Alternate reality on Planet Howie | Fat cats for Healey | UMass spending alert | Tripling down on Trump | About Contrarian Boston |
Can starter homes make a comeback? Baker plan aims to resurrect an extinct species
The modest capes and ranches that marked the post-war building boom have long since given away to McMansions with seven-figure price tags in Boston’s suburbs.
Now a proposal that would spur construction of a 21st century version of these classic starter homes is set to get an airing Monday on Beacon Hill.
Towns and cities across the state would be able to create special districts which would have, at a minimum, four homes per acre, with each home capped at 1,850 square feet.
The starter home district proposal is one part of Gov. Charlie Baker’s $3.5 billion economic development package that the Legislature’s Joint Committee on Economic Development and Emerging Technologies will review at the 10 a.m. hearing.
The proposal is actually a revamp of an earlier initiative the Baker administration rolled out in 2016. That effort fell flat, with no suburbs taking part, a story I broke in a piece for CommonWealth Magazine.
The new and improved version of the starter home initiative removes what critics say was effectively a poison pill embedded in the program, a rather mystifying requirement that starter homes be built near T stations.
For obvious reasons, not least of which most commuter rail stations are often in densely built-out downtowns, that simply didn’t work.
Maura Healey, darling of the business community?
Um, not exactly. But the self-proclaimed “proud progressive” is raking it in when it comes to campaign contributions from the movers and shakers of the corporate world.
Several top construction and engineering executives gave the max - $1,000 – to Healey last month, including some from big names like AECOM and HNTB.
Biotech and health care were also well represented, with MassBio chief Joe Boncore and Christine Boncore both chipping in $500 each.
Rounding things out, several executives from various wind-power and other renewable energy outfits also emptied their wallets and pocketbooks, as did Stephen Woerner, president and CEO of National Grid’s New England operations.
What do all these industries have in common? They are all heavily regulated and, in some cases, routinely compete for government contracts.
You aren’t seeing the same corporate types donate to the campaign of Geoff Diehl, the former state lawmaker and Trump acolyte who is the most likely to be the Republican gubernatorial contender this fall.
The business folks are going with the likely winner, and at this point, that’s Healey, who has nearly $5 million in the bank, thanks in no small part to the support of deep-pocketed execs.
And Healey has a whopping 76-1 advantage in campaign cash compared to Diehl, who has just $65,000 in the bank, state campaign finance records show.
With latest hire, Diehl triples down on Trump
Speaking of Diehl, attaching yourself to the ex-president is not a winning strategy in deep blue Massachusetts, but try telling that to the Republican gubernatorial candidate.
Diehl, a former state lawmaker, acted like he has pulled off some incredible political feat when Trump - indulging his well-known vendetta against Gov. Charlie Baker - endorsed Diehl last October.
In February, Diehl doubled down, hiring former Trump campaign manager and political henchman Corey Lewandowski.
Now he’s tripling down, having hired Greg Manz, a former Trump campaign staffer who worked in “Bannon’s War Room” as deputy campaign manager.
Given that polls show Diehl losing miserably to even hard-core progressive state Senator Sonia Chang-Diaz, it’s a questionable strategy.
Truly demented: Howie Carr hits new low in column about Baker, pandemic
There’s really no other way of describing this piece by the Herald’s long-time star columnist, which pushes some dangerous anti-vaccine rhetoric.
It’s such a twisted mess that it’s hard to summarize. But on Planet Howie, Gov. Charlie Baker is to blame for all the pandemic disruptions of the past two years.
To give you a taste, Baker, in Carr’s telling, is the “blithering idiot who singlehandedly destroyed at least half of their high school years with his preposterous diktats, ending schoolboy athletics, shutting down schools, gyms, churches, etc.”
And, oh yes, the governor is also the “blustering buffoon who may have cost their parents their livelihoods and businesses” and who “forbade their families from saying goodbye to dying relatives.”
A real one-man wrecking crew, that Charlie Baker.
But of course, Baker’s worst offense in Carr’s estimation was the vaccine mandate for state employees. The governor, we are told, “gleefully fired anyone anywhere who refused to take a vaccine that as it turns out wasn’t a) terribly effective and/or b) hazardous to one’s health.”
The facts are that while the Covid vaccines aren’t perfect, they have done an incredible job of preventing hospitalization and death.
In fact, roughly 234,000 people likely would be still alive today if they had been vaccinated, the Washington Post reports, citing new research.
And very likely, some of those dead were Herald readers who refused to get their shots.
Budget buster: Worcester latest to be hit with rising school construction costs
Worcester is scrambling to come up with another $23 million to pay for a new Doherty Memorial High School, a cost increase which has pushed the price tag to a hefty $316 million.
City officials are pointing the finger at a range of increases in construction materials and costs, with the electrical contract alone coming in $10 million higher than expected, MassLive reports.
The Worcester blowout comes atop a $38.5 million cost overrun on the new Lowell High School.
More than a dozen other school districts are pushing ahead with construction plans, so stay tuned.
UMass spending targeted by state auditor candidate
Let’s just say Anthony Amore winning the state auditor’s race has got to be the worst nightmare of the legion of highly paid administrators who run the state’s university system.
Amore, director of security at the Isabella Stewart Gardner, said he plans to take a hard look at spending in the UMass system if he wins the race to become the state’s government watchdog.
A Republican who has garnered a very high-profile endorsement from Gov. Charlie Baker, Amore told Contrarian Boston he has concerns about the seeming surge in construction of new buildings on some UMass campuses.
It is especially concerning given the decision by UMass trustees to raise tuition for the coming year by 2.5 percent.
Another potential issue are the salaries that university system administrators are taking home, with UMass always well represented in the lists of the top 100 best-paid state employees.
“The cost of higher education is out of control and it’s incumbent on the auditor to ensure the money going into the system is being used efficiently,” Amore said.
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.