Wu’s puzzling North End spat | Dems blind spot | Big city fears in Ipswich | Campaign gimmickry | About Contrarian Boston |
Next stop in Green Line gentrification: Medford
There’s nary a mention of Medford in the recent wave of stories on real estate speculation and rising rents that have hit neighborhoods in the path of the new Green Line extension.
But while Somerville has gotten all the attention, a perfect storm is brewing next door in Medford, which will have trolley service for the first time when the second and final part of the GLX rolls into town later this year.
With commuting into Cambridge and Boston on the Green Line suddenly an option, Medford will become an even more attractive alternative to already crazy expensive Somerville and Cambridge.
The new, five-stop line will cut through Somerville to its terminus at the campus of Tufts University, whose students are already putting upward pressure on Medford’s housing market.
It may be already happening: the average rent for a one bedroom in Medford jumped 14 percent over the past year, to $2,175, according to Zumper.
Think that’s bad? Well, then consider the upsurge of $1 million home sales in Medford, with 34 sold or put under contract in the past six months.
Here’s suspecting these already steep increases are just a foretaste of things to come.
Wu faces North End restaurant revolt after new fee
What in the world is she thinking?
That’s our question as North End restaurant owners threaten to go to court to stop plans by Boston Mayor Michelle Wu to charge neighborhood eateries a $7,500 fee to offer outdoor seating.
It’s certainly a hefty fee, and, oddly, all restaurants would pay the same amount, regardless of their size or whether they have five sidewalk seats or 15, said Steve Clark, legislative chief for the Massachusetts Restaurant Association.
And to add insult to injury, North End restaurants won’t be able to open outdoor seating until May 1, a month later than the rest of the city.
The move comes in the wake of a major spat between the new mayor and restaurants across Boston over the proof of vaccination requirement, which sent everything from weddings to business meetings scurrying to dining establishments in neighboring Somerville, Quincy and other communities.
“The fee structure appears to have come out of nowhere and seems a bit arbitrary to single out one specific neighborhood,” the MRA’s Clark said.
File under: Glutton for controversy.
Another town pushes back against Baker’s housing push
That would be Ipswich, where local officials have shot down a plan to build five townhouses downtown near the commuter rail station. That’s right, five townhouses.
It comes after a unanimous vote by the town’s select board in favor of a moratorium on all new housing development in town involving three or more units.
Believe it or not, town officials are worried that Ipswich, which has just under 4,700 residents, is in danger of morphing into a “small city.” One board member called the townhome proposal - which would have also renovated and converted an historic home in the front of the site into additional units - a “kick in the teeth” to downtown beautification efforts.
In a key detail, the development proposal fizzled because it failed to get the support of two-thirds of the town’s planning board.
Gov. Charlie Baker’s Housing Choice plan, passed a year ago, was touted for getting rid of the two-thirds requirement, at least when it came to votes on zoning rules. In theory, that should make it easier for plans for new housing to win local approval at a time when the market is starved for inventory and prices are soaring.
Are we seeing a major loophole emerge? Stay tuned.
Professors: Dems better not ignore education as a major mid-term election issue
Jennifer C. Berkshire, a journalist and adjunct professor at BC, and Jack Schneider, a professor at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, make good points about why Democrats should not be so dismissive of the political gains that Republicans have made in Virginia and elsewhere by making education a central issue.
As Berkshire and Schneider note in this Times op-ed, Dems have to rethink their long-held notion that “education is the key to addressing economic inequality.” It’s a persuasive argument.
But it’s an argument that doesn’t seem to address the points that Republicans are stressing and that concern so many moderate voters/parents in general, to wit: PC/left-wing political dogma that’s creeping into so many facets of education, from American history and civic lessons to even math courses.
It’s not happening at the breadth and pace hyped by Republicans and Fox News, the advocacy and propaganda channel masquerading as a cable news outlet. But it is happening often enough for Republicans to score major political points on the issue of education.
It's their gimmick and they are sticking with it
That’s the proposal by the two Republican candidates for governor, Geoff Diehl and Chris Doughty, to suspend the state’s 24-cent gas tax.
When your party controls just three out of 40 seats in the state Senate, and just 28 of 160 seats in the House, and the majority party won’t even seriously discuss the proposal with you, it’s a gimmick.
And a bad one, at that. All you need to do is look at the pathetic state of our traffic-choked, pothole-marked highways and byways to ask whether cutting off, even temporarily, hundreds of millions in revenue for roadwork is a smart thing to do.
If the issue is providing relief to inflation-weary voters, Gov. Charlie Baker, a fellow Republican, has proposed $700 million in tax cuts targeted at parents, renters and seniors.
But you won’t catch either gubernatorial candidate pushing Baker’s far more sensible plan as they vie for the support of Trump-loving, Republican party activists across the state.
Quick hits:
One day they may say that more people in the West should have read Aleksandr Dugin’s books. From the Washington Post: “The man known as ‘Putin’s brain’ envisions the splitting of Europe — and the fall of China.”
Last chance for BPS: “Mayor Wu urges state education board against Boston Public Schools takeover” Boston Globe
Republican blowhards get off easy in the media: “Opinion: GOP grandstanders aren’t the only reason Jackson’s confirmation hearings were so disgraceful” Washington Post
Umm, couldn’t he have mentioned this earlier? “Mo Brooks, jilted by Donald Trump, says the former president discussed “rescinding” the 2020 election with him during the last six months.” Politico
You reap what you sow: “Amazon Union Vote Set to Begin in New York, Which Has Challenged Company in Past” Wall Street Journal
What is Contrarian Boston?
I have fielded emails over the past couple weeks asking what Contrarian Boston is about.
Here’s a link to our mission statement – you can find it in the “about” section.
For a more prosaic, nuts-and-bolts description, read on.
An online newsletter, Contrarian Boston publishes every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. In Contrarian Boston you’ll find analysis of the day’s news, and original reporting as well.
Our focus is:
· Politics and all levels of governance, good and bad, with an emphasis on state and local, with some national mixed in;
· Economic growth and business, especially real estate, housing and new development projects;
· The media and why it does what it does;
· Education, from school board spats to the doings of multibillion-dollar university endowments;
· And whatever else catches our fancy.