’t even bring us water.
We have to drink mud and eat grass.
And my mother said, you’re not going to die. I said Ma, I’m trying to tell you something.
She said, I talk to God every day. And you’re special. You’re coming back.
I said Ma, everybody’s mother thinks they’re special.
I’m putting pieces of special people in bags. Listen to what I’m saying.
Don’t believe what you read in the Globe or what you see on the 6:00 news.
We’re losing the war. We’re being sacrificed.
You’re probably not going to see me again and she kept saying,
you’re coming back. She tried to tell a joke. She said besides, you got to come back.
I said what do you mean? She said,
if you don’t come back who’s going to pay
this telephone bill? And everytime I see or hear
anything about Veterans who lost their lives in Vietnam,
I pull up on the corner and I see guys with the cardboard placards
and their cups, I realize how blessed I am. Having gone through all that
everything that I do I do it for them. I do it for the guys that didn’t make it back.
I do it for the guys who lost their arms and legs and guys who
even lost their minds.
I long for the day with all this technology, like we walk around with computers in our pockets,
I long for the day when we can evolve to a point where
we can resolve conflicts without sending our sons and daughters to kill each other.
Let us not forget the total cost of war.
World War I was among the deadliest conflicts in human history up to that time at least.
The total number of military and civilian casualties in World War I
was around 40 million people.
40 million people
of which 9.7 military personnel
and approximately 10 million civilians lost their lives as a direct result of this conflict.
About 23 million military personnel were also wounded.
In the United States which was isolated from the combat conflict in Europe,
321,000 military casualties was approximately 3 % of the total military casualties of the Great War.
To put things in perspective, and why this date is so important,
90 million casualties of
World War II
and later conflicts further signified having a day each year
to honor and remember
all Veterans and their sacrifice
to protect our freedoms and their way of life.
Thank you for your service to our country.
Thank you for your sacrifice to our country.
To your loved ones, thank you to your loved ones as well.
Because oftentimes we don’t realize that
families are affected by not having their loved ones here.
Any gold star families here? We pray for you
and thank you as well. I have a great uncle that fought in World War I.
My family and my father didn’t talk about him much.
His name was Patrick and he left Ireland
to America and came to South Boston and he enlisted in the Army.
He went over to France and never came home.
I was at an event right after I got elected Mayor,
and I was talking to some World War I guys about
about keeping the memory alive of World War I service members.
And they sent me his draft, his card. The day he signed up.
And they sent me the letter that they sent to his brother Jimmy when he died,
when he got killed in action.
We never talked about in the house and never really
thought about it much. And my father never talked about it.
I grew up in an Irish home,
you didn’t talk about your things and I’m not a Veteran.
But I know the importance of telling what’s on your heart sometimes.
I’m in recovery. So my connection
to getting help is in recovery.
I grew up in Dorchester,
I went to work construction and you didn’t tell your feelings back then
when you’re drinking and things like that.
My drinking got out of control
so much that I ended up in detox.
It was the last place that I wanted to be.
But when I was in there...
I didn’t go there to stop drinking. went there to get the heat off me.
But while I was in there the first night a meeting came in,
you know, an AA meeting came in and they talked and whatever it was I was interested.
It kind of perked my interest and the rest of that week,
I listened to talk of addiction.
And I learned about what alcoholism was.
And when you get out of there you’re not cured.
The key for me is the aftercare.
And 23 years later I’m still working on it.
And you think about every now and then about situations you might have put yourself in.
And if you don’t deal with it and you don’t talk to somebody else about it,
it’s going to stay inside of you.
Because whether you’re in the battlefield and you come home
or you’re in the barroom and you’re not talking about it,
or you’re in a dark room where they’re putting a needle in your arm, and not talking about it,
there’s no way of helping.
And I equate, I connect the... not the same way because it’s very different.
The fighting for your country and coming back is different on the surface of alcoholism,
but inside it’s all the same.
It’s that feeling that hopeless, what I had,
helpless, don’t know what to do about it feeling.
And like I said, everyone had suggested that I go get help.
Many times I’m like yeah, yeah. I went to one AA meeting one time and used that as an excuse.
Yeah I got help, I went to a meeting. And I used that for about 5 years.
But it wasn’t until I hit my bottom.
And when I hit my bottom I didn’t realize it was my bottom, but I knew, it was pretty low.
And a lot of other things happened in my life that built up to that point.
Every time I drank I didn’t get in trouble, but every time I got in trouble I was drinking.
So, you think about that and I think about
sharing experiences and I love, I go to, I still go to my meetings.
Hearing people share their experience, strength and hope
about addiction, sometimes there’s somebody talking that’s in so much pain
that they don’t see the benefit.
They don’t see the hope. They don’t see the help. They don’t see the end game.
And if I get a chance to talk to them I just say, it’s a day at a time.
When I first got sober I’d hear people talk about they have a house,
a job and a car and they have this and that, and I used to be like, I want that.
But I was in no way in the situation that I could get that at that particular moment.
And seven years later I bought my house.
And I remember sitting on my back porch of my house, even
10 years after I had it. I looked up and I can’t believe it’s mine.
And it all goes back to going for help and asking for help.
And I know many of you in this room
shared your story today and I thank you for that.
And there’s probably some people in this room
that might be listening and saying I don’t know what I’m going to do.
Just reach out. Put your hand out and ask for help.
That’s all you got to do. That’s the first step. That’s the first step.
You fought for this country. We owe it to you to help you.
That’s our job. As a government that’s our job.
Our Veterans office, Veterans Affairs office,
I’m proud of the work we do because we’re there for the veterans.
I said this earlier as we went out.
In my five years as Mayor, I have never once had to suggest to the Commissioner of the Office,
you need to do this for the Veterans or do that for the Veterans. They’re already doing it.
It’s setup for you. If it weren’t for the Veterans
of the Revolutionary War, of World War I, II, Korea, Vietnam,
Iraq, Afghanistan fighting all over the world,
I wouldn’t have the opportunity to be the Mayor.
We wouldn’t have the opportunity of a democracy.
It’s because of you.
Because you fight for that democracy.
Thank you for being here.
Thank you for what you’ve done for our country. For what you continue to do for our country.
For me, Veteran’s Day is a day on the calendar just like Memorial Day’s a day on the calendar.
But Veteran’s Day, Memorial Day is every day. It should be every day in our country.
Everybody go 45 degrees towards the center.
Tuesday after the election for the Congress was complete,
I reached out to Richard Neal. Congratulated Richard Neal. He’s in line to be
the next Chairman of the Ways and Means from Springfield.
I reached out to Jim McGovern. Congratulated him.
He’s in line to be the Rules Chair from Worcester County.
That’s the seat formerly held by Joe Moakley who he worked for.
So we have some really good allies in there. I mean obviously they can’t favor Boston
per se on Massachusetts, but having them there
in their office, there’s a contact for a lot of different issues. Education, climate, transportation,
fire stuff, police stuff. That’s really important to have.
We’ll have staff in those offices that we can call, reach out directly to.
On a national level that will be important.
I also just reached out to the Governor to say that I’d like to get together with him
to talk about education, transportation and climate issues
and is there an opportunity for us to go and lobby in Washington
for those funds for the Commonwealth and the City.
I think we have decided to take a different approach.
The last couple years we haven’t done much of that because
we were used to going right to the White House.
We could go right to the Secretary’s when Obama was there.
We haven’t done that with this President. But I think there’s an opportunity for us to go
to Washington and lobby for a whole lot different pieces that we’re looking at here
through the Congressional folks right now. That’s usually how it worked in the past.
It changed under Obama the last couple years, they really made
a concerted effort to build a relationship directly with mayors.
Usually you go through the Legislative leaders like you at the State House.
So, I think that’s a really good thing for us.
Hopefully, I’m hoping good things can happen out of Washington.
There’s an openness that John has. If he opens it up we get a really
bad storm to 30 or 40 women.
It doesn’t go back down. Right.
He was willing... it worked well last winter,
to fill some beds between six and 8 p.m., but then leave a little room
for overflow from other places.
There needs to be some space because if he’s going to step up
he needs to be able to know that there is space that he's going to take these people to.
That we’re not going to be in a situation where he’s showing up at Pine Street or somewhere
and say you can’t.
A group of women who are sort of chronic...
they seem to be severely mentally ill who don’t leave shelter at all.
I mean they’re in it because we’re open 24/7 and they don’t leave.
I think we have a number of people also,
with sort of a combination of behavioral
and substance use disorders that are a combination there.
There’s a host of women who just desperately want to get housed,
who just don’t have the income you know.
Like we have a woman, an evacuee
from Puerto Rico
who just wants to get housing,
but has like a $535 Security Income check and that about 50 %
of the women also had some sort of domestic violence
or violence issue prior to coming, so we’re trying to get more service providers in.
There does seem to be a group of women who are like hiding.
Just trying to stay under the radar for whatever reason.
In the cold weather transit stations are places where people who are
sometimes less well-known or sometimes kind of hanging out have aggregated
and we know last year how the unintended consequence
of the compassion of the T at South Station
that really attracted people who were not so vulnerable, but....
- Predatory.- Taking advantage.
There was some of that for sure.
So we just want to think about this year,
what the approach is working with the team because I think
Superintendent, you want to talk a little about what you pivoted to last year,
when it was clear the South Station wasn’t working in January, February.
Unfortunately we had to just keep muddling through it.
Unless we come up with something better,
I think we’re going to have it worse this year. So at its peak we had 170 people in there.
There’s no vetting.
The place is not secure. There’s no metal detectors.
There was all kinds of activity going on, inappropriate, criminal.
A lot of people were telling me just throw more cops in there.
That’s not the answer, that’s treating the symptom and not the cause.
We’ve intelligence that suggests this year,
and everyone’s aware of what’s going on at Mass and Melnea.
We’re right in the middle. That’s where our headquarters are. There’s anywhere
as low as 50 to, as high as 200 people that are gathering there,
using drugs, engaged in violence, prostitution, you name it.
We’ve intelligence that’s already telling us that core group which is in the dozens
are going to South Station when it gets cold to do whatever they want to do.
So, it’s great. One or two nights, we hit some extreme weather,
they come in there, but last year as you know, it started November 10th.
Right away was the first day we had to do shelter in place.
Two weeks after that we went on a stretch that went 17 straight nights.
We just can’t do it.
I think we’re doing them more disservice,
we got killed in the media. We got killed amongst homeless advocates
because when you think of a homeless shelter, right away you think of showering facilities,
food, mental health, medical. We have none of that.
And I can tell you that the folks that are paying
a lot of rent inside South Station were beside themselves.
Commuters coming in, in the morning were beside themselves.
This isn’t me getting it thirdhand, and I personally would respond.
I would say a vast majority of, probably weren’t even homeless.
And it’s impossible for us,
I wouldn’t ask my officers to subject themselves to all kinds of accusations just to go around
and pick and choose who should stay in there and who shouldn’t.
I think we need to come up with a better solution.
I’m willing to hire people
and transport people all over the city, all night long.
We want to be good and responsible neighbors and we want to do our part.
But just from seeing that firsthand, I think we were almost causing more harm than good.
None of the folks who left South Station when the overnights ended,
very few of them ended up out in the street in places we saw.
They migrated to other places.
We have to work together to make sure that the transportation is offered,
that the shelter capacity we’ve added is available.
The most humane thing that we can do for people
who find themselves in the middle of a very bad weather situation
is to get them to the place where they can get the support and the resources they need.
Get a meal, there’s a bathroom, there’s a shower and there’s support there.
Leaving them at South Station especially some of the more vulnerable folks...
I feel like the public position,
we’re in a strong position to say that the T is stepping up doing what it does best.
Transportation.
The weekly outreach meetings on Tuesdays
we’re making sure that we have represent... because the other first responders,
the Boston Police Department, District I,
the Boston EMS, the Squad 80 Group,
and the State Police are all at that meeting.
Making sure we have conversations in those meetings about how the outreach networks can help.
Anything in your pockets?
Do you have anything in your pockets, ma’am?
- Any metal in your pockets? Phone, keys? - Belt?
No, belt's fine. Just your pockets
Have a good one, sir.
The Fair Housing Act of 1968 pretty much eliminates
or it makes it illegal for anyone to discriminate
when it comes to housing, especially for certain classes of people
based on race, gender, color, sexual orientation and a bunch of other things.
Currently, House and Urban Development has proposed a new rule.
It’s proposing a new rule under the Trump Administration.
And as you know,
the Fair Housing Act of 1968 has for the last 50 years governed or guided
the laws of fair housing.
What’s happening is that with this new rule,
under the Fair Housing Act, let me start by saying that there’s a portion they call Disparate Impact.
Under Disparate Impact what it does is it allows a complainant,
meaning anybody that has a complaint of discrimination happening in housing
against a policy or practices that are happening to bring a complaint, formerly bring a complaint
against a bank, landlord, lender, or any kind of housing provider.
So, currently what’s happening is
the HUD wants to propose a rule
that is going to make it basically next to impossible for people
or anyone who is
experiencing any kind of discrimination under the Disparate Impact Rule,
to be able to bring a complaint. How this will work is:
currently there’s a very neutral task for it. All that needs to be shown
is that there is a...
whatever the policy or practice is has a wide reaching discriminatory effect.
But under this new rule what’s going to happen is that
anyone that brings these complaints
will now have to show not only that it’s doing this, but also intent.
That whomever the housing provider is,
has these policies or practices that are happening
and not only do they have them, but they intend to discriminate against
a person of color, race, gender, sexual orientation, what have you.
The problem with this is that
it makes it next to impossible because people who normally bring these complaints don’t have the time,
the money, the resources under the current rule as it is to do this.
That’s why we’re able to investigate if such a thing happens.
Under the current Disparate Impact Rule we’re able to look into it.
Or HUD is able to look into it and investigate and figure out if this is happening.
With this new rule it makes it next to impossible.
And it shifts the burden onto the complainant. The complainant will now have to show this
that it’s happening. So we have written a letter along with the Mayor to challenge
the Federal government on it. Challenge HUD on this new proposed rule.
Our department has linked up with other city agencies
and we have been part of the comment period that is currently open
and the Mayor has also written a letter to HUD
opposing this new rule because if it does in fact pass,
then this thing not only is it going to affect how we currently
do fair housing under the Disparate Impact Rule,
but it has far more wide reaching effects which is an attack against civil rights.
Because the Fair Housing Act was enacted under civil rights.
And if you can erode this rule then you can erode civil rights,
when it comes to discrimination, segregation, voting rights,
equal opportunity in employment because these things we all follow the same thinking process.
And it’s under the civil rights umbrella. So if HUD is able to do this
that means later they’re going to be able to attack all these other civil rights
that the country has fought for over the last 51 years to make sure
that people have or are being treated fairly.
So, this is a really huge thing at the moment.
We don’t know what’s going to happen with it.
We’ve submitted a comment letter. We encouraged all of the other FHIPs and FAPs,
fair housing providers and the agencies that are involved in this work,
to submit comment letters as well too.
The mayor wrote a really good comment letter
that hopefully we’re praying we get some traction with HUD.
But in the event that it doesn’t pass, a
and the HUDs new proposal rule does pass, then we are now in a situation where
basically we are watching the erosion of civil rights in the country.
What do we have here in Boston
that highlights the strength of diversity and of our immigrant population?
How can we celebrate what unites us here in the City?
And having Boston be a city of immigrants
with a majority, minority population?
What do we have to say here
and what can we do to really communicate
and celebrate that our diversity makes us stronger
and it actually leads us back to one another and to a sense of unity
and solidarity with one another? And that is that our diversity
and our strength really comes from the immigrant population.
So that’s really where it came from.
Just really thinking about how can we highlight these intersecting types
of issues around health which have to do with food,
with the activity that we started with
at the Armenian Heritage Park starting with walking and physical activity and meditation.
And then coming over here and being,
and having a cooking class to sort of celebrate all of us being together,
healthy food and again, all the ethnic cultures of Boston.
That was really the goal of this series,
to break down some of the barriers that have historically existed here in Boston
and sort of, by being next to one another, by being together sort of
create the sense of community
that really exists and breakdown some of the separations that have historically
existed here in the City.
So the meal that we’re going to demonstrate today
is Shrimp Lo Mien.
So Mien in Chinese means noodles.
And Lo in Cantonese means stirred. So it’s a stir fried noodle.
And noodles in the Chinese cuisine symbolizes longevity and prosperous life.
Traditionally, it’s served at celebrations such as Chinese New Year or birthdays.
So, for the sauces we are going to use today
is oyster sauce, low sodium soy sauce, cooking wine and a little bit of sugar.
Some spices, either chili powder or the pepper, black pepper.
And it will also give it a flavor without adding too much salt.
That’s what we call rice noodle.
So it has different flavor and goes with different kind of sauces
and a lot of people from China, they go back to their home town just to have that dish of
the noodles that were in their childhood memory.
And we also put a tablespoon of our cooking wine
and just to give it a little flavor\and also to reduce
the fishy smell in the shrimp as well.
Now we put into the shrimp.
So the shrimp is already cooked
for our demonstration, but we do recommend
to prepare the protein separately from our noodles
just to make sure that it’s cooked all the way through
and then reach the internal temperature that’s recommended.
55 % of Bostonians
are non-White, so in addition to be a majority city of color, we are also
a city of immigrants. And so 28 % of Bostonians are foreign born
and come from about 150 countries of origin.
Immigrants own 33 % of incorporated businesses
And in 2014, according to Brookings Institute,
Boston was ranked number one in terms of income inequality.
By 2017, they ranked us number seven and that was due primarily
to the increase of income in the lower income brackets.
And the Federal Reserve Banks' Boston’s Color of Wealth Report,
it listed different things. First it was the first report to
break out net worth by ethnic groups.
It’s a fascinating report if you have a chance to look at it,
but for Black Americans, U.S. Blacks as it listed it,
the net worth, median net worth for U.S. Black families was $8.00.
And the medium net worth for White families in the same period of time $247,000.
This is not something we’re proud of.
Many Bostonians are
under employed, over credentialed,
so meeting with companies and doing a comparison on their job postings,
in Boston versus job postings around the country,
we’ve got some folks,
I won’t name them, but
we looked at one company and like 100 % of their jobs you need a Bachelor's.
And it’s like really?
And then when you look at like jobs around the country it’s just not true.
And so having conversations with employers that allow us to access those jobs is important.
Jobs are a big part of the work that we do.
So the Boston Resident’s Job Policy which was a policy that was developed in 1983,
was recently updated by Mayor Walsh. And this policy essentially
mandates that in the construction space
where there is any private development, or public development that is looking for a private
variances or any kind of public approval,
we are mandating
51 % of those on a construction site be Boston residents,
40 % people of color, and 12 % women.
And this is something that
is really important because the construction jobs end up being pretty good jobs.
And so part of that is creating a pipeline
in working with the Unions and others to make sure that we have a diverse workforce
so that we can hit those numbers.
The other one frankly though is the new
good jobs policy that the City just announced on RFPs.
So any City land that is being disposed of,
the Mayor announced that we will be looking for a good jobs analysis, or a good jobs program
for the permanent jobs that will be built or attracted to
the developments built on City land.
We don’t have the necessary legal levers to demand certain wages,
so we set criteria definition for what good jobs are and certain wages and benefits and conditions.
And we want the developer to respond to that.
Once the developer responds to that program and says
here’s what we’re going to do in front of the community and of the City,
we will then codify them in the City agreement to what’s going to happen on that land.
We are leasing the land so we will have
serious legal levers on any lease, on what they should be doing with permanent jobs.
On the small business side, the other piece is following the
Federal Reserve Bank's Color of Wealth Report, we do believe that there is
an ethnic strategy to wealth creation.
So the ethnic groups are very different in how they approach wealth and wealth creation.
So, how do you have the conversation with the immigrant communities?
And the different immigrant communities look very different.
Some immigrant communities are
high unemployment so their employment rate for some of the immigrant communities.
Cape Verdean’s, which is an immigrant group here, from West Africa,
their employment numbers are really high,
but their entrepreneur numbers are really low.
It does something for income, but does nothing for wealth.
How do you have that conversation with that community;
When you look at the Black community which is very diverse in Boston,
when you look at the U.S. Blacks,
it’s one picture. When you look at Caribbeans,
the Blacks from the Caribbean, it’s a different picture.
How do you help to think about
what’s happening there and how we have different strategies.
So we’re rolling out and we haven’t announced this publicly,
but we’re rolling out conversations that are ethnic based. The BDPA has
set up some research around it. We’ve got some numbers.
We did an internal presentation recently
and we’re going to roll out ethnic based conversations to have a conversation about the difference
in approach in our ethnic communities, not bad or good.
But we’re going to put out the number,
we’re going to set up panels of people from the community to have the conversation
about what this might mean and what might be new strategies
and how we can approach this to make sure we’re having
a very responsive conversation about the economy that people live in.
We’re now mandating that people tell us how their team
is diverse and inclusive in all areas. And then we will score them on that
diversity inclusion in a way obviously
that those who are more diverse
and inclusive of women and people of color on their construction team,
on their design team, on the development team,
on finance, on operation, on ownership.
And so we’re driving to use public assets for...
and align it to the Mayor’s agenda.
We’re also asking that people work with us
in terms of what the community has said it wants to see in the neighborhood.
The recent RFP that we put out is actually in response to what's called Plan Dudley Square.
And we’re making sure that there is clarity between alignment on what the community has asked for
and what these developments are bringing. The second innovation is we picked
a neighborhood, following
the first comprehensive citywide plan that Boston’s done in 65 years,
or 50 depending on how you look at it, alled Imagine Boston 2030,
to pilot an effort of trying to develop a neighborhood
without displacing the neighborhood.
One of the strategies called for the City being more aggressive in acquiring property.
It’s something we’re doing now on the housing side as well.
We are out there acquiring existing property
and not trying to just create affordability on new developments that are coming.
How do we go after the high risk property, buy them and then make them permanently affordable,
hopefully making the tenants the owners of those properties.
So now we’re doing that on a neighborhood wide scale in Upham’s Corner,
acquiring as much property as possible before we launch any kind of public conversation
around the development of those properties. The third one would be
working with corporations that are coming to Boston
who are looking for tax incentives or any kind of incentive to relocate to our city.
Or bring a headquarter to our city. We have an agreement with Amazon
who is building about a million square feet in the Seaport
which equates about 4,000 jobs in two waves.
2,000 for the first wave, another 2,000 for the second wave.
There’s an agreement with Amazon that we will use a linkage fees
that that construction is producing
to create a workforce,
development and placement program specifically for those 2,000.
We’re meeting with HR this December. We’re going to look at the criteria’s, skills, what’s needed.
We’re then going to work with Tren and her team
on an RFP that looks at the workforce development in being specific
in designing that pipeline, or that journey to those jobs.
This is something we’re doing more and more of
is linking the employers or employment opportunity to the development
and programs that are happening all the way down to high schools.
Which is something we didn’t talk about here, but Boston’s effort to map
the job development ecosystem and then link it in a way that it’s more effective and evaluated.
The concept of resilience is a powerful one.
It resonates with every aspect of city life and planning
in our city and what we do in our city every day.
And our decision to focus
on our racial equity work was important to our city to move on.
And to move forward really. Not move on, move forward.
It’s something that’s important.
I grew up in Boston in Dorchester during the bussing, when bussing came in.
I was at grammar school
and I used to walk to...
my mother and father are immigrants from Ireland.
And when they came here they sent me to parochial school, Catholic school.
I used to walk by the William E. Russell every day in the early 70s
and the kids would come up in the school buses, but they were led
by motorcycle police officers.
And there was a motorcycle police officers behind them, and one on each side.
And they were moving kids in and out of schools and I thought that was
a little hard when you think I’m walking down to St. Margaret’s down the street.
We’re walking down to school and these kids are being escorted by the police. Not understanding at that time
what was going on because I was six and seven and eight years old.
I wasn’t really sure what was happening and going on.
Since that time Boston has made some progress.
And we’ve worked on that progress with other elected officials
and talking about addressing the disparities,
addressing racism and addressing the past that we’ve experienced in the City of Boston.
But the disparities remain deep
and there’s a real, the distrust we have is real in a lot of areas of our society.
People wanted more open and honest conversations
and I saw the duty as a Mayor who’s a White Mayor,
Irish Catholic White Mayor of Boston,
to start by listening and learning.
And that’s something important you have to do because
if you get somebody making conversation and trying to make up answers,
like I did when I was a candidate, it’s not the way to go. And I did that as a candidate.
Trying to see what I could do.
A city can’t thrive if we’re disconnected from each other.
And that’s something also important as far as the work that we do moving forward.
Racial disparities are our deepest form of disconnection that we have in this country.
And I realize in Boston we can’t solve the problems of the United States of America in here.
What we can do is work on the issues that we’re dealing with here in Boston
and hopefully other cities will see what we’re doing
and mistakes we might make, they won’t have to make those mistakes.
And what is successful in our city,
they can say OK this is something we can do and use in our cities.
We were just in Columbia, South Carolina
with Mayor Stephen Benjamin a couple weeks ago, about 40 mayors I think there,
and inevitably this conversation comes up about equity and race. And we tie it into
what happens on a national level, but we also come to saying that the impact can be made locally.
All it takes is one city.
One city to do something about it. To be able to share best practices and ideas.
That’s what we do as Mayors, as cities, as city councils.
That’s what legislatures do: they take ideas from each other and use best practices.
I just continue to have these dialogues, continue to have these conversations
and hopefully we can continue to move forward as a City of Boston, but also as a country.
The Food Bank is a great partner to the City of Boston.
They work closely with our Office of Health and Human Services and Office of Food Access as they do with the State.
They’re member of our Boston Food Access Council
and we all know how important this partnership is.
One out of every 6 Bostonians struggle with food insecurity.
We’ve added 20,000 new jobs every year for the last five years.
We have $9 billion dollars of new development going on in the City of Boston.
We’ve built almost 28,000
new homes in the City of Boston in the last five years.
We have great prosperity in the City of Boston right now
and one out of every six Bostonians are struggling with food insecurity.
That’s the message today.
That’s something that we need to work together to tackle this issue
to get that number to zero. No one should have
to worry about where their next meal’s coming from.
Everyone deserves access to food and that’s everyone’s basic human right.
In Boston, we need to know that that work of fighting hunger is important
and the impact that we’re doing in fighting has to go much further.
I don’t know what it’s going to take the United States Congress and Senate
to recognize the need for gun legislation.
And also, we can look at Boston and see when we have a homicide in Boston,
you can generally tie it back to poverty,
maybe dropping out of school, lack of education, desperation, whatever it might be.
I don’t think anyone’s ever done a real study on what’s going on with these mass shootings.
These mass shootings don’t happen in other countries.
They happen in the United States of America. They’re targeting seniors, religious groups, kids
and nightclubs. It’s the second nightclub shooting
in the last couple of years here and Pulse was the first.
Something has to give here.
You can only protect the NRA for so long.
They have an obligation, the National Rifle Association,
if they don’t want to change the laws,
they have an obligation to the American people to come up with some solutions.
When Purdue Pharma, I’m not going to give him credit here,
had their back put up against a wall on oxycodone, they tried to offer some solutions.
The Labor Movement, when their back's up against the wall they have to come up with solutions.
The NRA needs to be held responsible and accountable for coming up with solutions.
And if we can’t pass legislation maybe that’s the route we have to take.
The NRA is allowing
mass shootings to happen by not letting any action happen in the Congress and that’s a sin.
The ultimate goal of making this stuff usable, at getting out here to West Roxbury
is one way to get to this data, but if we get it all online you don’t have to travel all the way up here.
Let’s say somebody is looking at
a governor’s mansion in Virginia and wants to compare it to the governor’s mansion in Massachusetts,
they may not even have to do anything more than open a computer
to get all of our data.
They might have to email or call us to find out
what do we mean by this or that or the other thing,
but the more accessible our data is the more usable it is.
Frankly, the more usable it is even here. So when I look for something,
I either have to know which box of the 2000 boxes we have contains the artifact
or I can look it up on our searchable database and open it up.
If a researcher comes in looking for a certain type of artifact
I can actually search our entire database to see if we have it or
how many do we have and what sites it turns up in.
And within 20 minutes Sarah or I could get out to the box and pull it for researcher.
Which is how it works. Usually when I get research requests, somebody will say,
I want to look at one particular type of ceramic.
If I don’t know where every piece of that ceramic is in our two million artifacts,
I can’t make it accessible to them even though I know we might have some of it.
It’s making them usable by people who may not even know that
we have these collections. I, myself am still learning what we have every day.
I haven’t seen most of this stuff, even while we were digging,
because I was in the home most of the time, not seeing the actual artifacts, but...
there’s some really cool stuff here.
Can I talk about the clams real fast because the clams are really cool.
I’ll take it all.
When we were digging we got down to the very bottom of the site and we hit a layer of clay
which is this deposit here, in the very bottom of our site.
It was manmade as far as
where it came from because there’s little bits of brick in it, so we know it wasn’t natural clay deposit.
But it’s a blue clay. We call it Boston blue clay.
And it’s a marine clay that was deposited by the glacier
right after the glacier left. It melted a lot of soil.
Basically the ground that Boston is was pushed down by the glacier
and when the glacier melted it was still down a little bit deep.
It’s almost like jumping off a dock. The ground bounces up after the glacier leaves.
But before that happened the ocean flooded Boston.
So we have a couple thousand years around 10,000, 15,000 years ago
where Boston was under water completely. And then it bounced back up above water.
But during that time it laid a huge deposit of clay
and that’s the Boston blue clay. And you see it in construction sites all over the place.
We found clay that was then dug up by somebody probably in the
late 1800s, early 1900s and they used it to line something,
we’re not even sure what it is. A cistern, a water collection, something like that.
And they dug up the clay and they pulled out all of these shells in the clay still.
These were stuck in the clay from where they dug it out. So these are actually clams that were living in Boston
when it was flooded that are between 11,000 and 15,000 years old.
So these are like prehistoric clams. They’re really thick. They’re huge.
And it’s just really kind of fun to see them from 11,000 years ago stuck in the clay,
scallop in two soft shell clams.
I just think they’re really cool to find. Basically they’re fossils.
We don’t get to find a lot of fossils in archeology so we don’t do dinosaurs,
but it’s nice to happen every once in a while.
In that deposit we also have artifacts from the 1700s, like this
1800s, like this glass. And 15,000 year old clams.
Not very typical, but it’s interesting.
Do minority and women owned businesses face any barriers
when it comes to city contracting?
The disparity study is designed to assess that question in a number of different ways.
So first, we’ll look at the degree to which minority and women owned businesses
participate in city contracts relative to their availability for that work.
I’ll unpack those terms in just a few minutes.
We’ll also provide a comprehensive analysis of the local marketplace to help understand
whether minorities, women and minority and women own businesses
face any barriers working in the Boston region, and whether any of those barriers lead to
less success with city contracting in particular.
We’ll also provide a comprehensive review of the contracting policies
and program measures that the city uses to help identify
any policies or practices that might be inadvertently
making it more difficult for small businesses and minority and women owned businesses
to compete successfully for city contracts.
Then we’ll also provide a great deal of insight and recommendations
around how the City can refine
the programs it uses to encourage minority and women owned businesses' participation
and what programs it can consider using in the future.
Educate me a little bit about this.
Disparity studies. I’ve been in this business in my industry for the past 30 years.
I have encountered all kind of difficulties and I’m still a small contractor after 30 years in business.
When you say disparity study, meaning a study that is a doubt.
Is there a doubt that this exists?
Because I find it in this 30 years the difficulty in contracts
for me to achieve all years in the study. I don’t think there should be a kind of a doubt.
Maybe we're looking for proof.
But I been part of it and not too long ago,
I was a minority in a contract, a State contract with housing.
I was a third tier subcontract
just so I can fill the minority quorums,
but there is a major company, let’s say White right in front of me to hire me just for that.
Is that something why wouldn’t I be directly to the GC?
Why do I have to be second and third tier?
So we know that thing happens where connections are made to just use us for the particular.
I’m sorry if I’m out of the equation
or I’m getting out of the point that we’re talking.
But for the past 30 years,
I can feel it... If the dollar is taken green,
I’m suddenly all the qualifications... I can’t meet them.
Usually like I was speaking here to Greg,
I cannot do a 20 or let’s say $10 million, let’s say $2 million project.
But I have 10, 12, sometimes 15, $200,000 projects.
I can do 20, as many as 200, but at one
then so really you'll see that
what is there that is something to keep us or keep me still on that $200-300,000,
but where the dollar is greener. So the disparity is there.
If it’s proof you’re looking, you come to me. I’ve been a victim of it for the past years.
It’s been very hard for a small company like myself to grow.
And usually I find let’s say major stream what do you call it,
not by using the color of the skin,
but the mainstream companies in five years in construction,
they do it in 20 or 30 million and they speeding up there.
And what we say if you really want to help this,
I don’t understand that in bigger companies, bigger projects.
Like I heard Honeywell has so many million dollars, negotiated contract with the city.
The casino was negotiated.
Why with a small contractor so we can’t negotiate with the city
to get that has to be different ways of doing it
that we can sit down and negotiate contracts and make sure we eliminate that gap.
Suddenly with us it’s illegal. With major companies it’s not illegal. That’s my point.
Question is there. I think essentially it was
why do the disparity studies? So there’s a belief on the ground that
these barriers exist.
So there’s a few reasons why we have to go through this process.
One is as researchers we, as strong as though, as strong as
our feeling is that these barriers might exist or not,
we’ve got to do the work and understand and look for evidence,
objective evidence that this exists. The reason why is because
in order for the city to develop its program
and for the city to develop a program that can stand up to legal scrutiny,
there has to be objective evidence in place
that they can point to that informs what programs they use and why they’re using those programs.
That’s really the reason.
I wouldn’t use the word doubt necessarily,
but it’s really an exercise in making sure that we’re gathering
the evidence that the city needs to make sure that it’s tailoring its program appropriately.
That’s really what it comes down to.
There is no doubt that there are disparities that exist in doing business.
There’s no doubt that there are disparities in our economy.
In fact, the Mayor would be very clear and has been very clear,
his number one priority right now is addressing
inequities that exist in the participation of our economy.
All over the City.
Now we think the inequities that exist in the participation in doing business with the City
is where we need to put real effort and try to lead.
And so there’s been historic
challenges doing business with women owned and minority owned businesses here in the City
way before we got in,
and there are systemic barriers and policy barriers.
And we want to address them.
We’ve been doing things
and there also have been challenges,
legal challenges to policies that the City
before we got into office, but all over the country,
whenever a City adopts a policy
that begins to work with one group or another, people will challenge it.
And say hey, is that fair? Is that not fair?
BBC, Sameer, is representing the city’s effort to make sure that we are well informed
when we introduce any of these policies.
And more importantly, that they can stand up in court.
Good boy.
So the good news is to take his temperature I don’t have to put a thermometer in him.
I have a scanning thermometer I can just put on his skin.
And it’s going to scan for his temperature.
- Perfect. He doesn’t have a fever. - He’s neutered correct?
So the plan for today because he’s already got his rabies vaccine,
we’re going to do a distemper parvo vaccine.
We're going to give him a kennel cough vaccine which is a drop that has to go into his nose.
We’re going to give him a de-wormer and we’ll do a blood test.
We’re testing him for heartworm disease. That’s transmitted by mosquitoes
and it’s a horrible disease
to have to treat that’s really easy to prevent.
Distemper. Ready?
What was that? Nothing.
Rabies. I’m sorry little girl.
So you want to giver her a bath now?
You can call 1-800-PETMEDS and ask for a prescription
of heartworm medication and they’ll call here to verify that the test was clean.
But the way to keep him healthy
is to have him on the preventive medicine once a month, all around the year.
This organization is incredible.
Morgan Memorial we all have a story growing up of Morgan Memorial
and Goodwill, providing opportunities for training,
for housing, for food,
for supplies, for clothing,
helping people. This organization has always wrapped its arms around people that are in need.
It’s one of our largest employers for people with disabilities. I want to thank you as well for the great work you do there.
I want to thank all the people that are here today that we had the honor of serving.
Thank you for letting us serve you today. Thank you for letting us be part of this day.
Thanksgiving is...
one of those holidays I think that
allows us the opportunity to come and serve somebody else.
And a chance to see people and it should fill our hearts with gratitude for what we have.
And on behalf of myself and all the folks from the City and the State,
I want to thank you because my heart is filled with gratitude today
because of the great work that Goodwill does
and the great work of the young people and the people that are here today.
So I’m going to stop talking and then we’re going to have, we’re going to have dancing.
Will the runners go to the kitchen and dinner will start.
We’re going to be doing the general contracting. We’re the developer and the property manager
and this is some of the additional organizations that we have.
We’re very proud of Cruz’s Care because it’s a nonprofit that does
outreach to youth. We mentor young people, we take them on trips, we do computer learning.
We do all kinds of backpack giveaways, but the most important thing is we spend time
with youth that live on our properties because we think mentorship
and interaction is vital in young people’s lives.
And next slide.
We also have heard through the community in this process,
about the wealth gap that exists.
And we all know in the Black community the wealth gap
between Blacks and Whites is 275,000
for an average White family and 750 for an average Black family.
So one of the things that we made as part of our mission in this proposal
is to give as much back economically to the community
and leave it better than we find it.
We just want to give folks a bit of sense of what we do from a payroll standpoint.
This is the last seven years. You'll see our people
of color percentages go up from 77 to 93.
Boston residents are in the 60’s. Women and Section 3 workers.
And we continue to put money back in the community.
And this is not only on an employee’s standpoint,
but on a business standpoint.
We think it’s very important that we support local businesses of color.
So these are MBE numbers.
Utilization of firms of color in the last seven years.
And you see out of 152 million of total development costs that we’ve done on average
75 to 78 % have gone to firms of color. And you look at the worker hours.
We’ve hit as much as 95 % on 35,000 hours.
So again it’s about Ngiving back to the community.
To talk about the program, it’s now 160 units. When we were selected it was 150.
But as you get more into design
and more finite layouts you find that you have a little bit more footprint.
So right now, it’s 160 units of which 105 are home ownership condominiums
and there’s 15,500 square feet of retail space.
That’s also an increase
from when we were designated because during, we’ve had about nine meetings
with DND, BPDA and part of the feedback,
most of the feedback we incorporated
and you’ll see in the design we have more of a street presence
and as that evolved it opened up for more retail space.
So you’ll see when they do the architectural
that our retail space has in fact increased.
Estimated real estate tax, people ask us, is about $700,000 annually.
As some of you know, as part of our community benefits we are going to be leasing space
to the NAACP at no cost for 10 years.
In addition to that we’ve endowed a $5,000 scholarship
annually for 10 years for them to allocate anyway that they want.
We also have agreed, YouthBuild Boston for those of you who aren’t familiar,
is an organization that trains young people in the trades.
Helps them get on a straight path.
We’ve committed $100,000 to that organization over five years.
Plus we’re going to hire at least one YouthBuild graduate
in every major trade or during the life of the development.
The life of the construction and we have estimated that to be about 20 positions.
Community benefits should be driven by the community
and not by a developer.
I’m not taking issue with that. It’s a broad statement that I’m making.
It’s not targeted at crews specifically.
What, in that sort of proposal and package can we revisit and look at
and really build more consensus around from the community’s perspective
as to what they would like to see as a community benefit.
Much of what you listed out
of course NAACP, I’m not sure they need 1,000 square feet of space.
And some of the others that are noble endeavors, but could there be others?
And that make more sense particularly for this site?
So I would just like to hear,
I think from not only the IAG group,
but also from the community
and have that community benefits process be more
inclusive of what the community wants,
as opposed to relationships that developers have with specific groups of people.
It may not be that thing, but it can look like that.
For us to go a little deeper on that.
I would like to respond.
We tried to get out ahead of...
Anytime we put in a proposal, as part of that we think about the benefits back to the community.
And I think the Roxbury Strategic Master Plan Oversight Committee asks the question,
how come the Cruz’s proposal has benefits and none of the other’s had them?
And it’s because we always try to be proactive.
So we can always have a discussion.
You know John’s always open to having conversations and considering things.
But we made a commitment to the NAACP in writing.
That not only would we give them free space for 10 years...
Not to date myself, but when I was growing up the NAACP was on Mass Ave, the prominent side.
You drive by you see them, you had ethnic pride because you knew their mission.
Now, unfortunately
they’re in the Washington Park Mall where no one sees them.
So we thought it was an excellent idea
to have them visible, where better than in Dudley Square.
When people come down. So we made that agreement with them.
We also made an agreement to fund a scholarship
at $5,000 a year for at least 10 years that they would have the control
to determine who got it. We wouldn’t be involved in that at all,
just from the vantage point of giving them the money.
And with YouthBuild. YouthBuild does a great job.
If you’re not aware of them just Google them.
Not that a lot of organizations don’t, but they do a great job
taking our troubled youth
and turning them around when their next step is either incarceration
or they have to turn their lives around. And so we thought that that was a high priority
for us to make a commitment on
and providing jobs. We’ve worked with them before, in fact
John has hired at least 10 YouthBuild graduates
in probably the last 10 or 15 years because we think it’s so important.
It’s like ex-offenders. They need a chance. They need another chance.
So, conversation on community benefits
is not off the table, but the ones that we’ve given
we feel like we’ve given our word to those people.
To those organizations. It would be hard to go back and say,
we’ve changed our mind.
Community benefits should be driven by the community.
It should have its focus come from the community.
I understand that you as a developer and others want to, some of you,
not all developers want to get ahead of that and put on the table,
meaningful, long term community benefits.
That’s the other thing and this is also more for the City that
community benefits shouldn’t just be a shot in the arm. It should be long term.
It should be, it should you know,
build equity in the community.
That’s my concern and my concern is that the voice
that carries that piece around community benefit
resonate and comes from the community.
I’m here today to tell my story on
how I got in front of the hydrant and why I’m in front of the hydrant.
First of all I’m not denying I parked there. I was wrong in parking there.
How I ended up there?
My industry’s biggest conference of the year
is September 22, 23rd. That’s something I know.
It’s also happened to be two weeks before my wife’s due date.
It was a big debate throughout the year if I should go, if I should not go.
That conference was in Rockland, Maine.
So predictably,
Tuesday night, September 23rd, I get a phone call, my wife’s having contractions.
And I race home to, from Rockland, Maine, Bar Harbor area.
So I drive home three and a half, four hours.
It’s East Boston past midnight.
There’s no parking anywhere within two miles of my house.
I’m a first time father, new father.
I have no idea what to expect. I just have to get a parking spot.
2:30 in the morning I park in front of the hydrant.
I wake up the next day and there’s not one, but two tickets on my car.
So, I’m here, letting you know I was wrong,
but as an exhausted, stressed, tired new father
that is facing a pile of medical bills, asking for reprieve from one of those tickets.
Based on the evidence you provided,
as well as the evidence provided by the Officer who wrote the tickets,
factoring what I’m allowed to factor in, legally speaking
I should deny the appeal today.
What I’m going to do however instead I’m going to dismiss both tickets.
One with a warning the other with a final warning.
That means is a couple of things.
First, in the future you got to make sure
you check where you park because especially with issues like this,
and with no stop or stands, they can tow the car if they really wanted to.
Which would not have been helpful in this entire process for you.
Second, if you filed an appeal you do need to bring
all evidence that you have that can corroborate any testimonies,
paperwork, receipts, photos, whatever.
And third, means you don’t have to pay anything today.
Thank you very much.
For the record we’re here today for ticket 754471406
issued to us in a resident permit only on 8/9/2019
at 10:09 p.m. at 343 Congress Street.
So what can you do to prove the ticket was given incorrectly.
It’s tough for me to prove the ticket was given incorrectly, but --
when I parked the car there wasn’t any sign for
resident permit parking there.
It was just a meter I thought
and I mean I lived in this town my whole life. I didn’t even know anybody lived down there.
I haven’t been down there in a long time, so
for me to park in that part of town
and think, wait a minute, this might be resident permit,
like it was the Hill or like it was the Back Bay
or like it was the South End.
I just didn’t see a sign
and I figured 9:00 I’m fine and I come out and get a ticket at 10.
I can’t understand what happened. I don’t, I just don’t know.
So what could have happened, there are some parts of Boston
where it’s resident permit after six.
So without any evidence that there isn’t a sign posted on the block,
more likely it was given correctly, but I’ll dismiss it.
Just make sure every time you park the car even if you’re at your in meter.
I have to check a little bit harder than I did that night. Certainly.
I was even on a date the other night and I’m like:
Hold on, I made her wait, I got to check the signs
Just keep going until you find a sign there, there’s always going to be one.
I just didn’t think to look. Again, because who lives down there?
Evidently a lot of people live down there now.
Maybe it’s like a new high rise or something, I’m not sure.
Back in the day, nobody lived down there.
So that’s a copy of the decision. Do you have any further questions?
Thank you for hearing me because I missed my date and everything.
- You missed your date? - Like I said, but the guy said you can.
Except for Atlantic, nothing’s that bad.
Don’t worry. It’ll get there.
Harold Street’s not bad so far.
So far it’s not bad. It’s going to be getting bad.
Starting to build up in the Sumner tunnel.
8th Street is not bad tonight.
I made a little adjustments over there earlier.
You figured they’d start diving off the highway, cutting through the back streets.
Looks like the highway is starting to slow down.
The expressway’s starting to slow down.
Everyone is going north skiing.
Got to stay ahead of the traffic. Got to stay ahead of the problem.
I might make this change permanent.
- Which one? - Upham’s corner.
I’m always doing this. I just don’t think those left turns need that much green time.
I never see that many cars making the move.
It backs up.
Some nights it doesn’t, but --
It don’t do it all the time though.
No, but it’s 50/50.
Gotta give it time. It will clear up.
What’s that? Double parked?
Hi it’s Keith from the Tech Center. Hey, how’s it going?
I’ve got a vehicle stopped in the bike lane on Congress Street at Milk Street.
Great, thanks.
I am the Executive Director of the Mayor’s Office of Women’s Advancement here in Boston
and you’re now joining a community of almost 8,000 women
that have been trained to know their worth and demand fair pay.
You may know that Latinas in Boston through the data that we measure locally,
and we are the only city that measures these pay gaps locally,
Latinas are making 49 cents to the White man’s dollar in Boston.
And then the figure nationally
is slightly different, but almost the same which makes today Latina Equal Pay Day.
We have to work up until November 1st
to make the same amount of money that White men made last year.
And so if you think that’s shocking and depressing as I do,
that’s why you’re here.
And I wanted to say thank you. You are part of the solution.
We have a two or three prong solution
that we’re working on putting together at the Mayor’s Office of Women’s Advancement.
The first part of it is training ourselves, empowering ourselves
and learning how to navigate the system as it is.
So we acknowledge that the system is unfair and that
it’s not our individual fault that we are experiencing this pay gap as Latinas.
But there is something that we ourselves can do about it and that is
learning to negotiate, learning our work, our worth,
doing our research and then demanding fair pay.
At the same time at the Mayor’s Office of Women’s Advancement we do understand
that’s only going to get us so far, so on the other hand
we are working on fixing that system and leveling it off so that
we are playing in a more equal play field.
What that entails is doing a lot of work with employers.
So that you guys will learn how to negotiate and demand your worth here,
they have to be ready for that on the other end.
We work with more than 200 employers in the greater Boston area to talk about this issue,
to get them to measure their own wage gaps and then to come together,
and learn and propose strategies for what they’re going to do about it.
Part of it is, how do you figure out for this role,
how do I know that I should be getting paid more?
Or that I should even get anything outside of just a paycheck? What is that?
With the advent, thank goodness, of the Internet,
that type of information is very readily available.
So one of the things that I did learn
at an early stage thanks to the same manager, because we had a conflict at one point.
And it was a conflict about the size of my skirt.
It taught me one of these lessons, a good negotiating point and why I researched.
Somebody complained that my skirt was too short.
Now mind you compared to these days, woo. It was like having knee length skirt.
But I asked him: would you ask or say something, say the same thing to a man?
I mean obviously at that time,
men didn’t have the option they do or --
non-binary wasn’t a thing then, so we didn’t have those types of conversations.
Then he said I’m going to teach you something.
I don’t care if you’re a woman or a man.
He said do you want people to think about these things because you’re a woman
or do you want them to think about the value that you bring into your role?
And so, he did teach me that, so part of that was
every time when I go for a new role, or I’m helping someone,
I say go look up what a man and a woman’s making for that role.
Find out what they’re making here
and what they’re making in other parts of the country.
Find out what that scale is, and then use the men’s scale.
The other thing too, when you talk about knowing your value is:
besides that number on a piece of paper,
what else should you be negotiating for? And that’s one of the great things
about doing your research between the Internet,
what the company’s offering and what other people are making.
Do you have bonus potential?
Are you moving expenses? Do you have training that’s involved, or
memberships for professional associations?
There’s so many things that you can actually negotiate,
they should all be on the table.
So how my strategy changed was I learned how to research.
I learned how to do those types of things. But the other thing I also learned how to do
and Evelyn you touched upon this. This is so very important.
Learning how to read people.
You can have all the knowledge in the world,
but if the person across from you does not want to negotiate
or you don’t think they want to negotiate, or you don’t know their negotiation style,
you may go nowhere in that conversation.
So another really important part of that negotiation is
trying to figure out a person’s negotiation style. It’s not that difficult
to be honest with you. One of the things I had to learn early on in my career
because when I started negotiating there was not that many women in my field.
So it was non’t even women of color, it was just women.
And I had to learn to hold my own
with all these men that in a lot of times I was leading, especially early in my career.
I was 23, 24 leading men that were,
had been in corporate careers for 20, 30, 40 years if not more.
So that was my first lesson because I remember,
just from a cultural type of perspective,
a gentleman from Alabama called me Sug one day.
Now I knew culturally that he wasn’t trying to be offensive
and I also knew him personally,
but I also knew that that could impact how other people looked at me.
And when you talk about value that’s not a dollar sign value at that point in time.
Although it could translate into it at a later point.
I had to go to my manager and say, I know he doesn’t mean harm by this,
but he could be creating harm
based on the fact that I’m a woman. And I’m a woman, a female negotiator.
So one of the things that I had to learn from a cultural and just the value as a woman,
was my job was a negotiator.
If I could not negotiate my salary, what was I saying to my potential employer?
So it was even more stressful to be able to put a package together.
A couple of things that I learned, I actually learned a lot from men.
I had a lot of male mentors.
Mostly because of the fact that there was no one else again in that space
that were women. And they were definitely not women of color, very seldom.
Very seldom did I ever run into a woman of color.
So I had to lean outside of that space
to actually find women and women of color who were doing something different
and that they could teach me and they could give me a voice.
So mentorship was huge for me.
Without that mentorship,
I would not have learned as a woman and as a Latina what my value was.
Then the other thing I did lean on
as far as my approach was concerned, was I watched men.
And I watched how they conducted themselves.
When you talk about learning your value,
a lot of times where I learned were at bars at happy hours.
So number one,
I was taught you should not be a woman going to a bar at happy hour with all these men.
I had to take a risk at that time in my career to say there’s something going on there.
And so I would go and have a beer or two.
And have these conversations because again, negotiation strategy.
People let their guard down at different points and it was usually at the bar for men.
The other thing that I had to learn as far as what was going on corporate America at the time?
Things were happening on the golf course.
I didn’t play golf. We played no activities. We had no money for it.
So, I went and I took golf lessons at the public golf course. I was horrible.
The first time I joined the company golf league and I would tell them, I’m horrible.
The first time that I went up to hit the ball, I missed it. And I missed it horribly.
But I told everyone. I said I told you I was not good at golf.
At least people knew I was going to play golf, but I was going to be on that golf course.
And I knew at the time that especially when I was living in Pittsburg,
there really was not that many women of color in the community,
much less in corporate America that I was doing these things, that I was representing,
so I had to be careful of my actions. I had to be careful of my words.
But when that did translate into salary,
I was at a stronger position
because people knew that I was willing to do these things
to understand what my value was.
Because at that point I wasn’t comparing myself to other women
and I definitely wasn’t comparing myself to women of color because they weren’t there.
I was learning what to do and what my value was compared to a guy,
compared to a White man.
And so that was huge for me as far as my career in negotiation was concerned.
We had a shooting today at Quincy and Ceylon Street.
It was a guy on a -- a kid on a scooter.
The scooter’s been recovered,
but the suspect’s still outstanding.
Pull it up, it’s on the brick, but I printed out
like 15 copies so you guys can grab one if you need to.
Check your emails. It’s in there.
Otherwise, we’ll be on the lookout for him.
And 7 p.m., the 201 -- what did I say 201 was?
Hogan and Lahey. You guys do
the Gloucester versus Boston Latin game up at Madison Park.
Go up there. A couple code 19s. Or just drive around at 7 p.m., take a look
and let us know if anything needs attention up there.
I remain concerned about the precedent
establishing past practice of this committee to approve such a request as this
of allowing the increase in enrollment for a school,
when we know that the current physical capacity of their building
is not equal to what we are proposing going to.
And that we’re setting ourself up for a year or two years from now,
the school rightfully coming back to us and saying,
'we expect a bigger facility,
'you told us we were going to have a bigger facility'.
And this is something that
this committee has perpetually done time after time.
This is no reflection on the school.
But I’m concerned we’re setting up a conflict
a year or two from now
when you’re trying to expan to your approved enrollment level
particularly when there’s a lot of demand for your school because you’re doing
really good things there with some youth who are very challenged.
You’re doing outstanding work.
And yet, unless I hear otherwise,
the answer I have here was about suspension, but was not yet about facilities.
This is a long setup to then hear from the Superintendent on
where the District stands
about what we will do for facilities
because I remain deeply concerned about approving this amendment.
I recognize we’re in a challenge. We’re doing this because of the State review.
And yet we’re setting up a problem a year from now.
I believe there was testimony last time that the school is already well in excess of its
approved enrollment and so part of what is in front of us right now
is an opportunity to right size the maximum enrollment of the school
that would capture what the excess enrollment will be.
So that’s not an excuse and that’s not
a total answer for what your question is, but I think
just to give that context, we are serving through the current building,
or the current facility, students in excess of what our current allotment is.
So there is a need for an additional building
or additional space. I don’t want to presuppose a building.
And within that context I think that might be helpful for the District to further
elaborate on its own comments on the facilities from the last meeting.
But Mr. Chair, correct me if I’m wrong. We are not just approving
for the Charter, for the enrollment to go up to what the existing enrollment is right now,
we’re going beyond that which would allow the school to expand
particularly in the 2.0, right? So this is a kind of a newer program.
So this will be an expansion for the school, it’s not just --
part of it is correcting where they are, right?
I agree with you, but just help me out with that.
Absolutely and I want to just make sure that within the context of that,
the increase is not 100 students.
The increase to the approved maximum enrollment is 100 students.
But the increase I believe in the actual enrollment is --
can you help me out with what that number might be?
Next year is 430. And the enrollment is 405 in our Charter.
- And this is a multiyear enrollment? - Over 3 years.
The idea would be to grow 100.
- Grow 100 additional students? - To 505.
To 505.
That’s 100 additional students, but over your existing maximum enrollment.
- its’ about 70? - 70.
70 students over your actual enrollment.
- And that will require new physical space. - More space.
So, we’re setting ourselves up here for a big challenge.
So we’re not proposing simply
to adjust the amendments to the actual enrollment right now,
but we’re proposing now to allow them to expand
for students that we know we do not yet have space for.
We cannot identify specific space so we can’t say a plan is part of it.
Am I correct in that?
I can tell you that we are committed
to finding space for the current students who are offsite already.
So we will be finding space for them regardless.
They’re currently in an offsite location this year.
- They’re in the Dearborn? - In the Dearborn.
And Dearborn’s going to need that space next year?
So we already know we need to find some space for them?
But now we’re talking about additional space beyond that.
This is a great problem to have.
It’s because you’re an outstanding school doing outstanding work.
There is huge demand. When we talked to folks at the Reengagement center,
they would love to have so many more students there.
It’s not about a bad problem.
But it’s a problem that we’ve done over and over again here.
And that’s what concerns me.
I wonder if we can come to a compromise
of what the enrollment actually is for the building
and come back and have this conversation.
In order to capably serve
the varied and diverse
and high needs populations within our district, we need to be able to
walk and chew gum at the same time. Be able to move these programs forward
while we also continue to think about how we are best creating the facilities
and the architecture around the district to support these programs.
I’m wondering if it may be better for us since we’re improving policy
just to make it clear that we’re approving you to 435 or whatever the number is immediately
and to 505 contingent upon finding a suitable facilities solution for the school.
So the school and their leadership and their students and their staff
know that this is a priority for the school committee
to find that solution for the school.
And that we’re also very supportive of the school
because we know the population they’re serving is critical.
But also now it’s a school committee by policy,
putting it back to the District that it’s critical we find a solution.
Not putting it solely on the back of the Superintendent to say,
we’re going to find something.
My recommendation at this point would be
rather than change the number which would require a whole new process of approval,
that we table the current request
until we have completed their satellite location identification
and we will bring this back to you
subsequently with that space solution connected to it.
What about simply adding the sentence
to the approval that
the expansion is subject to finding an appropriate facility solution?
Does that create a problem?
Thinking about
the issue that the Interim Superintendent just laid out,
I suppose an approval like that
would allow the District to move forward
simply upon notification to the committee at a later date that space has been found.
And so what that would then do would be--
it would simply be delaying the opportunity for BDA to move forward to the State
and seek the approval for the full 505 at a later date.
In other words, we would be taking care of our committee business this evening
with that provision
and in the alternative,
if we were to table this we would be voting at a later date.
Either way, it’s going to result in
an action from BDA to DESE
that follows the identification of space for these students.
So, you know, I think it’s probably six of one, half dozen of the other.
We do think that’s a wise path forward. It allows
the current Charter proposal as presented to be approved,
but the approval of moving beyond the 435
is contingent on us coming back to you with their offsite space plan.
So if you want to propose the amending language
that would give them the approval
and also make it clear that before we submit it to DESE,
we will have come back to you with the space plan.
Alison, if that buys you the right amount of time?
We’re not waiting until fall next year.
No. We’re talking about before the end of this school year.
To bring it back from the very
focused conversation we had about facilities this evening.
This really isn’t about facilities. That’s just a condition precedent to
allowing you to continue to serve the population that you serve so well.
And expand that service to
a number of students across the district who really need it.
We’re very excited.
Something that was lost is that you’re also changing your enrollment policy
as part of the Charter amendments that are going forward and so,
making it easier and more accessible for students to find
high quality education at BDA
is the sum and substance of the Charter amendments that you put before us tonight.
We’re very happy to approve those and we wish you well.
And we look forward to hearing about your new location.
So your main issue is the rodents?
I found one of them dead under that cabinet. I moved the refrigerator --
I had to throw him away. He was about that big with a big fat tail.
And oh, it stunk bad.
- It pulled out the refrigerator. - You were seeing ‘em over here?
I threw one away. I killed one. I had traps under there.
Trays and they were empty. And then I smelled a bad odor. Really bad.
He was like that big. That wasn’t no mouse and he got a big fat tail with rings around it.
So it could possibly be a rat.
Did you already clean out the droppings under there?
Yeah, but I did take some pictures on my phone.
I wanted to just check around here just to make sure.
They’re possibly getting in through right there.
He’s coming through the cellar I think.
We can take a look.
But those droppings right there are pretty big.
It’s not a mouse. I had three tomatoes on the top of the counter.
They we’re smashed all over the place. I’ve never seen a mouse do that.
How often have you been seeing them?
Every day for the last month, month and a half.
Since they’ve been working on the streets.
- I can’t even sleep at night because -- - Because that’s been going on?
I mean I saw one of them running, he runs fast.
And then I hear him in the broiler there where I left him some peanut butter
and then the next day it’s half gone.
I’m surprised he’s still kicking. But there might be more than one.
This is probably the second one. There might be three or four.
Those kick plates underneath the cabinet can come out easy, they’re not nailed in.
If you kick it or-- yeah I can kick it with my foot.
- There’s definitely heavy activity down there. - I know I wasn’t imagining it.
- I’ve never seen rats before here. - You’re getting a lot.
Before this I had raccoons in my ceiling.
They dug two holes and I patched
that one, but with the heavy rain he dug a big circle in the wood
and the water was coming in and the rain, the sheetrock just came down.
Does the management usually get back to you when you try --
My sister’s got problems her side of the house. Water leaking in.
So it’s you on this side and your sister on the other side?
And my two brothers own a part of this
and one of my brothers is trying to evict me because I think
he wants to come down into my apartment which is better than his.
Got you.
I put all those in there. They’re pretty clean.
There’s no food on them, but I don’t know.
- What’s going on with the flooring? - It’s just cracking from the water.
It’s been that way for the last year or so.
It was with all the little leaks.
When you have a chance and possibly get to it sooner than later,
start scrubbing that, getting rid of that heavy build up, that grease.
- Because any sort of food source -- - He ate half of my--
I had a sponge with some food on it and he chewed half of it away.
So what you really want to do
is not leave any kind of food source out for them.
So anything like for instance these onions right here.
If you can, get a plastic container and just put them in there
at least until --
I’ll let the management or the landlord know what’s going on as far as the issue.
But in the meantime, you’re going to have to do your part.
So, that would be the stove and putting
these onions or any kind of fruit or vegetable in a plastic container.
What I’ll do is I’ll try to talk to them,
find out what’s going on.
And where the disconnect happened so hopefully we can come to some sort of resolution
where you’re not living with a pest infestation and the leaks.
Because they spread disease too.
And I try to keep it clean as I can here. I’m a bachelor right now
and living here for 18 years since I got divorced.
I’ve made my mistakes, but you know, I don’t do drugs or anything.
- I’m clean. - That’s good.
I have a glass of of wine here and there and lately my spirit's broken.
Because they want to throw me to the street after all.
Anybody’s spirit would be broken.
I’ve been going through mental health through Veterans.
And I got some anxiety pills, I’m on blood pressure pills,
baby aspirin because I got stents in my heart.
But I’m still alive. Hopefully move onto something better soon.
We’ll try to help you out as much as possible.
And I’ll talk to them to see what exactly is going on.
Anytime, and I’ll leave my card for you.
On the back of my card
I’ll leave my cell in case you have any issues or if anything comes up.
Most of this stuff will be on a 30 day notice.
Some things that I deem is an emergency will be on an emergency notice.
And so, once they get an emergency notice that’s 24 hours.
The other stuff will be 30 days so they’ll have 30 days to fix that.
What I need from you is when they come by
or when they’re letting you know
like within the 24/48 hours like
I’m going to come by and do the repairs. Just let them in.
That’s no problem. Sure.
I want the repairs to be done. Believe me.
- I know. - I don’t want to live like this.
I hear you. So, like I said I’ll touch base with you later on today
after I talk to your siblings and then we’ll take it from there.
Currently
we need to finalize the community process which we’re doing right now
and then finalize the host community agreement with the City.
And then apply to
to the Cannabis Control Commission for the provisional licenses
and then that will allow
617 to move forward with the build out and final inspections and hopefully,
ultimately license to operate.
How close are the cannabis shops going to be to the school?
How many people are you hiring? And where are you hiring them from?
I believe the closest school is about 600 feet.
To say that we just want to offer jobs is actually a misnomer.
We actually want to help people with a career.
We also have
a cultivation facilities in Southwestern Massachusetts
that’s going through licensing processes.
Anybody can get a job. That’s very easy.
But in this industry, we want to be able to mentor somebody
and to let them have a pathway to a career.
If you’re interested in edibles, we can help you with that pathway.
If you’re interested in extractions,we have a facility going up that will be able
to mentor people to go through that particular program.
If you want to be a grower,
we do have some pretty good growers on our team that would be able to mentor people
to get to a certain point where they can become successful in this industry.
And not just so they can go get a job, right?
We’re looking for pathway to a career, a mentorship program that can
really turn some things around for this neighborhood
in certain ways that a job just probably couldn’t.
How many parking spaces do you guys have dedicated to your facility?
What's it like in the surrounding area? Have you done any traffic studies?
And then how many shoppers can you physically handle inside your store?
What’s your plan for line management and overflow?
I only saw a small mantrap on that floor plan.
So I’m curious if you could address that.
Someone would come into a vestibule.
He would be identified with the proper government I.D.
and then he would buzz into the retail area there.
So, as soon as we want,
we’ll have someone outside telling everybody, have your I.D. ready.
We’ll try to move that line as fast as we can safely, professionally and securely
that allows them into the next.
And then when they make the purchase they will exit a different door
so there won’t be that backlog right there.
Are you going to have a line down the block? Are you going to have a waiting area inside?
Just these are the things you need to think about
because these situations will come up when
you’re at capacity and people are going to be standing outside.
These are things that you got to think about.
Given the neighborhood, given the location,
we absolutely think that a lot of the traffic
and customers are going to be pedestrian based as well as public transportation.
And then certainly rideshare which is being used all over the place.
When you talk, you’re speaking to the host community groups,
I’m sorry, there’s some of those groups
that are being talking to that really don’t matter.
And some of those people that you’re talking to
are making decisions for the rest of us in this room
that don’t consider us.
Like some of the people over in Savin Hill that don’t like this side of Dorchester.
So, I think when we’re talking about --
when we’re making plans about host community and talking about to the community,
I think you need to reach out to the regular people of the community
because some of these organizations and some of these little groups and meetings
don’t really give a crap about us.
And it’s all about their agenda that they have set forth. That’s one thing.
Also often in our community
we do have Asian businesses that are run,
but there’s not people that look like me that work in those Asian businesses,
I don’t want -- we’ve talked Richard so I don’t have a problem with you
and we’ve already discussed this.
I’m just concerned that are we going to make this a multicultural employment area?
Like I said, a lot of the times
the Asians that do come in our community, they don’t hire me.
We have to hire locally because that’s the easiest
community outreach we can do
and also for the operations sense is the best way to do it.
As a business owner,
once you get in here and I’m not going to say right away,
but maybe six months or a year depending how your profit goes,
are you willing to personally give something back to this community to help
educate the young African Americans, the young Cape Verdeans, the young Asians
that live in this poor community that’s riddled by gun violence
and other drugs that are not marijuana that keeps everybody calm?
If everybody was on marijuana they’d be calm someway.
Your first comment regarding the various groups that we are supposed to meet,
and I strongly use the words 'we were supposed to meet',
because a lot of those are dictated by the City.
Exactly! That’s my point.
So you know for us to jump outside of that particular parameter
is not very easy for us.
As a business man, as a lifelong resident of Boston, Massachusetts,
we would want to give back.
But because there are some things that are beyond our control as a business,
there are only so many things we can do per the host community agreement.
Now if you want to touch upon a personal stuff,
that’s a personal passion of mine to really give back
and do things for the community.
I can’t promise you anything today, but I can pledge.
Let me finish. I can pledge
that there are times we will outreach to the community.
People that think that we didn’t include them in this particular
round of talks and everything like that, because that is a personal mission for me.
That is something I hold dear and near and it's passion for me.
First things first. I need to make sure that I cross my T’s and dot my I’s with the City.
They are the ones that are in control of a lot of things in our situation here.
I just want to make sure that
whatever funds that you’re going to be giving out of your pocket
goes into a great entity in this community that really matters
and that is actually having an effect on our community.
As I said, I support you guys. I just want to make sure that you have a solid plan,
and especially around security
and the overflow thing is really, we need to address that as the young lady said
becaus we can’t have a line of people
particularly if we have people coming from like Milton or other places.
It’s kind of like Oh look at them, let’s go setup for robbery.
I want to make sure that those are addressed, OK?
I guess I want to find out from you what you’re going to do
truly to address safety concerns around the store that you’re looking to open.
We have some phenomenal officers in our neighborhood. They work extremely hard
to keep us all safe.
And it sounds like part of your public safety plan is to lean on the Polie.
And I think that’s a bit unfortunate.
There’s a lot going on in this neighborhood that isn’t good.
And we lean heavily on them to help support the community.
So that doesn’t help when we’re layering something additional onto the BPD.
Second question has to do with the process for approving this.
If someone can just sort of address
whether or not the community has an opportunity to vote up or down.
This has to go through another process.
The Board of Appeal which they have not received a date as of yet.
You can make your voice heard through that process as well.
This is not a done deal here today.
They have more meetings to do. We have more applicants to
visit and do outreach to as many people in the neighborhood as possible.
Leaning on the police for their expertise
in this neighborhood and what the police needs for resources in this neighborhood.
I don’t think we want to stand up here and say
oh, we’re going to do X, Y, Z for security.
And then the police say You don’t want to do that in this neighborhood',
or 'That’s not what we need in this neighborhood'.
I think that conversation is ongoing.
And one of the big things that I think 617 can do as an entity
is obviously that surveillance and extending that circle of surveillance
really in conjunction with BPD and what they’re looking for.
Making sure those systems talk to each other.
But also making sure that BPD and who’s ever running the store have a relationship.
My concern is I’m an abutter to this whole establishment.
So, I’m right behind Walgreens.
I maintain it. There’s dumpster diving back there with Walgreens.
They park in my driveway. I can’t get in and out of the alley.
Half the time I got to call the police. I got to call 311.
It’s a huge major --
If I wasn’t such a gentleman I would say what it is.
So what I’m saying is that having no parking,
dealing with the security issues that I’m dealing with right now,
I’m not having it. Just dealing with the restaurant
and dealing with the smoke shop and dealing with Walgreens is enough.
I can’t even get in and out my driveway as it is.
I got people dumpster diving in the middle of the night. I have security cameras.
When the police come and they look what stuff that goes on back there,
doesn’t do anything.
Those are my issues whatsoever.
The parking -- People that park from Boden Str. and down Blakeville Str.,
blocking the driveway just when people are going to the restaurant.
So never mind having a dispensary there.
Where they going to park at? Where they block
my neighbors, I got one, two, three, four, four or five abutters here
that they block their driveways here and we always like
up in a rage trying to figure out whose car is blocking your driveway.
So what are your plans for that?
We’re going to have cameras out front that indicate
that someone’s there and we’ll have one of the security go out there
and ask them to move.
We’re going to work hand in hand with Boston Police on this.
There may come a time when we may have to hire some details
to help us out at the early goings on this.
We’re going to have conversations with them. They’ll approve our plan.
They’re going to have input to our plan
and those are things that we’ll discuss with them
that they can be on the lookout when they send their patrols by as well.
And I can tell you that there is no way
that we’re going to let our customers double park in front,
say I’ll be right back and run in.
They won’t be allowed entry into the store.
We have personnel who will be onsite inside and outside
as well as some sort of combination of Boston Police outside,
and our store person checking people as they get in. And we won’t let them in.
Walgreens is a staple of our community and an intersection where people go get
family supplies, go get Pampers, they go get their medical needs.
So within that going on,
they have to pass through a smoke shop, a weed shop.
Then that alley that’s running there is famous to becoming a smoke --
destination. Before the smoke shop got there that was a smoke destination.
The smoke shop came and it became a bigger smoke destination.
A barber shop was there. It became a bigger smoke destination.
The Walgreens has been raided, I mean from --
us doing an event for the community
and people going across the street and raid it.
There’s been shootings and other negative things going on in the community.
So just having an entity there constantly is really worrisome for
our seniors, our young people who have teen centers.
We have schools, even though there’s a radius.
At the end of the day this is a common intersection for everyone.
Those imaginary lines don’t exist because we have to go to Walgreens
to get our medications, we have to go get Pampers
and our daily stuff that we need right away.
We need Walgreens in our community.
We don’t necessarily need a smoke shop or a weed shop, but we do need Walgreens.
As I read this, you guys are talking about
'fostering a mutual beneficial healthy and safe partnership'.
Again, we had a store, never got robbed, never got anything,
but we have seen people who have been getting shot in corners, inside stores.
There is a lot of trauma in this neighborhood
and in your whole beautiful presentation I didn’t see
bullet points around
how you guys are doing all that and bringing it back to the community.
And also about,
where you say that you’re creating a positive economic impact beneficial to Boston,
and Dorchester neighborhood. Bowdoin Geneva is a high needs.
We don’t have police available in the evening hours.
So it’s my concern how you guys are saying that you’re going to reach out
and get support from, you know,
the police department which is all nice and dandy,
but they’re short staffed. They have people retiring day in and day out.
And academy’s coming in
and we’re not getting the people that we need in order to
provide the services that we need, in order to be a safe environment.
So bringing in this flow where you guys are going to have somebody at the door,
I didn’t hear anybody directing traffic or telling people
where to go and how to park. It sounds beautiful when you’re saying
we’re going to tell people to move their cars,
but that’s not how it works around here.
We are not in downtown. We are not in Back Bay.
We are in Dorchester where people say
I’ll leave my car there, what you gonna do about it?
I think that it we all agree that earing that type of feedback
is the starting point because we don’t have all the answers right now.
You’re absolutely right. There are certain things that we don’t know.
And we need the feedback from the community
to be able to work together to come up with a plan that works.
Are we going to have all the answers on day one?
I hope so, but it’s unlikely.
We’re not going to know what problems may arise.
There may be problems that are resolved by our presence just as much.
We can commit to working with you to resolve them as they come up.
I mean that’s all that we can promise right now. Hearing that,
that’s something that’s important.
It’s noted. We want as much feedback as we can get
on those types of issues that we may not be able to see at the moment.
And if we can help prevent issues like that
and there’re ideas on how to do that, we’re all ears.
It may sound like we haven’t addressed it,
it’s only because there are a lot of moving parts that we have to
make sure that we coordinate with the City.
Having community meetings like this to meet with you
to talk about stuff that concerns you guys
and incorporate that into our business plan and plans moving forward.
This isn't by far a done deal. This is something that we would like to discuss
with everybody in the community as well
and hopefully tonight’s a great start to that
and something more elaborate and a little bit more lengthy in the future.
This community meeting is part of the process for you to get your license?
And then does this community meeting have a process to vote?
So does this community, after we talk and we vent, and we cry and we laugh --
- What happens? - Nothing.
We take what happens here back to City Hall.
We have a conversation there about what happened --
To City Hall meaning the Mayor or --?
We go back and reiterate what happened here.
So you also have an opportunity yourself,
if you’d like to send in an email, a phone call, write a letter
- And it gets taken a look at. - It goes into a file for this applicant.
I’m new to this. I’m sorry.
So that’s how the information that --
the public puts out gets put into play.
'Mr. Mayor, this is what they said'. And then what happens?
In a nutshell we go over what happens and it’s deliberated,
it's decisions made and if they move forward they move forward.
You have good intentions. I believe you.
If you have good intentions, forget the requirements!
Communicate with us. Go above and beyond.
Make sure that everybody knows about it.
- Too much? - No, no you’re right.
You have good intentions.
Do more, make sure that everybody knows about it because you know what?
I know this kind of stuff is beneficial to Black communities if done properly
because I’ve done my research. However,
if done in this way and just an ill prepared manner --
I’m not saying you have been because I don’t know enough --
then you have detriment at your hands.
This kind of business, if it doesn’t benefit our community
is a detriment and will disproportionally affect brown and black people.
We have been outreaching to the community members.
They work at the neighborhood associations to address us and to introduce us.
We cannot go knock on every single door in Dorchester. That’s not possible.
Those neighborhood associations are predominantely represented by Whites.
So what happens is the people that
or we’re saying that are impacted, the people that suffer from trauma or not,
we’re not generalizing this culture saying everybody suffers from trauma. We’re saying
that this is a poorer neighborhood and poverty affects us in this way.
So, the people that it impacts are not being communicated to.
And so, it makes sense then
if you have good intentions that you go above and say look,
we want everyone to be aware
and we want to be very transparent so we’re going to do more.
This process is not dictated by us, the applicant. As much as we want to be
in control as business owners, this entire process is dictated by the City.
Let me reiterate it. This entire process is dictated by the City.
Many things you brought up and concerns, I personally am bothered as well.
Some of the things that you talked about and you reiterated,
some other people have said that same thing.
We heard it. Several, many times.
But the fact of the matter is a lot of things that we’re hand tied.
To go above and beyond something that was instructed us to do by the City,
we just do what the City asks us to do.
Now to say forget about crime, just go ahead and do that.
We can’t. We listened tonight and we shall.
We need to get organized and get to the City then.
We need to change this process.
I represent the Bowdoin Geneva community.
It’s an amazing community, but that has some of the worst public health outcomes.
If you look at the geography of incarceration today in our Commonwealth,
about 60 % of the people in the Massachusetts jails
actually come from the zip codes that I partially represent.
And so I want to just ask a couple questions
that constituents brought to me. First, I’ve only been in office 7 weeks.
The State didn’t do a good job
and I’ve said this at every cannabis meeting
because applicants are educating residents
about things that should have been done by State and City government.
At least that’s my opinion.
And so I offered to bring the Office of emerging industries and the Commission
to come and talk to our community directly because we have questions
that can’t be answered
by asking an applicant and having an agitated conversation with the residents.
The first is this is one of the most diverse communities in the entire City.
It is the poorest part of Dorchester.
It’s over 90 % of color.
My question is do you have anybody on your team
that represents one of the major ethnic groups in this community?
I know the Vietnamese community is 20 % so that answered probably yes.
I don’t want to assume Asian identity.
Two, also mass incarceration has deeply impacted our community
and when this law was first passed I know a lot of people went to vote
because we wanted to right the wrongs
of also what has happened to our community because of the war on drugs.
Do you have anybody on your team
that has been impacted by that or have you thought about that?
Third, we know that the host agreement goes into a general fund,
so the other question I had is have you discussed as a team
how you will put resources together for this community
that is highly under resourced,
also by the City and State government to be quite honest,
but there’s an immediate needs on this --
in this corridor that are not represented in areas like
Neponset or in Lower Mills. That the Bowdoin Geneva specifically
been deeply impacted by bad policy and under resources. So those were
three questions and are you open to a second meeting or conversation?
This district is 42 % Cape Verdean
and a lot of the times at these meetings, I might see 4 or 5 Cape Verdean Americans,
but nothing is translated in our language
and so what I find is that they’re not even participating
in these conversations, not because they don’t want to.
They care about this community, but you’re not going to walk into a room
where they don’t speak your language or try to have things translated for you.
So I just wanted to know if you’d be open to another --
because you’re only required to have one meeting,
so the question is are you open to another conversation?
So those are the points that I want to share that mainly came from constituents
who couldn’t be here tonight,
so part of my job is to represent their interest and share that.
Somebody brought up a comment earlier about
when they walk into these particular stores they don’t really see
a representation of themselves.
Well I do want to note that we’re not open yet.
And so we will have representation of this neighborhood.
A lot of people have asked us to drill down hard on that number.
That’s a business question. I don’t have that answer for you because
that has not been answered during our business plan discussions.
But we're willing to have more conversations and more dialogue with everybody
that should be involved. As you stated in your first comment
before saying anything else that the State didn’t do a very good job on this.
And I felt the applicant’s the guy that has to elucidate and enlighten the public.
And we’ve done that.
Through our own pockets, through our own measures and through our own grit.
We don’t want to see this industry fall.
Because yes, Dorchester has been disproportionately affected by this.
I don’t see anybody else stepping up
to really say hey, let’s bring this to Dorchester and really make this happen.
You see a lot of Colorado people,
you see a lot of Washington people, you see a lot of California people.
But the barrier is so high during the DPH era,
for you to get into this that it was nigh impossibility
for anybody thinking of bringing a medical marijuana establishment to Dorchester.
You’re talking high six figures to even be heard,
so not only have you been disproportionately affected
by having your members of your community arrested,
and now there is an economic barrier for you to go ahead and overcome
just so you can do business in this industry that has affected your life
and generations down the road.
We’re not the type of people that’s going to come in and say
I can go ahead and clean this up for you.
I’m not that type of person. But what I can pledge to you
is that we can come down here
and have discussions and frank conversations with everybody
to make sure we include as many people as we can.
We can’t do everything for everyone,
but we can do a lot of things for a lot of people.
But again, we are not open yet. Give us the opportunity to come down
and really show you our medal and show you what we’re really all about.
And let the State know that what they did
and what they have been doing is not the correct process.
And with your help we can go ahead and let them know
that we can overcome that situation and bring this neighborhood around.
This is the poorest neighborhood in Boston.
Do you guys not want economic development?
Do you guys not want to be a piece of something
that has taken your lives away from you?
I’m the catalyst for that and so be it. I can do it. I look forward to helping you
and you helping me and we can accomplish this together.
We see everyone who’s at the table here,
and as a community we need to make sure that we’re holding them accountable.
So we shouldn’t just be saying this now in the moment,
but we really need to take everybody who has a hand in this to task.
When things are not working correctly
because you all have to live here. We have people who work here.
We have people who care about this community who’s been here for many years,
putting in the hard work and effort to get ourselves together.
And so the way we do that is every time somebody says something to us,
let’s make sure we’re going back to them.
And let’s make sure that we’re holding them accountable.
And let this evening not be the only time where we’re continuing to do that.
Because if we do that, you know what? It’s just going to be another situation,
same old, same old and we get to hold the crappy end of the stick.
And we’ve been doing that for many years
and so let’s hold folks to the fire and let’s hold folks to task.
There’ll be business cards on the back table. If you have comments
you can call up or you can shoot an email.
We’ll be responsive and we’ll make sure it’s noted and it’s on file.
We talked about this you know from a year ago when we first met to talk about
utilizing the restore program. Hiring an architect through our program
to work with you and your family, to really elevate your business.
I know one of the other goals was really, I mean this is a very successful supermarket.
I think that you have a very loyal customer base,
but I do know
and this is true for any business in the city,
it’s always important to attract new customers.
So were you hoping, is one of the goals
that by doing this project it will attract some new customers in the city?
Yeah, absolutely 100 percent. You know I know during the rush hour traffic
in the morning, rush hour traffic at night there’re
thousands of cars that go along Cummins Highway that pass the
store and probably don’t even think twice about
ever coming in here to do their grocery shopping. But I think
once we remodel and redesign the front I think they might
have second thoughts about that and maybe give us a chance
and see what we have to offer for them and their family.
Yeah, I mean we do know like through this program that when people complete a project
of this scale, two things happen. Your existing
customers feel grateful and taken care of,
and it in many ways it’s a thank you to them for shopping here.
And I think people get very excited when a project
like this, a store that they’re going to constantly is transformed.
But I think also
people discover you for the first time
and as you said, people are driving up and down Cummins Highway
and not pulling into your parking lot.
Because they’re not really seeing you. And I think that’s absolutely going to
happen for you and we see this happen over and over again for many of our projects.
Is that people walk by a storefront and once we actually transform it
through the restore program with a new signage and design, you know
it’s getting people through that door. And obviously that helps you
be more successful.
Who are the customers that come to this store?
So predominately residents of Mattapan.
We also get a fair amount of people from
Dorchester, Hyde Park, a little bit of Milton as well.
And you know demographic wise come from many different countries,
all the Caribbean countries, South, America, Central America
hat’s predominately where customers come from.
And you know I live in the neighborhood too, so I know
America’s Food Basket’s been in the neighborhood for so long.
I do know that based on the constituency that
America’s Food Basket’s been serving in your four locations,
so do you carry specific foods and that really the community needs?
Yeah, yeah absolutely especially in the meat department, the produce department
and grocery department as well. Basically we want customers when
they come in they feel like they never left their home, left their country.
Whether they’re Haitian or Dominican, they want, we want them to be able
to come in here and get whatever it is, whether it’s Plantains, Yucca, Ox
Tails, you know whatever seasonings that they use in their countries
we want them to be able to use that same recipe that their grandmother and mother
used when they were growing up back home. Only now they’re in Boston.
So how do you develop that list of ingredients and foods over time?
I mean the founders of Americas Food Basket,
you know they’re Dominican so that aspect the Caribbean aspect
of it was fairly easy.
Then as you’re in the store, as you gain experience dealing with different types of
types of customers, they’ll ask you what they’re looking for
and we try our best to get whatever it is that they’re
asking. And you know I think to a great extent
we’ve done a good job of that, kind of serving to their needs.
Managing expectations is important so, where we can get folks
in a room who are interested because they’re calling me too
and they have all these great ideas and I said well that’s not how
National NAACP conventions work. We’re not organizing from the
ground it’s really organized from National and there’s some local activities.
So, I’ve had to educate folks locally on that,
but I think if we can have a community conversation
I think Tanesha could host.
And then I manage expectations
that it’s convention of delegates, it’s a voting convention.
So people are here to do business.
They’re here to go to luncheons,
be part of panel discussions. There’s not a lot of free time
to leave the area that they’re in,
and if they leave the area they’re not there to vote
on a particular matter that’s coming before the body.
So there’ll be some limited opportunities
to get out of the convention area and see Boston
and we just got to be intentional about when those opportunities come up.
We talked about that. There might be NAACP
members that are police chiefs and fire fighters
and nurses, and doctors
that want to like get a tour of behind the scenes at Mass General or
go to Dimock in Roxbury
and see how the recovery community that they have there,
one of the best in the country. Look at these different
places and so we can offer that up for people.
We have a criminal justice community here so if we tap Harvard, and some of our other
higher Ed institutions say hey, we need Skip Gates
to be at the convention and we as the City of Boston are reaching out
to you Harvard to say make your folks available.
I think there’s an opportunity for us to provide value in that way.
If we can do that basic part first then all the extras come along after that.
There’s a fuller picture of Boston’s history good and bad that I want
West Roxbury to know and Roxbury to know
and Dedham to know and I think we have an opportunity to share that through different
ways so that it’s an education for us
Bostonians and an education for our visitors.
I think it’s great. And I say this all the time.
I know there’s kids in Roxbury, in West Roxbury
that have no idea, they don’t even know busing
because they weren’t even here. Their families were
where their families impacted by it.
And not even understanding, I think even bussing there was a
step before that that’s not talked about if the
school committee elected at the time took action
Yes, would have staved off that whole experience.
So that was a lack of, inaction by local represented people elected by the people.
And if they’d dealt with it and addressed it history might have been a
little different. And it would have been, maybe a little different if you tackle
the issue at the time, in a different manner, but it wasn’t thought of so.
And not to debate that, but I think what’s interesting
is the values of the city wasn’t fully reflected by that
City Council as it is today right? We see the diversity
in the City Council today. The diversity, the lack of
diversity at that time didn’t take the racial imbalance
issue seriously enough that if they had had more diversity
they would have said no, let’s avoid court action and let’s
do something proactive to create the kind of diversity
Wanna back up even further, Civil Rights Movement? That same
diversity wasn’t in the City Council today that it was back
then. And they took action. And the abolition of slavery, a lot
of things, so it’s like that generation had an opportunity.
Yeah, they missed it.
And you mean obviously it’s easier to talk about it today sitting here and
not saying you should do that. But there’s a different mindset today.
So we talked about all the talent here, the Cornell West, the Skip Gates, the
Academic Institutions, the healthcare industry,
dominant industries here in this City
and in this region. We say hey, we can offer those up as resources as you have the
conversation here. So we know the folks from Partners are already interested.
We know the folks at TGS companies. I talked to Bob Rivers today at Eastern Bank and
the banking community wants to be involved. Now we just got to sort of harness all
that interest and I think they’re reaching out to me and to you and Tanesha and it’s
exciting that this is, in my years of being President of NAACP, there was never
this much focus on being involved in civil rights. And contributing to it, so we
just have to harness that. How do we get Black and Brown and White Boston to become
observers, delegates, alternates at the convention during that week?
That would be huge and I’ve not seen it done as well as I think Boston could do it.
That we have an additional 3,000 Bostonians
at the convention to listen to the Presidential nominees
or Presidential candidates at that point to partake in the conversation
around criminal justice and what’s going on in terms of today with mass incarceration.
The folks are here and the interest is here. We just got to get them over to
-I think it’s the marketing. -Right
It’s how do we market it to let people know this is open for you, so that you
live on whatever street it is you live on, Humboldt. This is your convention. You
might not be a credential voting delegate, but you are as engaged in this conversation
as everyone else. We need you to get that. And I think it’s about marketing.
We’ve done all this,
but yet we’re still not where we need to be
And why did that happen? And how do we take the past
and celebrate it, but also understand where the problems happen
and I think that you know, when people talk about you
know racist Boston, racist Boston, racist Boston, you know
like you said, a lot was done here.
So to bring equality,
but for some reason we have more work to do.
And I think there’s an opportunity for maybe one month’s a reflecting month.
History is the key thing. Right. Is if people
know history they get the good, they get the bad,
they got a context for where we are
and then they can act. But the problem is many of us don’t know our history.
So we think that the poverty rates in our communities is an accident.
People just decided to be poor or our health disparities
is an accident. People just need to eat better
and they don’t understand the context for access
and opportunity and inequities. So I think there’s
a unique opportunity with the convention coming
here and the work that you’ve been doing around
racial justice and equity and these conversations
is to have it be a citywide conversation as
you said that plays out throughout the course of
the year and it’s really grounded in history.
Oh say can you see by the
dawn’s early light, what so
proudly we hailed at the
twilight’s last gleaming.
Whose broad stripes and bright
stars through the perilous fight
O’er the ramparts we
watched were so gallantly
streaming. And the red rockets red glare
The bombs bursting in air.
Gave proof through
the night that our
flag was still there. Oh say does
that star spangled
banner yet wave
O’er the land of the free
And the home of the brave
To the people of Boston, thank you for the privilege
of serving you these past five years. I love my job
Every day I get to go out into the neighborhoods to talk
listen and work with the people of Boston.
Every day Bostonians walk through the doors of City Hall
and share their hopes and dreams with me.
They remind me of how grateful I am to live my dream
and walk through those doors as the son of immigrants.
I think of another door that opens. It was
the morning after my election in 2013.
I was in a hotel room and opened the door for the worker to deliver breakfast.
Her name was Letty. She emigrated
from Africa to follow her dreams here in Boston.
She came around the cart and gave me a big hug and she was crying.
She said we did it. We won. We are going to be Mayor.
Letty’s here somewhere. Thank you Letty.
It hit home right at that moment what this job means.
It means opening doors for more Bostonians to walk through.
People of every race, creed and class.
Changing a city. Changing a nation.
One year ago I pledged my second term to strengthening
and expanding Boston’s middle class.
Today more people are working than any other time in our city’s history.
Unemployment is 2.4 percent.
The lowestever recorded.
We are ranked number two in the nation for moving people up and into the middle class.
And we’ve been named the best city in the entire world to find a job.
We have thrown open the doors of opportunity
and Bostonians are surging through them
to live their dreams and lead us forward.
And because we are drawing on more of our people’s strength
the state of our city is stronger than ever.
But I’m concerned about the state of our Union.
What happens in Washington, we feel on the streets of Boston.
But here’s what matters more. What we do in Boston can change this country.
We’ve shown that differences don’t have to divide us.
When we come together anything is possible. That’s democracy in action.
That’s how we built this administration.
We won office in a coalition that wasn’t supposed to be possible.
Working people, Black, White, Latino, Asian, all came together.
We created the most diverse administration in Boston’s history from
the Cabinet to the frontlines.
We listened to the voices of every community. We took on Boston’s toughest
long standing challenges and we began changing our city.
We are opening doors to new schools, new libraries,
new homes, new jobs.
We’re listeningto new voices. It’s not always easy or comfortable,
but a more open conversation means better solutions for our City.
The sign of a more vibrant democracy.
We put social justice at the heart of our vision.
Because a more equal conversation means a more resilient city.
So we’ll keep leading the fight to defend immigrants.
We’ll continue our groundbreaking work to achieve gender equality.
And we’ll never stop protecting the rights and embracing the
identities of our LBGTQ community.
Five years together, we made Boston a more compassionate, a more
dynamic, a more democratic city.
We’ve listened, we’ve learned and we’re leading. I’m proud of what
we’ve achieved. We should all be proud.
And we should be ready to do more. Our city needs us, our country needs us
and we’re just getting started.
Boston 311. How may I help you?
1,367 customers affected. Estimated time to be fixed between five and 5:30.
And is this only in Brighton or does it extend beyond that?
And you said that it fell onto your property, correct?
No, so that’s furniture and furniture you can
just throw that out with the regular trash.
If you want I can connect you over with the Credit Union.
OK, but if you were in Watertown that would be a responsibility of Watertown.
It wouldn’t be anything with Boston.
OK. Is it a whole tree, a limb or a branch?
The first step is to request a birth certificate request form.
You print it out, fill it out and then with that form you would
send it in with a $14 money order or check, addressed to City Hall.
So the senior shuttle you mean?
I can connect you with their department so you
can see exactly when it’s going to get there OK?
OK, I have down that you reported that there
is something wrong with the hawk’s eyes?
And that the hawk isn’t acting normal since it is feeding on
a pigeon on the street other than flying away with its food.
There are a lot of people around the hawk and
the hawk doesn’t seem able able to fly away
But it’s only picked up on your specific trash day.
Yeah, so if it’s public housing
you want to contact the Boston Housing Authority
Work Order Center to get that replaced for you.
Sir, please don’t yell
I just have someone on the other line that’s trying to locate a gravestone.
They have a name, but they just are trying to find the burial ground