Months before Somerville's Strategic
Planning Committee will begin the design process, the concerns of local
residents are being collected and will be presented to the City in the
next year. Mary Regan, of the SCC, spoke of her dialogue with residents
around the city, saying "I've had both positive and negative reactions
to the plans, but most people seem to see it as a chance to promote
healthier living and better access to transportation." At the July 14th
meeting outside of Ball Square, excitement was tempered by the worries
of residents who fear that the tight-knit ambiance of their
neighborhood could be compromised.

Bill Finnegan, a
neighborhood resident, worries most about parking implications. As
Somerville residents can park anywhere within the city, he envisions
commuters parking nearby the station, on their way into work in the
city. There won't be a commuter parking lot, Regan assured, but an
increase in traffic in the area is all but guaranteed. Another concern
of vital importance to those gathered was the preservation of the
existing small businesses in the area. Amy Thibeault, the co-owner of
one such business, True Grounds, is cautiously excited about the future
of the neighborhood. "I think it'll help business tremendously since
there will be much more of the Monday through Friday hustle and
bustle." On the other hand, she added, "There will be more of a threat
of gentrification."

In each location, from the neighborhood
surrounding the Lowell Street stop to College Avenue, general themes
have arisen to indicate the priorities of Somerville's residents. "The
common points," Regan said, "are wanting to make sure there is good
access to stations, a minimal effect on parking and a desire to protect
small businesses and low income housing."

Having seen the
monumental changes that have occurred since the Red Line was installed
in Davis in the '80s, Somervillians are all too aware of the potential
for gentrification, as well as for economic rebirth, through a healthy
transportation system. They have waited for thirty years for the Green
Line–and will wait another five before it is completed. With its
impending arrival, organizations like Groundwork Somerville and STEP,
local businesses and residents are trying to ensure sure that, after
all these years spent hypothesizing, it is everything they had hoped
for.

Ward
6 Alderman Rebekah Gewirtz proposed the order at the Board's July 9
meeting, saying a recent conference she had attended in Chicago had
inspired the idea of copying that city's use of roof tops as gardens.
The gardens save energy costs by reducing the "heat island effect"
which impacts densely populated areas.

"The benefit over time is
extraordinary in terms of impact on the environment and actual cost
savings," Gewirtz said, citing the West Somerville Neighborhood School
as a possible pilot location.

Alderman-at-Large Bill White also
suggested that the city could look into the use of an alternative
green-colored asphalt, which he said some communities to reduce the
heat retained by traditional black pavement — known as "heat sink."

"That
color asphalt actually contributes to a reduction in the heat sink,"
White said. "It would help consumers save on their electric bills."

The order was sent to the Legislative Matters and Environment and Energy Committees.

The total amount of the
grants is $200,000. Each ranges from $10,000 to $36,000 per district.
Because of the funds, educators will be equipped with the necessary
resources to begin to design new schools, according to a press release.

Of
particular interest to Somerville residents, the City has gotten a
piece of the grant pie. The $19,144 that has been allocated will
support the development of as many as two conversions, within grades K
to 8, including one, which was modeled after the Harlem Children's
Zone.

Boston scored $36,376 to support the development of two
Advantage High School conversions and a new Advantage School, within
the 6 to 12 grade range.

Additionally, grants were awarded to
school districts in other parts of the state, such as Fall River. That
city will use its $10,800 to support the development of as many as two
schools, in either the Advantage or Alliance categories.

"The
strong response to the Readiness Schools initiative shows that school
districts are enthusiastic about the opportunity to use greater
autonomy to improve their schools," said Governor Deval Patrick.
"Readiness Schools provide powerful opportunities to promote
innovation, close achievement gaps, and give students and families more
choices in public education."

How did the state decide how much
funding to allocate to each school system? "Decisions about funding
were made by the committee [which] reviewed the applications, based on
the information contained in said applications," said Jonathan Palumbo,
Communications Director of the Executive Office of Education in the
Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Every district in the state were
eligible to apply for the funds, according to him.

More
specifically, "the preliminary information contained in [the City of
Somerville's] application for planning grant funding indicated a desire
to explore a model similar to that of the Harlem Children's Zone in
NYC," said Palumbo.

In that instance, "the school provides
wrap-around services including supports for parents, access to health
care and other outside of school assistance in addition to longer
school days, with a greater focus on core subjects and extra help and
tutoring for students," he said.

Readiness Schools will enjoy
greater flexibility and autonomy in curriculum, budget, staffing,
school schedule and calendar, as well as school district policies. They
may be developed as new schools, or as conversions of those, which are
already in existence. Each will operate under a performance contract,
which will set specific goals for student achievement, as well as
school improvement.

"We expect indicators of success to
include: student performance, grade advancement, graduation rates,
improving attendance rates, [or] lowering dropout rates.

The
implementation of the Readiness Schools initiative is a key part of the
Commonwealth's forthcoming application for federal "Race to the Top"
education funding, which will provide states with more than $4 billion
to promote education reform.

However, "The US Department of
Education has not released the specifics of the application for funds,
but [it] has indicated that states who work more aggressively to
address issues of under-performance (Acceleration Schools) and to
promote policies of innovation (Advantage and Alliance Schools) will be
looked upon favorably in the application process," said Palumbo.

There are three types of Readiness Schools: Advantage Schools, Alliance Schools, and Acceleration Schools.

The
first type, Advantage Schools, refers to those, in which faculty will
primarily be responsible for the development of the "innovation plan"
and performance contract, under which the school operates.

According
to Palumbo, the plan will [most likely] include "creative with
curriculum, school schedule, incorporation of outside resources, which
the external partner brings to the table."

The second type,
Alliance Schools, refers to those, in which external partners, such as
colleges, museums, and other organizations will play a central role in
development of the innovation plan and will be held accountable for
adhering to the terms of the performance contract.

Finally,
Acceleration Schools refer to those, in which conversions of
under-performing and chronically under-performing schools will occur.
They will be implemented through innovation plans and performance
contracts, which were developed by the Commissioner, with input from
local stakeholders.

The grants, which are funded through the
state's Targeted Assistance program, will allow districts to plan and
implement strategic reforms to improve student achievement during the
2009-10 school year, and leverage those reforms to establish Advantage
Schools and Alliance Schools, beginning in fall 2010. The Patrick
Administration plans to introduce legislation soon to authorize
Acceleration Schools, as well as some components of the first two
categories.

Presently, the number of Acceleration Schools is
not definitive. However, legislation is being drafted. "If the
legislation is passed, the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education
would promulgate the regulations in close collaboration with educators
and the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education with
additional input from our office," he said.

Other individuals are optimistic about the grants.

"These
16 districts are positioning themselves to be among the Commonwealth's
leaders in education reform and innovation," said Mitchell Chester,
Education Commissioner.

They "have a head start on one of the
most exciting education reforms in the past decade. By passing
Readiness School legislation quickly, we can give these districts even
more tools to work with, and provide Massachusetts with an advantage,
when applying for "Race to the Top" funding," said Paul Reville,
Massachusetts Secretary of Education.

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Don't forget this weekend in Davis Square – the annual "ArtBeat" festival will be all over the square – another great event happening all weekend.

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If you haven't caught a Somerville Sunsetters 2009 performance yet, here are your choices for the next week. We highly recommend watching these young performers – it is good old fashioned entertainment at its finest! Wednesday, July 15th, 7:00pm at 51 Elmwood Street; Thursday, July 16th, 7:00pm at 24 Cambria Street; Saturday, July 18th, 11:30am at the Davis Square Plaza/ArtBeat Festival; Monday, July 20th, 7:00pm at 34 Gorham Street; Tuesday, July 21st, 7:00pm at 240 Pearl Street and Wednesday, July 22nd, 7:00pm at 107 Shore Drive.

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Centro Presente's annual Family/Dancing Cruise will be held this year on the Boston Harbor – One Long Wharf – August 2, 2009 from 5 to 8pm. Tickets are $30 for general admission, $25 for members and children under 12 are only $10. The tickets do not include food, but a chance to enjoy some good dancing and music! Reserve tickets now by calling 617-684-4662 or send an email to: mvarea@cpresente.org.

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Our own Bob Publicover is will be going through some tough tests this week starting today – so we all hope that he does his usual miracle move and pull through this one. He's a nice guy to everyone.

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More star sightings in the 'Ville! Amelia's Kitchen on Broadway was the place to be this past week, one night a couple of Red Sox players and their wives decided to feast Italian style at the Teele Square Restaurant! We will have to wait and see who they were once the restaurant posts the pictures on the famously star-studded walls.

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The Somerville News congratulates and welcomes Maren and Heidi – who are opening "The Training Room" – a small fitness facility that will provide personal and small group training, cycling, yoga and outdoor boot camps at 691A Somerville Ave. They are having their Grand Opening event this coming Saturday, July 16th from 12 to 8 p.m.

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Recently retired this past year as a 32-year veteran officer of the Somerville Police Department, John Mahoney passed away this past week. John was only 61 years old. He was a life long Somerville resident from Weston Avenue who just lost his mom this past year as well. John was a great guy liked by all and will be missed by many.

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Cambridge Health Alliance's 2009 Golf Tournament will be held on Monday, August 10th at the Andover Country Club. For information about the event, call the Alliance Foundation at 617 499-8344.

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The Somerville Arts Council has been awarded $25,000 in federal stimulus funds under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). These funds will help support operational and programmatic costs.

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So we hear this story about a house that was empty and sold, not to long ago – the new owners buy the property and about 3 weeks later the new owner goes to Inspectional Services to pull a permit. After a few minutes, he was told he needed to go and talk to someone at the treasurer's office regarding some fines…apparently this nighttime inspector kept driving by this house for 3 weeks straight and handed out about $3,000.00 in fines for a simple cover off the trash barrels, now if it's obvious the house is empty and the barrels haven't been moved, why would they still keep giving tickets? Welcome to Somerville…

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Don't forget about the city's annual SomerMovie Fest that began last Thursday. The SomerMovie Fest features a series of nine movies, shown at parks throughout the city during July and August, and extending into September. This Thursday, Dreamgirls will showing at Seven Hills Park, Davis Square. Movies are shown outdoors on Thursday evenings beginning at dusk (approximately 8pm), and will be shown in Seven Hills Park, Nathan Tufts Park, Lincoln Park, Hodgkins Park, and at City Hall. In the event of inclement weather, movie screenings will be canceled. Vist the City's web site for the full schedule.

We have commented on it before – but – when you throw in changes in seasons – the frustration of days on end of rain and then all of a sudden, wonderful weather in an instant – you have to wonder if there's a pressure cooker out there waiting to explode.

As a community, Somerville has the benefit of being an urban setting and still hanging on to the old neighborhood feeling enjoyed by the suburbs. It's like the best of both worlds, except when it comes to crime. Crime doesn't know the difference between a quaint little urban community and the so-called "ghetto." In fact, based on some recent studies, a community like ours could be the most volatile and unpredictable, because while the inner city and the outer suburbs rarely see cyclical fluctuations in crime rates based on economic conditions (they pretty much stay the same or cycle to other more specific variables), anything could happen next as far as crimes and patterns of crime are concerned.

Having lived here and worked here our entire lives, there isn't much that can shock us anymore when it comes to crime in the city; however, taking a look at the booking logs week to week can make you wonder. It makes us wonder what's going to happen when this city becomes a virtual ghost town every Friday at noon until Sunday late evening – will it be more dangerous for those people who don't have the luxury of escaping to Somerville North/South?

Oh sure, there's no need for panic, but, quite frankly there have been weeks where it has been very quiet in the 'Ville and other weeks when it seemed like Snake Plissken (remember the movie Escape from New York?) would become incontinent.

Thankfully, as we have remarked about before, the Somerville Police Department does a fantastic job with the resources they have available. Now they have military grade, fully automatic M16 rifles to fight back against an evolving and expanding arsenal that violent crime offenders have at their disposal. The hard work and dedication these men and women put into the job every day should be applauded every day by those of us trying to get up every day, go to work and live our lives without worrying about whether we will be jumped down the street or car jacked.

So the next time you see a cop at a detail and you think "oh what a waste" and you drive away shaking your head, be ashamed of yourself – because that same cop who watched you do that with a scowl on your face may just save your life someday.

At the same time that the State's Executive Office of Transportation is holding public meetings on the actual construction of the lines, four local community organizations have been holding meetings to help Somervillians adjust to the idea of seven new train stops. These four local organizations are known collectively as the Community Corridor Planning, a non-profit coalition made up of Groundwork Somerville, Somerville Community Health Agenda, Somerville Community Corporation and STEP. "We have been working for eight months and have been holding meetings," says Jennifer Lawrence of Groundwork Somerville in last Wednesday's meeting. The CCP has nothing to do with the actual stations; their concern is instead with the half-mile radius outside each station, making sure that it has sufficient splendor and appeal for residents, those traveling through, and possible new local businesses. Much of this meeting was interactive; mirroring what is done in a classroom, with group exercises and a big paper pad in place of a blackboard.

Abi Vladeck, a summer intern at SCC and Active Citizenship Summer Fellow through Tufts' Tisch College introduced the group exercise portion of meeting, saying "…imagine that it's, let's say, ten years from now," instructing the residents in attendance to use all their pertinent senses to "envision yourself on this path." People heard trolley screeches and cell phones, saw bike lanes and blue skies, and smelled coffee and donuts from nearby bakeries. "And there's going to be more college students," added Manish Lama of East Somerville. Jorge Castillo works in Somerville and is concerned about the local businesses when the new stations open. "It will probably be good for big business," he says during the group exercises portion of the meeting. Still others contend that the opening of the new stations will be beneficial to locally run businesses. Jennifer Lawrence of Groundwork Somerville said this kind of discussion is helpful because it makes certain that "…they [the State] take us into consideration – the businesses, the parents, the students," saying also that meetings like this one make us more certain "…how it [the Green Line extension] will affect everyone's lives."

I began this series before the 1998 election, when "change" was the most common word uttered in campaign speeches. Candidates from both major parties promised that if elected they would change the policies that have done so much damage to the nation and the wellbeing of its people.

My thesis was fairly simple. The root cause for these disasters isn't the policies themselves, but the outdated economic and political institutions that create them. And the process by which politicians achieve and maintain their positions ensures that few will have the will or courage to challenge the institutions themselves.

So let's test this thesis. Six months into a new presidential administration and Congress, what has become of the candidates' change promises?

Healthcare

When he was a Senator, Barack Obama declared himself a "proponent of single-payer universal health care." He said that the only reason why single-payer proponents should tolerate delay is "because first we have to take back the White House, take back the Senate, and take back the House."

Now that this has happened, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Montana) is conducting hearings on healthcare reform. On May 12, he had five doctors and nurses arrested when, from the audience, they asked why he would not allow a single proponent of a single-payer system to testify.

The president and a majority of congressional Democrats are now advocating a system which would largely continue current arrangements, but individual consumers could opt for a publicly managed healthcare plan. The proposal is a costly giveaway to insurance and drug companies, and patients who opted for the public plan would probably be among the most costly to treat.

Obama could successfully speak directly to the electorate, presenting unequivocal evidence that a single payer system would produce better outcomes and reduce administrative costs to 1% from their current 15-to-30%. He could mobilize the 60% of Americans and 60% of their doctors who say they would prefer such a plan. Instead, his "pragmatic" approach underestimates Americans and squanders his mandate.

Over the last decade, the healthcare industry spent $2.9 billion on lobbying. This does not include campaign contributions.

Financial Regulation

"Change" candidates took turns surfing the wave of public anger against those of the greedy whom the public perceived as responsible for the financial meltdown. Since being elected or reelected, they have done nothing to change the underlying institutions that make such disasters inevitable.

Instead, Bankers and their lobbyists, shameless with regard to their role in the meltdown, persuaded lawmakers to eliminate an 18% interest-rate cap from the credit-card reform bill. They successfully opposed a measure in the Senate that would have allowed 1.7 million homeowners facing foreclosure to renegotiate their mortgages in bankruptcy court.

The previous episode of public thievery (Remember Enron, Tyco, Global Crossing, WorldCom?) prompted cries for reform. We got the usual window dressing and piecemeal band-aids. Treasury Secretary Geithner's current proposals don't seem much different. Here's one example.

Derivatives are financial contracts whose prices derive from something else-stocks, commodities, exchange rates, interest rates, inflation, etc. They are often complex, difficult to understand, and enormously profitable for banks. Their massive debt leveraging played a significant role in the meltdown. Geithner proposes allowing customized derivatives to trade privately, outside of public view.

Over the last decade the financial services industry spent $3.4 billion on lobbying. It spent $1.7 Billion on federal election contributions.

Military Spending

We should be spending public money to make ourselves more secure instead of enriching what President Eisenhower called the military-congressional-industrial complex. In the segment on military spending, I wrote, "If Barack Obama does not make some tough decisions about where and how to make deep cuts in military spending, he won't have money to do anything else."

It seems that Secretary of Defense Robert Gates does want to eliminate costly and ineffective programs. This has been a staple in many Democratic legislators' speeches for years. But if such cuts would eliminate pork from a legislator's own district, then threatened programs become worthy necessities.

Among the examples of waste that I cited in the military spending segment was the chronically troubled and strategically useless F-22 fighter. It costs $44,000 per hour to fly, and the Pentagon and President don't want it. But now, Senators Kennedy, Kerry, and a congressional majority are poised to approve it.

Over the past decade, the defense industry spent $835 million on lobbying. This does not include campaign contributions.

Energy and Climate Change

A policy that effectively controlled energy costs and fought climate change would have to do three things: end our addiction to oil and coal, accelerate our transition to cleaner and cheaper energy sources, and make polluters pay for their greenhouse gasses. The American Clean Energy and Security Act that is now in congressional committee can't do any of these. It is riddled with loopholes and larded with hundreds of billions in giveaways.

Focusing on one small point, there is no safe way to remove and store CO2 produced by burning coal. By the time such technology could be developed, alternative energy sources would be much cheaper. Yet with a straight face, Obama continues to speak favorably about "clean coal."

Over the past decade, the energy and natural resources industry spent $2.1 billion on lobbying. This does not include campaign contributions.

Economists describe our institutions' incapacity to place a proper value on a clean atmosphere and humanity's future as a "market failure." In fact, it is the inevitable evolution of the market as we know it. In the last segment of this series, I'll describe why this is so, and how we might change it.