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This is my first general newsletter of 2021. I hope to have an annual report on 2020 out soon, and I will need to do a separate update on zoning redesign, but this newsletter contains more specific and timely updates.
I continue to attend almost every neighborhood area council meeting in Ward 5 and as many Ward 5 community organization meetings as I can, and these remain good venues during the pandemic to get in touch with me and ask questions about things happening in Newton. If you don’t know how to attend those or when they are, send me an email and I will help you get set.
Here are some recent things you might want to know about from the weeks before and after the holidays.
Emergency Assistance for Renters and Businesses
Businesses: A 2nd round of Covid-19 Small Business Recovery Grant Program for Newton's small businesses disrupted by Covid has begun, using an additional $300,000 in CDBG-CV CARES Act funding. Grants will again be available for two categories of brick and mortar Newton businesses: $10,000 for microenterprise businesses (5 employees and fewer) and $15,000 for small businesses (5+ to 20 employees). The application deadline is Monday, February 8, 2021 at 5:00 pm. The Program Guidelines and the link to the online application are found at http://newtonma.gov/SBR
Renters: In December, the Community Preservation Commission and City Council approved a two-month extension (January/February) for existing recipients of last year’s Covid-19 hardship emergency rental assistance funds. I continue to advocate for extending it to a full 12 months, anticipating a lengthy period of hardship for many families even as vaccinations become more widespread. This would require an additional $1.1 million. (I believe we have this money available from various emergency and CPA sources.) So far more than 200 Newton families have received help staying in their homes through this program. The program is also still accepting new applications.
The city is also continuing to provide free brown-bagged meals to families in need and food insecurity in Newton remains an urgent problem. Please consider donating to the Newton Food Pantry as well, if you are able to do so.
Chestnut St Safety Improvements
Setting aside the Chestnut St roadwork and water main work, which will continue in 2021 (and let’s hope we come up with enough funding for the durable improvements we need), you might have noticed some safety improvements that recently appeared. In the dangerous 20 mph zone from Beacon St to Comm Ave, there are now electronic speed readout signs. This was something Ward 5 residents, especially neighbors in that section of Chestnut St, had been pushing for. These improvements grew out of a community meeting with city staff a couple years ago that Ward 5 Councilor-at-Large Andreae Downs organized. She is now the Chair of the Public Safety & Transportation Committee! There’s a lot more work that can and should be done to make Chestnut St safer, especially for pedestrians in that section, so please keep making your voice heard – and again, let’s hope there’s enough funding available.
Zervas Elementary Area Cell Coverage
Earlier this month, after some heated debate, the City Council approved Verizon’s proposal for a small 4G wireless booster antenna on an existing utility pole on Beethoven Ave by Zervas Elementary school, aiming to try to rectify the longstanding service dead-zone. This is in lieu of a 60-foot tower. There was some mixed opinion from the public, but in my door-to-door conversations in 2019, complaints about the poor cell coverage around Zervas were plentiful, and I think this was an important item to approve. There were urgent safety concerns about the interior of the school being a near-total dead zone for cell service when an emergency happens.
Docket Review: Tenant Protections, Local Preference
#13‐21 Request for development of web page to provide tenant resources:
COUNCILORS ALBRIGHT, BOWMAN, CROSSLEY, KELLEY, HUMPHREY & RYAN in the face of possible evictions due to the Covid pandemic, (1) request the Planning Department develop a web page on Newton's website, similar to https://www.mass.gov/covid-19-getting-help-with-housing-costs aimed at reducing the number of evictions, and (2) discuss and possibly develop a process whereby landlords notify tenants of their rights and available resources to assist them if tenants have been served a notice to quit or notice of lease non‐renewal or expiration.
(This is early in development, so I don’t have further details right now.)
#528-20 Requesting review and possible amendment to Local Preference in Chapter 30:
COUNCILORS ALBRIGHT, NORTON, CROSSLEY, BOWMAN, NOEL, HUMPHREY, WRIGHT, LAREDO, KALIS, RYAN, LIPOF AND DANBERG requesting a review and possible amendment to the Local Preference Ordinance in Chapter 30 sections 5.11.8. This section requires an Affirmative Fair Housing Marketing and Resident Selection Plan (AFHMP) for all Inclusionary Units [guaranteed lower-income units in mixed-market developments by the private sector] which provides for a local preference for up to 70% of the Inclusionary Units. Various groups including The Fair Housing Committee and the Newton Housing Partnership have questioned whether the percent of local preference to current Newton residents should be lowered with the goal of increasing racial diversity in Newton.
(This one is a tough one to weigh because there are definitely pros and cons on local preference for affordable housing in both directions, especially in a community like Newton, compared to some of the more urban communities nearby. I will probably return to this with more thoughts as we progress on this item.)
New Senior Center Update
I attended the January community presentation and the presentation to the City Council on the latest concepts for a new senior center – either renovated/expanded or all-new – in Newtonville. There are good, feasible concept options for both, but we are still waiting to hear back on the cost estimates, and I believe it remains very likely that the cost of a renovation and expansion will be prohibitive compared to an all-new building. I will wait for those cost projections to come back before I get into more details in a newsletter.
Schools
Many residents continue to contact the City Council regarding the situation of the Newton Public Schools during the pandemic. While our authority on school matters is relatively limited by law and city charter (to public facilities and public health) compared to the School Committee, the Superintendent, and the Mayor, we have continued to hold meetings in our various relevant committees to keep track of what is going on and to offer our help.
In order to safely reopen for in-class learning, I believe at minimum we need an independently-audited high standard of air filtration (improvements have been made but we need to confirm they are sufficient), serious surveillance testing of staff and maybe students (so we’re not flying blind and pretending no news is good news because we didn’t go looking), and a serious plan for safe social distancing (how many feet?) and mask-wearing (how will that be regulated?).
The Newton Teachers Association has been consistent in stating these reasonable prerequisites for classroom learning. The city’s financial team has said to us on the Council that money is not a barrier, especially with emergency funds available. The health department has said they will figure out how to set up real surveillance testing if that is ordered (and the state seems to be heading that way). So, at the end of the day, the Council can only offer an opinion, because the decisions on these 3 points lie with the Superintendent and the Mayor.
Unfortunately, I have my doubts that reopening is feasible in the near future (and certainly not full-week or full-capacity). Some accounts coming out recently on the new and more virulent strains of Covid-19 suggest that both indoor and outdoor transmission is worsening and that cloth masks may no longer be as effective as they once were (or could require more layers). It is also not clear that vaccination prevents asymptomatic transmission.
We might find ourselves back at square one on school reopening, from a safety standpoint, which is an alarming prospect for many. If transmission of Covid is indeed becoming much easier with new strains, I believe school districts such as ours ought to be thinking about how to make their remote learning curriculums as engaging and endurable as possible, and they should put in at least as much time on this contingency as on reopening plans. If people didn’t feel like the home learning experience was going to be an unending nightmare, there would be less pressure to reopen before it is safe to do so.
Police Shooting
On January 5, Newton Police shot and killed a young Newton resident in his apartment building during what seems to have been a mental health crisis – one which was physically containable. Police did not need to use deadly force – something I believe should never occur, not just this time – and they were not the appropriate people to resolve this incident. A mental health counselor was called to the scene but never actually brought to the situation. This tragedy was avoidable, and we should not have put this kind of problem onto our police. This speaks to a broader need to restructure and reconsider public safety from the ground up.
Other countries prove you do not need to bring a gun into a situation like this to resolve it safely. Indeed introducing a gun makes these situations more likely to spiral toward disaster. We also know that other occupations, especially nurses, have a great deal of experience in resolving mental health episodes without resorting to deadly force.
We cannot keep doing this. The FY22 Newton budget ought to reallocate significant resources from armed police to unarmed teams specializing in mental health, social work, and code enforcement.