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NIMBY Gloucester: Housing density is ‘immoral’
Um, the headline in the Gloucester Times - “Council provides strong feedback on MBTA community districts” – doesn’t quite do this story justice.
The president of the fishing port’s city council and a fellow councilor are blasting as “immoral” Gov. Charlie Baker’s push to force towns, suburbs and cities to open their doors to new apartments and condos near T stations.
"The ‘smart growth’ model of placing more people into already densely populated neighborhoods has been proven to be immoral for centuries & to keep promoting it is equally repugnant,” reads the letter to state housing officials, which was ultimately approved by the City Council on a 9-0 vote, the paper reports.
Really, have we been transported back to the 19th century, when towns and cities were seen as fallen, immoral places to be feared?
Jonathan Berk, a member of Abundant Housing Massachusetts, summed up the comments by the Gloucester city councilors rather succinctly on Twitter.
“This is insane bordering on malpractice from Gloucester City Council,” Berk tweeted.
Community college shakeup? Bay State life sciences sector seeks training boost
Expect to see more debate and talk soon about the challenges our booming biotech industry faces in finding enough skilled workers.
MassBio is at work with a consultant and gearing up to release a big report in early June that is expected to highlight the need for a better pipeline to the industry – and in particular to biotech manufacturing jobs - from the state’s community colleges.
The life sciences sector, which currently employs around 80,000 people in Massachusetts, is looking to fill tens of thousands of new jobs over the next three years, said Ben Bradford, MassBio’s vice president of economic development and workforce.
The demand is there and it’s robust, Bradford told members of the American Council of Engineering Companies at a conference in Cambridge on Friday. In fact, more than half of the life science companies surveyed by the trade group said they would hire candidates without a four-year degree.
That’s the good news. The bad news is that life science executives in Massachusetts are increasingly concerned whether they will be able to find enough trained workers to fill all these new jobs.
The problem is that Massachusetts community colleges are still geared towards preparing students to move on to four-year colleges, as opposed to providing the training needed to go directly to work in the life sciences sector, according to Bradford.
Meanwhile, the report will also have a “large focus on diversity and equity,” Bradford said, with an earlier MassBio report finding that just 15 percent of the biopharma workforce in Massachusetts is Black, Latino and Native American.
“In our Yankee arrogance, people feel you need a four-year degree or more to work in our industry,” Bradford said. “A four-year school is not for everybody.”
Nor, apparently, is it necessary to get a start in the state’s leading growth industry.
MassGOP better start praying for Baker to ‘pull a Brady’
Otherwise, Republicans don’t stand a chance of keeping control of the governor’s office this fall, according to a new poll by Suffolk University and The Boston Globe, which has Attorney General Maura Healey trouncing the two Republican candidates, Geoff Diehl and Chris Doughty, by 54 to 27 percent and 55 to 25 percent, respectively.
But if Baker were to jump into the race as an independent, he would start with a nearly 10-point lead, garnering 37 percent of likely voters compared to 28 percent for Healey and just 17 percent for Diehl.
In fact, while a solid majority of state residents feel the nation is going in the wrong direction, the results flip completely when it comes to whether Massachusetts is on the right track, with 50.63 percent answering in the affirmative.
That’s pretty persuasive evidence of Baker’s enduring popularity.
Quick hits:
From Mass Save to Mass fraud: “Stoneham police officer, brother indicted, charged with defrauding $36M from Massachusetts energy efficient funds” Boston Herald
Expect showdown with House over collegiate sports betting ban: “Senate passes sports betting on voice vote - Bill has major differences with the one passed by the House” State House News via CommonWealth Magazine
Here’s hoping this is real: “Cracks emerge in Russian elite as tycoons start to bemoan invasion” Washington Post
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.