Mayor
Joseph A. Curtatone this week said he is trying to avoid that and only
wants a trash pick-up company that "delivers the best service to
taxpayers. I'm not concerned with ideology."

Last year aldermen
criticized the no-bid process that led to F.W. Russell, a non-union
company, getting the contract. Teamsters had recently scuffled with
police and Russell owner Charles Carneglia during a labor protest that
ended with 11 Teamsters arrested.

This year, Curtatone did put
the contract out to bid and said he was not happy with the return.
Russell's bid, he said, came in at a higher price than expected.

Still,
he said, aldermen who demand a union trash company might be putting
this city at risk. "I don't think aldermen want trash all over the
city's streets because we couldn't find a union company. This isn't
about politics or ideology,it's about picking up the trash and
delivering services to taxpayers," he said.

He said he has met with other vendors who could step in when Russell's current contract expires at the end of the month.

I've
reminisced fondly about the Christmases we had when I was a lad – in
the 60's – as well as the present day Christmases that my kids enjoy. I
recently wondered what Christmas in Somerville was like for my dad – he
was born in 1920 and if he was still here I would sit him down and
interview him for this story.. Thankfully I still have his sisters (my
aunts) around to tell me of the Christmases back then.

We were
having lunch at one of our favorite restaurants last week and we
started talking about Christmas. It began with the complaint that kids
today get so many gifts as opposed to when we were kids. My cousin
Carol, who is right behind me in age (but doesn't look it), agreed that
we got less gifts back then, but always felt that we got more than
enough. Christmas was a very big deal back then. Auntie Olga chimed in
and told us about what she used to get for Christmas when she was a
little girl. In 1934, Olga was 10 years old. Italy had won soccer's
World Cup, and a new federal prison called Alcatraz had just opened.
There were 3 sisters in 1934 – Gemma, Gilda and Olga. Marie came along
a few years later. My father, Fred, was the oldest and Uncle Joe was
the youngest – until my Godmother (Marie) arrived. Auntie Olga
remembered sitting in front of the Atwater Kent radio and staring at it
the way we now watch TV. At Christmas time my Grandfather would play
the piano and sing carols in Italian. I still remember his version of
Jingle Bells that he joyfully sang to us grandkids.

Olga
recalls the sound of her mother (my Grandma) making noodles from
scratch in the kitchen. You could hear her working the dough with the
rolling pin. It made a bang as it hit the wall, because the table was
up against the wall. Scooping some sauce up with a meatball was a true
treat.

On Christmas Eve the girls would hang their long brown
stockings on their headboards. In the morning they would be filled with
an orange, some nuts and perhaps an apple. The best Christmas was the
one that all three sisters got brand new dolls and baby carriages.
Auntie Olga's eyes lit up as she was describing how special those
carriages were. The boys got brand new sleds one year, and that was
pretty extravagant for those days. They also received the dreaded "gift
of clothes." Back then they probably appreciated clothes, even if it
didn't have Reebok or Phat Farm stamped on them.

A trip to
Davis Square with 50 cents each in 1934 would find the kids at
Woolworths. All the sisters went together and their mother would warn
them to "keep their hands in their pockets" and to not take anything
without paying. That was before Mr. Wise ran the store and kept his eye
on everything. I wonder what kind of Christmas decorations Woolworths
sold in 1934? Maybe those plastic candles we put in our windows were
real candles? Maybe not.

Imagine if we gave our kids a
stocking stuffed with an orange, an apple and some nuts? They would
look at us as if we were nuts! To hear Auntie Olga tell about how happy
that houseful of kids was really made me smile. They didn't have a lot,
but they made do with just enough.

The best part of talking to
my Auntie Olga about her brothers and sisters and her parents was the
love that was on her face as she was reminiscing. She said more than
once that her parents always treated all the kids equally, and it was a
very happy house.

Having my aunts so close makes not having my
dad around all that much easier, especially at this time of year.
Thinking of him as a 14 year old boy on Christmas Eve is priceless.

Christmas
in 1934 was very special for the Del Ponte family, so we will carry on
the tradition of putting family first – now and always. Thank you
Auntie Olga for sharing your special memories with me.

Someday I hope someone will tell my grandkids about the wonderful Christmas of 2008.

It's
easy to look at all the nice, warm and fuzzy stuff happening around
Somerville and then point at Mayor Joe and say it's all because of him
– but the truth of the matter is that he is only one piece in the
puzzle, albeit the most visible piece.

The Board of Aldermen and
the School Committee really accomplish a lot more on a day to day basis
than most people realize – and while they serve two year terms like the
Mayor, their respective President and Chairperson only have 12 months
in their leadership roles. That's not a lot of time to get things done
when considering each body's goals/agendas.

Dennis Sullivan has
always been a colorful character – his effervescent personality and his
genuine interest in what you have to say automatically endears him to
what is generally regarded as the widest age range appeal of anyone
holding office today. As President of the Board of Aldermen this past
year, he has stepped up and demonstrated his ability to corral a group
of 11 elected officials with very different personalities, that can be
occasionally divisive and bring them together to make tough decisions.
He did a great job this year and we are sure he will continue to fight
the good fight when he rejoins the horseshoe.

Paul Bockelman has
done an outstanding job this past year as Chairman of the School
Committee – a difficult elected body to understand for the average
person on the street – in a year with plenty of action. Sure most
people have no idea what the School Committee does, but this year saw
plenty of work being done there from contract negotiations to setting
lofty long term goals for the school district. His personal and
professional experience in dealing with municipal issues on both sides
has proven vital this past year and we could certainly use more people
like him on our elected/appointed bodies.

With impending local
aid cuts looming in the not too distant future, this coming year will
prove interesting at the very least for both the new President of the
Board of Aldermen and the Chairperson of the School Committee. It will
certainly not be a year without some pain – thankfully each of these
two elected bodies has had their eyes fixed cautiously on the horizon
for some time now – so it most likely won't end up as bad as most will
suspect from the start.

"The City
is working to get the word out to residents, businesses and visitors to
the Union Square area that the meters will be reinstalled next Monday
and that Traffic and Parking enforcement will be present," said
Kotzuba. "Union Square is a thriving business community and enforcement
is necessary to ensure that visitors to the square have access to
short-term parking."

The state-funded Somerville Avenue project
is more than 75 percent complete and six months ahead of schedule.
Major construction has been suspended during the winter months and will
continue in spring 2009. The project is expected to be substantially
complete in late 2009.

Brune was mayor between 1980 and 1990.

"The
1980s were probably the worst financial times this city ever saw,"
Brune said at the Dec. 5 Somerville News contributor's meeting.

At
the top of the list of financial challenges Brune faced when he walked
into City Hall was the so called Proposition 2 ¬Ω, which, he said,
forced him to cut property taxes three years in a row by 15 percent.

The
financial state of the city was already a mess, he said, and the tax
constraints only made matters worse. Equipment was so bad, he said,
Department of Public Works employees would pick up trash, throw it in
the truck and then watch as it all fell out the bottom and back onto
the street.

School officials over counted the number of
students in Somerville schools and the state wanted $3 million in
education aid back, he said.

New police and firefighters could
not be added to the ranks because of money woes, he said. He did,
however, replenish the ranks after retirements, he said.

Brune
said he got through those tough times by avoiding debt and recruiting
young, eager professionals to work for him in City Hall.

"I
always said I think I had a caliber of staff in City Hall that you'll
never see again," he said. "They were all young. I love young people.
They give you all the hours you want, they want to make a name for
themselves, they have energy.

"I told people after my second
year in office, I'm going to use the bad times as planning years and
good times as building years" he said.

Beginning in his second
term, 1983, Brune said things got better. He redid the city's
playgrounds, paved 175 streets and planted over 5,000 trees. He started
the purchasing, personnel and traffic departments and refurbished City
Hall without bonding a dime, he said.

In all, Brune said the 80s
were an economic roller coaster for Somerville. "In the 10 years I was
mayor, things were bad, somewhat good and bad again but I was still
able to do some good for the city," he said.

Now that mayor
Joseph A. Curtatone finds himself in a similarly rocky fiscal position
(cuts in state aid to the city could reach $5 million by some
estimates), Brune said there are some ways to get through it all.

"[Curtatone]
has to do a few things," Brune said. "He has to not go overboard in
starting new programs that the city has to pay for year after year. He
has to watch out for debt. And he has to try and get the most out of
people who are working for him."

You
may have seen the headline in last week's Boston Globe: "Pensions to
strain city, town finances – New infusions needed as funds lose value."
And it may have sounded like the most boring topic on earth, but
appearances can be deceiving: this is an important issue and it
provides a good example of how Somerville's conservative fiscal
management will help us weather this recession.

In past opinion
pieces, I have written about how our strong bond rating has steadily
improved over the past five years – and continues to give us access to
credit markets at reasonable cost. I've written about creating the
City's first-ever Capital Stabilization Fund, which sets aside
predictable amounts of revenue for routine expenditures on our parks,
schools and other facilities. I've explained how investing in the basic
infrastructure of our community helps increase our economic viability
by maintaining property values and encouraging commercial investment.
And, more recently, I have outlined some of the ways we will be cutting
back on spending – including the deferral of hiring to fill some
existing vacancies (public safety hiring will proceed) and the
reduction of the City's share in the cost of non-union employee health
benefits from 85 percent to 80 percent.

We've been increasing
our efficiency in other ways as well. Last year, we came out with an
Environmental Strategic Plan (ESP) that included the hiring of an
Energy Services Company (ESCO) to design and install a series of energy
savings projects in all our buildings. The guaranteed savings over the
life of the project will be $2.7 million. An automated shutdown program
puts city computers in sleep mode when not in use – and turns them off
entirely at the end of the business day unless workers specifically ask
for them to be left on. The savings from this single initiative is
estimated at $25,000 annually. Over the past three years, we moved
every department in the city to a Voice over Internet Protocol (VOIP)
phone system while getting rid of older copper lines no longer in use
(by the way, the phone service failure at City Hall last Friday was due
to one of Verizon's old copper lines getting wet – our VOIP system
never failed). These changes are saving taxpayers roughly $170,000 per
year. And, we just saved another $18,000 per year by switching to a new
vendor for push-to-talk, cellular and data-card service.

Even
as the recession has deepened, all of these factors have kept
Somerville in a stronger position than many other cities and towns.
Nobody would call us a wealthy city, and there is no doubt we are going
to feel the sharp pinch of a struggling national economy, but we are
going to survive without losing ground on the progress we've made.

All
of which brings me to the issue of retirement system management: Every
city, town and state authority in Massachusetts has an independent
retirement system with its own investment portfolio. All of them –
including ours – have been hard hit by the steep decline in stock
prices. The average loss for the calendar year in Massachusetts
municipal retirement systems is 29 percent; Somerville's loss is 28
percent. The effect of that decline, however, varies widely among the
various systems – and, as in so many other areas, Somerville is in
better shape than many of its sister cities and towns.

As
recently as 20 years ago, our investment funds supported only about 40
percent of our obligation to retirees – the rest had to come from city
appropriations. Nowadays, thanks to the prudent action of several
administrations, and the skillful management of our retirement fund
investments, we're over 62 percent. That's far from ideal, but it puts
us in significantly better shape than many other small and mid-sized
cities across the Commonwealth. We've also seen our retirement
investments perform as well or better than the state's Pension Reserves
Investment Trust (PRIT) and our neighboring communities of Cambridge,
Brookline, Belmont and Medford. Calendar Year 2007 investment rates of
return were: Somerville (12.14 percent), PRIT (11.9 percent), Cambridge
(11.89 percent), Brookline (6.96 percent) and Medford (6.91 percent).
On a five year basis, Somerville's rate of return was 12.46 percent.
All of this means that we have been able to manage appropriate payments
from the City to the retirement system while still having enough
resources to expand public safety, education and other basic services.

I
can't take any credit for this solid record, because the Retirement
Board makes independent investment decisions. Its five governing
members are Chairman John M. Memory (elected), Mary Phinney (elected),
Larry Murphy (appointed), John Rourke (appointed) and Ed Bean (ex
officio). They're doing a fine job, and the rest of us in the
retirement system owe them a debt of gratitude for their dedicated
service. But what they've accomplished is just as important for the
taxpayers, because our Retirement Board's strong performance ensures
that the negative impact of a slumping stock market will be less severe
in Somerville than in neighboring communities.

Of course, every
little bit helps, and I support the Mass Municipal Association's call
for legislation that would tack on several more years to the state's
current 2028 deadline for fully funding state retirement systems. Such
a change would allow us to further soften the impact of pension system
costs on taxpayers, and provide more operating budget dollars at a time
when the state is contemplating cuts of up to ten percent in the 2009
local aid budget.

Regardless of the outcome of that proposal, or
any of the ideas now on the table for more diversity in local revenue
sources, Somerville's taxpayers have an advantage in their prudent,
conservative Retirement Board.

In terms of policy – from the
environment to human rights to the expansion of city services – this
administration has a strongly progressive record. But when it comes to
financial management, a conservative approach is best. That's the
approach our Retirement Board has taken – and it's paying off for
taxpayers and retirees alike.

***************

Lots of businesses are
slowing down in this recession – already the pinch is on for many
smaller businesses – some are even contemplating laying off employees
after the first of the year and that would be sad.

***************

The
Ward 1 Democratic Committee held its Seventh Annual Holiday Party last
week (Christmas Party) – there was a great crowd of East Somerville
Democrats on hand to celebrate this past year. Many of the area's fine
restaurants donated food and several of the Aldermen were spotted there
– including the very popular Alderman from Ward 1 – Bill Roche and
Board President Dennis Sullivan. Other just as popular Aldermen like
Bill White, Jack Connolly and Bob Trane were also on hand. Funny how
none of the PDSers are ever spotted at a Christmas Party isn't it?
Maybe they have their own Secular Holiday Party – we didn't get an
invitation, did you?

***************

Speaking of
Christmas Parties / Holiday Parties the Mayor's party on Monday night
at the Greek Church was jam-packed and everyone had a great time – it
was nice to see so many people there.

***************

Our
condolences to a long time Somerville family member, retired Mass.
State Police Sergeant Desmond Howe – who recently passed away. The
entire Howe family have been extremely active and dedicated in our
community throughout these many years and continue to be seen around
the city, we are all sad this day for their loss.

***************

Michelle,
Donna and Mary – the three "Charlie's Angels" of the Somerville Social
Butterfly Team are amongst the missing – these three never miss an
event until recently they haven't been seen in over a month. Rumor has
it that one of the "Angels" may run for a political seat in the near
future.

***************

Don't forget if you need a
Christmas Wreath or Tree this year, head to Foss Park and support the
Next Wave/Full Circle Alternative Schools – they will be there until
December 21st – wreaths cost $12 and trees range from $9 to $49,
depending on size.

***************

The year's Somerville
Public Schools Winter Concert will be held this Thursday, December 18th
starting at 7:00 pm at the high school Auditorium. This is truly a
special event that you should check out if you have never made it in
previous years.

***************

The annual SHS musical
(Bye Bye Birdie) costs around $12,000 to produce – all from funds
generated by ad book and ticket sales. This year, the musical will be
staged on February 6th and 7th and if you want to purchase an ad and
support this wonderful production, then you need to get your ad into
Rosemary Sears (the Producer) before 12/31. You can contact Rosemary at
617-625-6600 x. 6109 or email her at rsears@somerville.mec.edu.

***************

Auditions
for Klass Klownz – which is being coordinated by local friend to all,
popular guy, and Somerville News columnist Jimmy Del Ponte – have been
extended through tonight at 6 p.m. at the West Somerville Neighborhood
School. Auditions are open to all 6th through 9th graders who can sing,
tell a joke or just be silly for one minute. Jimmy's been getting a lot
of attention lately. Don't forget about us when you're famous Jim!

***************

The
Somerville Kiwanis recently donated three large flagpoles to the City
of Somerville and on Tuesday city workers were seen installing one of
them at the Winter Hill location of Broadway & Main Street.

***************

There
are a lot of charitable organizations in Somerville which need our help
even more so than in the past, particularly now since we are in a
recession, please remember them and be as generous as you can be.

***************

Get
well soon to Catherine Hart of Caspar on Highland Avenue – Catherine is
dedicated to making sure that everything runs smooth throughout the
year and many are wishing for her speedy recovery!

***************

Recently
heard from is Claire Olsen, formerly of Highland Road but probably more
famous for being the founder of the Walnut Street Center – she's
retired now – she was the founder and for many years the inspiration
for the growth of the organization. Some of us miss her around the
city, but she's home in Winchester and hopefully feeling better by the
time we write this. A true life-long Somerville family person who did a
lot and looked for no recognition.

In a
complaint filed in United States District Court in Boston against seven
Somerville police officers, Gerard Contaldi, now 17, of Somerville,
alleges that he suffered bruising, a bloody nose and a black eye
swollen shut after Officer Marcos Freitas attacked him on Medford
Street for kicking the bin near his Nissan Z sports car.

Freitas
was out of uniform and smoking a cigarette on his parents porch on
Medford Street before the incident. He had just downed three to four
alcoholic drinks at a bar and stopped at his parents house to sober up,
the complaint alleges.

When Contaldi kicked the recycling bin
near the sports car, Freitas allegedly slapped the boy and yelled,
"Don't you know that is city property, you idiot!" A friend of
Contaldi's then pushed Freitas to the ground and the group of boys ran
down Medford Street, the complaint says.

Freitas, and six police
officers responding to a call for an attack on an officer, tracked the
boys down in the backyard of 33 Dartmouth St. and, according to to
Contaldi's lawyer, handed out some "curbside punishment" on the kids.

Officer
Alan Monaco allegedly pushed Contaldi's face into the gravel and yelled
at him, "Don't you realize you hit a cop?" Freitas then struck
Contaldi, who was in handcuffs, in the face with a flashlight or a
nightstick, the complaint alleges.

Contaldi and three other
juvenile boys were arrested and charged with assault and battery on a
police officer. Contaldi was found not guilty of the charges at his
trial. According to his lawsuit, the seven police officers gave
conflicting accounts of the incident when they testified.

"Instead
of following our system of justice it appears these Somerville police
officers followed the rules of street justice," said Contaldi's
attorney, Howard Friedman. "They all worked together to give Mr.
Freitas a chance to assault a prisoner and that is totally wrong."

The
lawsuit alleges that police officers Robert Kelleher, Kevin
Shackelford, Bruce Campbell, Clifford Mansir and James Hodgdon were at
the scene of the incident and permitted the beating.

Deputy
Chief Paul Upton directed questions to the city's law office. City
spokesman Tom Champion did not return repeated calls for comment.

The complaint asks for punitive damages to be awarded to Contaldi, but does not specify an amount.