TM Papers Due Today; Close to 100 Empty Seats Expected

Nomination papers for all offices are due to the Town Clerk today.  The Clerk’s web site says that it closes at 4pm.

As for Town Meeting seats, the outlook is poor. I dropped off my own papers this morning and took note of how many others made it back.  Only 140 people have returned nomination papers for town meeting with just hours to go before the deadline.  This weekend’s weather (cold, with damaging winds) did not make for an inviting environment to walk the neighborhood to knock on doors to collect those last few signatures.

As of this morning, my unofficial count off the Clerk’s handwritten list:

Precinct	Seats	Papers pulled	Papers returned	Deficit
1	23	26	15	8
2	22	22	13	9
3	21	19	15	6
4	23	15	8	15
5	21	30	18	3
6	23	20	13	10
7	21	14	13	8
8	22	31	16	6
9	22	20	12	10
10	21	13	7	14
11	22	20	10	12
Totals	241	230	140	101

As you can see, we could have as many as a hundred empty seats coming out of the April election.  Granted, some of those papers could come back before close of business today, but how many?  Additionally, some of these nominees will be disqualified after examination because of insufficient signatures.

It also means that there will not be a “race” in any precinct — not even the “hotbed” districts of #5 and #8.  Every person on the ballot will be elected.

Can you imagine going into the caucuses with 100 vacant seats?  How many will be filled by caucus?  Twenty?  Forty?

My instinct tells me we will somehow patch together a quorum each night, but how can any representative body thrive under a heavy shroud of apathy?

Town Meeting in Trouble

With five business days remaining to pull nomination papers, there are far fewer candidates than open seats.  Using information from page 4 of today’s Minuteman, I put together the following table:

 

pct	seats	running	new	incumbent	deficit
1	23	22	5	17	1
2	22	16	4	12	6
3	21	18	3	15	3
4	23	15	4	11	8
5	21	27	13	14	0
6	23	16	4	12	7
7	21	14	1	13	7
8	22	27	6	21	0
9	22	18	6	12	4
10	21	11	1	10	10
11	22	17	5	12	5
totals	241	201	52	149	51

 

It’s important to note that the above represents the number of people who pulled papers.  Not all of them will be returned.  We don’t know how many will come back.  They are due back to the Town Clerk Monday, February 27 at 5pm.

I think it’s safe to assume there won’t be too many more papers pulled in the next week.  But for the sake of argument, let’s assume that all of these people do return their papers and the election commission certifies them.  That’s the best case.

Even if that does happen, only two precincts (5 and 8) will have more candidates than seats available.  On the other end of the spectrum, precinct 10 will be nearly half-empty.

Bottom line, there would be no fewer than 51 seat empty after the election (21%).  Still think Town Meeting in Billerica is alive and well?

Yes, some — maybe even most — of these empty seats will be taken by caucus on the Thursday before the first night of TM.  This will get us a quorum on most nights (although I bet it may be close here and there).  But is it enough for quality leadership?

This year –with all 241 seats available — was supposed to be a important year for our Town Meeting.  A chance for major turnover.  A chance for new people to step forward.  Instead it looks like Billerica has lost interest in its legislative body.

 

Billerica Selectmen Pile on MBTA

A week or so after Boston mayor Tom Menino fired off a letter asking Beacon Hill to raise the gas tax to save the MBTA, the Billerica Board of Selectmen wrote one of its own.

Here is the text of that letter:

Town Center Road Improvements Project Revived

In a surprising development, the town center road improvements project is suddenly alive again. The project, which has been dormant for almost a decade, has a new conceptual design. Town Engineer Kelley Conway and her consultant, the BETA Group, presented two concept plans to the Board of Selectmen on Monday night. One plan showed minor improvements to the existing road configuration, while the second is a radical change from the existing condition.

The BOS voted to send the second plan, shown below, onto the Traffic Management Committee.

Town Center Road Improvements Concept Plan (The BETA Group)

The Plan

This JPEG is not as clear as the PDF: Town Center Road Improvements Project

The project is at the “conceptual” stage — translated from engineer-speak means it’s a level below brainstorming.  There is still an opportunity to make major changes.  Features I will point out:

- The backbone of this plan is the idea of moving the southbound Boston Road lanes from the west side of the Common to the east side.  In order to to this, the “frontage road” in front of Centre Cafe and Mangia Mangia — along with its angle parking — would be eliminated.

- The roadway in front of the library would be reduced to one lane, with angle parking added there.  The road would run one-way northbound.  I don’t understand why it wouldn’t be better to run this road southbound and let drivers who want to access Concord Road from Boston road southbound use it.  Also, I understand we are losing parking along the old frontage road, but I don’t think we need the new angled parking next to the Common.  The parking lot behind the library is large and the lot behind BATV is probably large enough.  On-street parking could be added to Andover Road.

- The triangle island at the end of River Street is being eliminated.  I can’t believe it’s not protected by the historic district.

- I counted four trees proposed for removal.  One of them is a big one on the northeast corner of Boston Road and Cummings.  Is it possible no one is attached to these trees?

- The traffic signal at Boston Road at Cummings Road won’t work very well.  Allowing all left turns there will not allow for efficient operation.  And how will the crosswalks operate?  If the BETA Group has performed any traffic analysis, I will try to answer some of these questions.

In other words, there is a lot of work to be done, but this is a great start.  I am glad that BETA, Ms. Conway, and the BOS are open to “blowing up” (more engineer-speak) the roads around the Common, and thinking about the vehicle and pedestrian problems from scratch.

The Traffic Management Committee

Who or what is the Traffic Management Committee?  No one is certain (staff in town hall is searching for the members’ names for me as I write this), but we do know that they will be holding a meeting on Monday, February 13th to discuss this concept plan.  We also know that Sgt. Martin Conway, from the Police Department Traffic Division, is its chairman.  And that Dave Gagliardo is the BOS representative.

We also know that Monday’s meeting, while open to the public (7pm in the Conway hearing room), is not a public hearing.  I imagine that means the committee will not be asking attendees to share their opinions on the projects or the plan.

So when will you have the opportunity to participate?  That’s unclear, as no public hearings of any kind have been set.  But in my experience with dozens of public processes in my professional career, I would recommend that:

- The discussion about parking should start immediately.  If we learned nothing else during the two TM debates about mixed-use zoning, parking is very important to people around here.  In a town where there are 10 parking spaces for every man, woman, and child (OK, maybe it only seems that way), nobody wants to give parking away.  If we can’t touch the angled parking in the old frontage road, this project may go nowhere.  Bring in the Billerica Alliance now to discuss it.  Need some leadership on this.

- Let’s get an opinion from the Historical Committee before we go any further.  Which curbs can we move?

- Traffic level of service should be top on the agenda in public meetings.  I’m all in favor of creating two-way traffic on the east side of the Common, but will it work?

- Place a high value on pedestrian comfort and safety.  If we can’t tie the two side of Boston Road together for foot traffic, there is no point in building anything.

- Make it as easy as possible to comment.  There will be a lot of people interested in this project.  It should have its own web page.  Get creative with the public process.  Sit-down presentation/Q&A meetings are fine, but consider design charettes and open houses (where people can freely stroll in and out, look at plans, and talk with designers) as well.

Press

Evan Lips from the Lowell sun files two stories, one Tuesday and another Wednesday.  The Minuteman filed this report.  Finally, Billerica.org also posted a story.

Detractors

Like anything that costs money, this project is going to have its enemies.  From one of the Sun stories:

Selectman Mike Rosa … questioned the timing of the project, citing “tough economic times” and the town’s recently approved $16.5 million sewer-expansion project.

We need sewer, yes, but for the economic development health of the town center, we need to fix these roads more.

What You Can Do

Stay tuned to this station, where I will be posting contact information of staff (and of the Traffic Committee members, if they are all located), to whom you can comment.  As you know I have designed projects like this as a professional, and I can serve as something of a liaison, explaining what the elements of the project will mean to you.

Please get involved.  We’ll only get one shot at this project in our lifetime, so I want to make sure it’s done right.  As more people participate and demand a good project, the higher quality it will be.

Do We Honestly Want a Smaller Government?

In his State of the Union speech last week, President Obama said this:

“I believe what Republican Abraham Lincoln believed: That government should do for people only what they cannot do better by themselves, and no more.”

Yes, the nation’s chief Democrat is talking about the size of government.

This is an excellent topic of discussion for all Americans.  How big should government be?  What is government doing for us now that we would rather do for ourselves?

When you ask people if they want government to be smaller, they usually say yes.  This includes many Democrats.  The reason for this is in large part because a smaller government presumably costs less to run, and lower costs equals lower taxes.  (Although as I have argued before, budget cuts sometimes result in higher costs elsewhere.)

But what people say they want and what they really want is often very different, and this dishonesty within ourselves is where the debate gets hung up.  In fact I believe that a most of us truly like how much government does for us (but would never, ever admit it), and in some cases wants it to do more — sometimes much more.

My exhibit today is parking permits.  I work for a city department that issues parking permits — some 32,000 of them over four months each year.  They expire on the last day of January, and anyone who misses the deadline will get parking tickets.  The Department mails out renewal notices in October.  Permits may be renewed by mail or on-line,and the Department will mail out the new permit.  No visit to City Hall is necessary.

November passes, then December.  About three weeks into the new year, visits to the Department start to climb sharply.  By the last week of January, it is too late to renew by mail, the procrastinators storm City Hall, making the atrium look like Occupy Wall Street.  At its height on the 31st the line snaked up a staircase and wrapped all the way around a long circular hallway on the second floor.

Although the Department is open until 8pm on Monday night, windows stayed open until well after 9 until the last customer walked out with a new 2012 permit.  Clerks earned overtime.  A total of 1600 permits were sold in the final two days of the month, meaning that 5% of all permits were sold in that time.

Why, with fancy a smartphone able to remind people that the deadline is looming, do people wait in such long lines?  Why not spend three minutes on-line in December to avoid such an in-line headache in January?  Why do procrastinators rely on a government department to stay open late for them — at extra cost — when it would have been so easy to do it for themselves?

Maybe because they can’t.

So “the government should do for people only what they cannot do better themselves, and no more.”  What are these things exactly?  Inspect their own meat (USDA), decide which drugs are worth buying and won’t do harm (FDA), ensure air travel safety (FAA), find out if a hurricane will strike this week (NOAA), or haul our trash to the dump (Billerica DPW)?  How about renew a parking permit?

Maybe the government is the dishwasher, and the people are the sponge and towel.  The dishwasher is expensive, but we all buy it, and none of us complains about the cost.  Because washing dishes by hand is icky, and we are soft.

Posted in Politics | Tagged: small government | 5 Comments »

Measmer Named Editor of Minuteman

Posted by Jeffrey R. Parenti, P.E. on February 1, 2012

Liana Measmer, former owner/publisher of the Billerica Green newspaper, has been named the new editor of the Billerica Minuteman.  She made the announcement in a e-mail today.

Before founding the Billerica Green, Measmer was a reporter and columnist.  She worked for Max Bowen, whom she now replaces.

If you have never met Liana, she is a dynamo.  She started the Billerica Green from nothing.  She wrote most of the material herself, adding other content provided by volunteers.  She sold advertising to dozens of local businesses.  Measmer mailed the newspaper, for free, to every mailbox in town.  Her monthly paper quickly grew a large fan base.  She was forced to stop publication once for financial reasons, then brought it back a second time before folding the business for good about a year ago.

Liana is hands-down the most positive, upbeat person I know in town, and one of the hardest-working.  Her smile is contagious.  She wants to bring more human interest stories to the Minuteman, something she did so well with the Billerica Green.  And she knows town hall backwards and forwards.  I am excited about her connections, journalistic ability, and dedication to press coverage of our town.

I have complained in this space more than once that we need deeper and broader news coverage in this town of 40,000+ people.  It looks like I got my wish.  Few people know Billerica better than Liana Measmer, and I think you will see that come through in her work.

Congratlations, Liana!

Posted in Billerica | 1 Comment »

 

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