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Festivals of Lights
This evening, the Waban Improvement Society invited us to the Waban Library Center (inside due to the rain) for the annual Waban Square Tree-Lighting festivities, including hot cocoa and caroling.
In dark times, it is important to be able to gather together and share light and joy. It is no accident that so many cultures and faiths around the world feature festivals of lights, community, dancing, singing, and good food each year when the daylight hours grow short. These events serve as a reminder that humans get through difficult times more easily through cooperation, connection, and solidarity than through solitude and individualism, and they also serve to remind us that the light always returns for those who make it through the dark.
Zoning update
In the spirit of cooperation, or at least in an attempt to compromise, last week a supermajority of the Newton City Council members (including me) voted during this term to table proposed rezoning for commercial centers not adjacent to the transit lines and just to focus on new zoning for areas with MBTA rail service for now.
I believe that, in the long run, many residents who asked for this concession will come to regret this decision, as it leaves behind their nearest economically struggling commercial centers, like Four Corners, while putting more uneven redevelopment activity into a smaller set of areas and creating more cross-town car trips instead of more people walking or driving a very short distance to the closest commercial hub.
But this is what people seem to be asking for, and we can return later to these other areas, if folks start to feel left out after all. So, I felt it was best to improve and stabilize the areas of the city we could reach agreement on.
Debate will continue this week, looking at Auburndale and a few other areas more closely.
(And if you are tuning in hoping for a final debate on the long-awaited reform to the Tree Protection Ordinance, we have sent it out of committee, but we will be postponing it immediately at the full Council until December 18th.)
Ward 6 Recount update
Ward 6 Councilor-elect Martha Bixby successfully defended her election in yesterday’s hand recount of that race at the Newton Free Library, receiving the official certification from the Newton Election Commission as the winner, and her opponent conceded today. It was an interesting process to watch all day, and I came away with the distinct sense that introducing human error and human subjectivity to the process, overriding the machine-read results, was actually less helpful and less reliable than just counting on our very good optical ballot scanners.
With just four machines in this race, the outcome was never in doubt, because each machine would have had to have had a very high average error rate in its readings to change the result – so high, in fact, that it would have meant several of the citywide results would also have been in serious doubt if that error rate were consistent across the whole city.
Councilor-elect Bixby is continuing to raise money for her committee to pay the legal costs associated with defending her election win.
I’m really excited to serve alongside Martha, who has been a very engaged community member and has a talented political mind.
Teacher Contract?
Although the City Council has no role or involvement of any kind in this matter, which is handled by the School Committee, the Mayor, and the Superintendent, I continue to receive many calls and emails that express concern about the continued lack of resolution to the expired contract for Newton Public Schools educators. I share the view that the negotiation process has been incredibly disrespectful and antagonistic toward the Newton Teachers Association. The constant stream of emails blaming the NTA and attacking their tactical responses to the breakdown in meaningful negotiation has been especially harmful.
Ultimately, the dispute is a contest for relative distribution of some of Newton’s resources – which the educators are arguing they need in order to attract and retain top talent and to provide adequate wraparound services for our kids struggling with mental health challenges, learning disabilities, and learning loss – more than it is about any superficial issues of respect, but that doesn’t help. (And of course the most meaningful way to show respect for employees is to pay them fairly. My mother, active in her nurses’ union, can attest that empty gestures of “appreciation” and occasional branded swag from an employer don’t stack up credibly against good pay and benefits…)
I am cautiously optimistic that perhaps the election of new leadership at the School Committee, taking office on January 1, will help reset the situation, if we can get there before things break down further.