Contrarian Boston/02.04.2024

New apartment construction drops off a cliff | Ayanna Pressley’s praise of striking teachers draws ire | Nantucket High School next stop for Belichick? | McGrory back with column skewering greedy hospital chief | Newton stuck with $1.1 million in expenses in wake of strike |

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The day after: Newton wants teachers to pick up part of the seven-figure tab for police, other services, during recent strike

Newton rang up roughly $1.1 million in costs during the just-ended teachers strike, shelling out money for everything from police details to custodial crews.

“It all adds up and it’s real dollars,” Chris Brezski, chair of the Newton School Committee, who played a key role in the talks that ended the strike, told Contrarian Boston.

Now the outlines of a deal are emerging in which the Newton teachers union would effectively split the $1.1 million bill with city taxpayers.

School officials and the Newton Teachers Association plan to ask a state court judge to waive the $625,000 in fines the union was hit with during its illegal, two-week strike, Brezski said.

The city’s teachers union, which has 2,000 members, would instead pay that money directly into city coffers, under the proposal.

Meanwhile, the details of the larger contract agreement are also coming into focus.

Newton teachers will take home an extra 12.6 percent over four years.

That’s up from the school committee’s initial proposal in the 7 percent range. But it is a far cry from the more than 19 percent jump the union had originally pushed for - and which Newton officials had warned would force painful layoffs.

“There is no universe where we could have met their ask,” Brezski said.

(Chris Brezski, chair of the Newton School Committee)

As a result, there are no plans now for layoffs, as the deal is within what the district could afford, with additional assistance from the city, Brezski said.

However, the agreement does raise questions as to whether Newton teachers could have secured the same contract without forcing an exhausting and bitter strike that left parents and students in the lurch.

For its part, the Newton strike is one of a growing number of labor showdowns by local teachers unions over the two years. Not coincidentally, the spike in strikes follows the ascension of militant leadership to the top of the powerful Massachusetts Teachers Association.

“It’s quite obvious that Mass Teachers wants to have strikes,” Brezski said. “They want to do it strategically.”

Contrarian Boston reached out to the Newton Teachers Association but the union did not respond.

Prepare for crash landing: Collapse in new housing construction may be even worse than most people realize, major developer warns

That’s the word from Michael Procopio, head of one of the larger apartment and condo developers in New England.

The big jump in interest rates has meant that almost all new residential projects on the drawing boards have been mothballed, Procopio noted in a recent interview on Joe Kelly’s podcast, the Mass Construction Show.

And the few new apartment and condo buildings where developers have recently started work likely had their financing lined up a year ago when interest rates were lower, he said.

Banks have pulled back on lending when it comes new apartment and other housing projects, only willing to put up half the money as opposed to 70 percent previously - and at much higher rates.

“The number of deals being mothballed is 90 to 95 percent,” said Procopio, CEO of The Procopio Cos., a Middleton-based construction, development and management firm.

The tough forecast, in turn, could mean that rents and prices, already at record highs thanks to a years-long housing shortage, will continue to surge.

That said, Procopio remains bullish on the long-term outlook for the residential sector.

“I don’t think we are in an existential crisis for the sector, which some people are talking about,” Procopio said. “People have to live some place and the supply and balance is so big, especially here. You will fill your building with tenants.”

Winter of discontent: Ayanna Pressley draws fire after lauding Newton teachers strike for “showing what's possible when we labor in love”

To say there are bitter divisions in Newton in the wake of the just ended teachers strike would be an understatement.

For her part, the Boston congresswoman raised eyebrows when she recently took a prominent stand in support of Newton’s striking teachers, essentially calling city officials cheapskates.

Among other things, Newton is not in Pressley’s district, with elected officials in Newton, a blue city if there ever was one, mostly wary, if not outright opposed, to the illegal walkout by local teachers.

So Pressley’s attempt to take a victory lap on Twitter after the strike ended Friday went over like a lead balloon.