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Hello Ward 5! It’s time for another update. Newton has just completed a citywide special election and the City Council will be joined by two new members: John Oliver for Ward 1 and Tarik Lucas for Ward 2. The full City Council will be up for election, along with the Mayor, this November.
My newsletter this week focuses on infrastructure and facilities updates of interest to Ward 5 residents. (As a reminder, I am not including updates in my newsletters on vaccination plans because those are determined primarily by the state and I don’t want to give out information that changes immediately.)
And if you have not already received a physical copy in the mail of my 2020 Year-End Report to Ward 5 constituents, you can read it online.
Chestnut St update
Chestnut St from Rte 9 to Beacon St is scheduled for paving in the 2021 construction season, now that water main improvements in that section have been completed last year. This year’s work includes cold-planing & re-paving the top surface, and repair of damaged or hazardous curb (including metal edge concrete curb) and sidewalk.
We are also expecting traffic calming changes at the intersections of Tamworth/Amherst/Chestnut and Wyman/Larchmont/Chestnut, as prioritized by community members a few years ago at a public brainstorming session. However, we don’t know at the moment what those exact changes will be, so please stay tuned for updates in the coming weeks. Your Ward 5 delegation (especially Public Safety & Transportation Chair Andreae Downs) continues to work on this behind the scenes.
Paving operations will be scheduled soon after curbing and sidewalk work is done, requiring approximately two days where travel will be restricted. Signs will be posted on the street two weeks before the date when the equipment is scheduled to arrive on site.
If you plan to have non-emergency utility work (water, sewer, gas, electric) requiring trenching in the street or sidewalk, schedule it ASAP & notify the City of Newton Customer Service Center of your plans. After pavement resurfacing, there is a 5-year moratorium for non-emergency trenching.
If you live on Chestnut St in this section, you should have received a letter specifically requesting permission for the city’s contractors to step onto the edge of your property while working on your sidewalk or re-connecting your driveway to the new road surface.
If you live on Chestnut St between Beacon St and Commonwealth Ave, that is a separate section of work and unfortunately the delays further south over the past couple years have rippled along the chain of work, so we are still not getting to the urgent repairs in your section yet. We all share your frustration on that and continue to press for keeping it a high priority.
MBTA update
Green Line: Weekend track replacement work on the Waban section of the Green Line will occur on March 20/21 (this weekend). There will be various other Green Line work between Riverside and Reservoir, including night work east of Newton Highlands, at different dates and times throughout March and April. Keep an eye on the T website for service replacement alerts and check the project-specific page for information on which days or nights will have work at specific sections.
Buses: Outside of Ward 5, we are immensely frustrated by the state’s decision to completely suspend the Route 52 bus beginning this past weekend. That route served Dedham, Oak Hill Park, the Mount Ida campus of UMass Amherst, the Brown and Oak Hill Middle Schools (and effectively Newton South High School), Newton Centre, Newton Corner, and almost to Watertown. This change, which further undermines an already transit-deprived area of Newton, is part of the state’s ongoing slashing of public transit service under the pretext of the pandemic, although it will be very difficult to restore service after the pandemic ends.
The 59 bus that serves Needham, Upper Falls, Needham St, Newton Highlands, City Hall, Newtonville, Nonantum, and Watertown is still in service, although that service was modified in an earlier round of changes.
Athletic fields petition
The City Council’s Programs & Services Committee (on which I serve) met virtually on March 3 to hear and begin preparing a response to item #61-21 "Request for response to resident petition calling for investment in athletic fields.” The petition last year garnered over 1,000 signatures and met with widespread support among City Councilors and certainly among committee members.
We are currently under-investing in athletic field maintenance by such a wide margin that some of our fields have simply been dropped from use because they are too run-down. (That puts even more pressure on remaining fields, which deteriorate faster.) As with our road maintenance schedules, the less we invest on regular annual maintenance, the more expensive the dire conditions become to repair later.
I recently submitted my FY22 budget suggestions to Finance Chair Grossman to pass along to the administration and one of them was to increase the investments in our athletic fields. This is such a deep crisis that it's more of a chronic emergency at this point, and it's also one that affects so many of our residents, as both the petition and the group memberships (as well as the school athletics programs) all demonstrate.
If you are not someone who uses the fields, this still affects you: I believe that there is a wider fiscal risk from failing to maintain things like our fields, even as we consider the fiscal burden of playing catch-up. The future tax revenue growth to the city, which is part of what we have to estimate when trying to figure out what we can afford to borrow, is dependent on quality of life things like the athletic fields. If a significant number of people (even a sizable minority) no longer want to stay in Newton or move to Newton due to the poor athletic field quality or availability, that will affect our future revenues and therefore our debt situation across the board, not just on this issue. So, this is the type of investment that likely strengthens our revenues over time, helping us stay well ahead of our debt service.
Fortunately, interest rates for borrowing are fairly low right now, as we discussed during the committee meeting. That could make it less expensive to finance such projects.
I am also very confident that I will be supporting any Community Preservation Act (CPA) funding requests for athletic fields if those arrive at the City Council Finance Committee, which I hope they will. One interesting idea presented to us by the petitioners was prioritizing rebuilding some athletic field “swing space” with early CPA-funded projects, to buy us time to renovate other fields after that.
The committee also heard from Parks, Recreation, & Culture Commissioner Nicole Banks in response to the petition. She provided updates on her department’s ongoing review of a number of related issues including: regular field maintenance, field usage fee structures, field scheduling, major capital improvement projects, and project financing options. We should hear more soon on proposed policy and budget changes on these points, especially once the FY22 budget is released.
The committee will likely take up some kind of resolution with more specific recommendations at a future meeting.
One final unrelated note: I have been getting questions about the police reform task force report and I will get to it in detail in a separate email update focused on that. We are still having meetings this week about the topic, and I did not want to write a newsletter without waiting to hear and read everything being presented.