^ the new waterfront in Salem : emblematic of mayor Driscoll’s 14 years of city leadership

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Reading the many pronunicamentos published about Salem’s future by Mayor Kim Driscoll, I’m constantly wondering whether I’m reading something posted by Boston Mayor Marty Walsh. Affordability, bike lanes, theme parks, even Sanctuary City (which I supported and still do support) — the entire message is that which Walsh, as Mayor of a huge city — a metropolis — has to face and should face.

Yet Salem is NOT a metropolis. It’s not a big city at all. Why then does Mayor Driscoll want to address Salem’s future as if it were Boston ?

Perhaps she thinks that by creating an arena in which big city issues dominate, Salem will somehow become a city of 100,000 people, even 200,000, rather than the 40,000 who call this quite small city home. Of perhaps Driscoll simply envies big city Mayors, who can perform on the Big Stage dealing with the Big Urban Issues that Mayors worldwide confer about when they gather to exchange ideas about climate resilience, immigration, traffic, the opioid crisis, homelessness, school bureaucracy, international business and social media Woodstocks.

I can understand Driscoll’s thinking here. Much more satisfying to apply her quite extraordinary intellect and mastery of detail to major world issues that will be written about by historians, than to deal with water rates, real estate taxes, public works clean-ups, trash fees, and restaurant closing hours. Or perhaps Driscoll is a noise adept ? Big cities are noisy places — it’s a big part of their attraction. The ears get played to every hour of day and night: the cliche is correct, that the (big) city never sleeps. Salem, on the other hand, is a quiet place. When my Boston-born wife first moved to Salem with me, the first thing she noticed was how quiet our street was after nine p.m. In Salem you can hear the electricity transformers hum. It’s kind of like seeing the full Milky Way on a night up-country, far from Big City lights. Mayor Driscoll might feel as unsettled as my wife. Quiet can be like that. It can leave you feeling isolated, abandoned, whereas noise connects you to the world. It’s the glue of urban excitement.

Salem faces a next phase. We all know this. The 14 years of drama and development, the Pharaohs’ pyramids phase of Salem’s rebirth are over. Seven pyramids in Giza — apart from the city just as Downtown Salem is apart from the very local residential areas of Salem — were nice for Egypt, just as the huge new hotels and trendy bistros and Halloween tourist traps are nice for Spooky-town Salem; but once you’ve built it, you can’t just rebuild, You have to stop and actually use the fortune teller kiosks, the restaurants serving cheese with every kind of burger-greens-BBQ sauce dish, the Talbots-like clothing shops, the wine shops, the coffee houses, the law offices and investment letter research cubicles. There’s a lot of them, at least by small city standards, which are the standards that measure Salem, whether Mayor Driscoll likes it or not. So what comes next ? Not more of the same, because residential Salem IS NOT downtown Salem and has zero intention of becoming downtown-ish.

Residential Salem, which comprises at least four of the city’s seven wards and probably more, doesn’t need bike lanes. It doesn’t want 30 to 100 unit, pyramid-sized apartment complexes with “affordable” set-offs (if you think Salem is unaffordable, try Boston). Residential Salem isn’t at all happy with the anarchy of strip malls and one-offs that make Highland Avenue look like a forest after a tornado has buzzed it, and they sure don’t want more of it. Residential Salem would like its wages to keep up with prices — a policy goal that Mayor Driscoll can do nothing about. Residential Salem would like to be able to go about its business of commuting to jobs; sending the kids safely to a school worthy of taxpayer funding; parks that aren’t dominated by constructs and paving. Residential Salem would like the quiet of its Salem to continue.

There may well not be any meeting of minds between ( 1 ) the denizens of downtown, newly moved into funkytown and wanting more and more of beer bistros, doubled-fee parking meters, bike hobbyists, hotel festivities, water taxis, and noisy beehives of knowledge and idealism, and ( 2) the long-time Salemites who command Residential Salem and live in an entirely different world of commuting to wage jobs, bringing up the kids, and wanting the environment to be silent. Yet it would be good for Salem’s future if Mayor Driscoll were to recognize that her mission to create funkytown has been accomplished — that Salem must not and  cannot now adopt big city signposts — and that now it is time to address the needs of residents who are fed up with hearing about it and paying for it.

—- Mike Freedberg / Here and Sphere

The Boston Calling case, officially titled United States of America vs. Kenneth Brissette; Timothy Sullivan, probably should never have been brought. There seem ways to have disciplined these men for what they did short of a criminal prosecution.

I will discuss the issues raised later. First I direct you to read the Appeals Court Judge’s finding that Brissette and Sullivan could be properly indicted pursuant to the Hobbs Act, which, says the Court, incorporates the common law definition of extortion : http://media.ca1.uscourts.gov/pdf.opinions/18-1254P-01A.pdf

We all know, thanks to years of public discussion, what Brissette and Sullivan did: they intervened in Crash Line Productions’ September 2, 2014 concert permit application to insist, as a condition of the permit being granted, that it hire workers from Local 11, workers that Crash Line said it did not need. This they had no legal power to require, and thanks to (City Director of Operations) Joe Rull’s directive to them, they knew it. Yet they did it anyway.

Thus the question arises : what should be done by way of disciplining Brissette and Sullivan ? And another question : are City officials barred from advocating for the hiring of Union workers, even to the extent of making union hires a condition of permit issuance ?

The second question is easy. In the Appeals Court opinion one finds this sentence : “The licensing agreement between Crash landing and the City did not obligate Crash landing to hire workers that it needed to put on a festival from any union or otherwise place restraints on Crash Landing’s hiring practices.” This sentence would suggest that the City could have a permit applicant enter into an agreement that would require hiring union workers.

The Court’s opinion also notes that Crash landing had a pre-existing contract, with another firm, to supply it the workers it needed for its event. By their holding up the permit issuance, Brissette and Sullivan disregarded Crash landing’s existing contract obligations. Instead of, from the outset, negotiating an agreement with Crash landing to require that it hire Local 11 workers — an agreement which the Court suggest they would have had authority to do — Brissette and Sullivan simply imposed, on their own hook, whether or not they realized it, their own demands on all concerned. They acted capriciously, carelessly.

Advancing the cause of union workers and union wages is a necessary undertaking and should be a political and economic priority at a time when wages have fallen behind the huge rise of housing prices. I applaud Brissette and Sullivan for their commitment to the union argument. I cannot, however, credit the amateurish way in which they applied their commitment in the Crash Landing case. They deserved to be admonished in no uncertain terms : suspended or maybe even fired by the City administration, including for the embarrassment generated.

Admonition ceased to be an option once the United States attorney brought her criminal indictment of the men under the Hobbs Act. Now the entire history of government regulation of union activity came into play. The NLRB has jurisdiction over what sorts of job action and organizing tactics a union — or its friends — may employ. Criminal sanction is available for actions that result in intimidation and worse. Extortion is pretty much defined by labor conflict intimidations, and when such intimidation is general to a union action, prosecution is a must. Yet it’s not always easy to tell where legal hardball ends and criminal action begins. A large number of NLRB cases turn on how the facts are delineated. In the Brisette and Sullivan case, however, there seems to be very little of  intimidation, just a lot of hurry, or maybe a desire on the part of Crash landing to be Mr. Nice Guy.  Amateurish, Brissette’s permit game surely was; annoying, too. But intimidation ? Hardly. Also this : Crash landing was legally entitled to its permit ; why did it not go to Court, on an emergency basis, seeking an injunction ordering the City to issue it ? Would that nit have put an end to the Brissette and Sullivan business ?

I have a hard time justifying the United States Attorney bringing a “corruption case” where the victimized party did not seek ordinary legal remedies available to it.

Even though Brissette and Sullivan were told that it was illegal to do what they did, I think their mindset was that they were just negotiating; that if push came to shove, they would have no choice but to issue the permit. Did Crash landing say to them, “if you don’t issue us this permit, we’re going to Court” ? It seems not. If so, then I doubt that Brissette and Sullivan felt they were intimidating anybody. That they have had now to entrust their futures to a motion by their lawyers for “:judgment notwithstanding the verdict” — a normal motion but hardly a common one — is a shame. I think those who are protesting the conviction have it right : that officials will now shy away from advocacy for unions without first consulting, and perhaps even having to retain, a lawyer.

—- Mike Freedberg / Here and Sphere

^ proposed new roadway along Chelsea Creek, showing its direct link to the Suffolk Downs site

Recently Cargo Ventures, Inc.,(“Cargo”) a warehousing business servicing Logan Airport, proposed a major reconfiguration of a half-mile long stretch of East Boston waterfront abutting Chelsea Creek. Cargo’s plans depend in part upon the State conveying the railroad right of way that it owns, as shown on the map pictured above. No sooner had these plans become public than opposition from some moved the State to withdraw, temporarily, its conveyance, pending “further study.” Clearly what the State means by “further study” is time for the various interests affected to weigh in on either the Yes side or the No.

We stand with the “Yes” side. Here’s why :

( 1 ) the plan will create a shorefront roadway that will offer some traffic relief to McClellan Highway, which is the only highway that commuters from coastal communities North of Boston can reasonable take to and from Boston.

( 2 ) Cargo will build a garage and warehouse that will greatly expand its footprint, creating hundreds of jobs for residents of East Boston and other nearby communities.

( 3 ) the planned  new road will connect directly to the entrance-way to Suffolk Downs, which will be undergoing enormous development during the next 20 years. Suffolk has already committed to mitigating traffic along McClellan Highway. This connector road serves that commitment beautifully.

( 4 ) the connector road will also relieve the traffic pressure on Boardman Street and Orient Heights’ main intersection, Saratoga Street at Bennington.

Much of the land area to be mitigated by cargo is today an eyesore of junkyards, auto repair shops, parking, and under-utilized old industrial buildings. Cities have learned to maximize their waterfronts’ appeal — and tax assessments. The new Chelsea Creek waterfront buildings will greatly increase these parcels’ City tax revenues.

It is difficult to find an objection to the Cargo plan that stands up to scrutiny. Will all the new jobs impact all traffic, not just the traffic relieved from McClellan Highway ? Maybe. Yet the new roadway’s direct link to Suffolk Downs suggest that it will reroute that development’s traffic increase far more effectively than any alternate suggestion that I have seen.

I invite your criticisms of our argument, yet I am doubtful that any such can overcome all the reasons for supporting this proposal.

Note : many thanks to Bayswater resident Mary Berninger for explaining to me graphically the positive benefits of this proposal.

— Mike Freedberg / Here and Sphere

^ how to resolve the state’s traffic and transportation riddles without surrendering people’s freedoms or unbalancing tax allocations : Governor Baker confronts Massachusetts’s most intractable public policy problem

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Whether he likes it or not, Governor Baker is now Massachusetts’s “transportation governor.” Of the many problems facing our Governor, many of them challenging and even intractable for any government, the state’s transportation situation surely ranks high. Higher than the opioid addiction epidemic ? Affordable housing ? Schools performance ? Possibly. Certainly in political terms, transportation comes first. Not necessarily with the voters — at the door, in the campaigns that I am working, schools challenges get many, many more mentions than transportation issues — but with activists and executives as well as most media, the state’s traffic congestion has take the top spot. Which means that it must take first place with Governor Baker as well.

It’s an obstacle to us all and to him. No transportation fix can be quick. Roads and bridges can’t just be closed down for repairs. Nor can the T or commuter rail. They must all be fixed while being used — a riddle that no Governor can resolve. Which means that fixes will linger and last and hang around even as they’re being fixed. Baker sets the year 2032 as the target date for bringing the T and commuter rail fully into the 21st Century — signals and track, trains and cars, electrification, service expansion, greater frequency of trains and T cars, you name it.

The Governor’s recent submission to the legislature of an $ 18 billion bond bill announces his acceptance of a long term commitment — well beyond his term ending in 2022 —  to the transportation challenge. Today the Boston Globe reports two additional Baker proposals : ( 1 ) creating opt-in, toll-paying lanes on some of the state’s major roads and ( 2 ) including buses in the opt-in lane. I am skeptical of set asides that set one form of transportation apart from another, and I most definitely do not want the opt-in tolls to b e diverted to the MBTA / commuter rail budget — tolls charged to users of roads and bridges should be used for roads and bridges. Still, if we are to have dedicated lanes, and it seems that we can’t avoid it, then the Governor’s plan is  a workable one. You want to escape traffic ? Pay for it. You want buses to arrive on time and to not take forever to make a trip ? Let buses use dedicated highways lanes.

You can read the Governor’s press conference on this proposal here : https://www.masslive.com/news/2019/08/gov-charlie-baker-open-to-charging-fees-on-managed-lanes-to-reduce-traffic-congestion.html

Critics of Baker’s suggestions say ( 1 ) that opt-in lanes favor those who can afford it, and secondly, that the way to price traffic is to charge drivers a surcharge for driving in peak traffic hours. My response is, first, that so what if opt-in lanes earmark those who can afford it ? Getting them and T buses off the rest of the highway frees up traffic on both the opt-in lane and the rest of the highway. Second, I agree with the Governor that surcharging those who drive in peak traffic hours penalizes people who have no other good option. To which some critics respond that congestion pricing will push drivers to forgo cars and use the T. My response : first, government has no business pressuring people to use one form of transportation over another and second, the T goes where it wants to go, not necessarily where you want to go, and it goes there when it wants to, not necessarily when you want to. The T is a controlled environment, and most people prefer to be their own control, which is why we use cars, not controlled transport.

I think that Governor Baker gets what I am saying; that he has no intention of pushing free people into an unfree environment for the sake of transportation rationales. The T and commuter rail must serve us : we do not serve it and should not be made to serve it. Fixing the T and the commuter rail, and applying highway lanes more skillfully than the current method, cannot be rushed, cannot be excuses for changing our tax system or reallocating our tax allocations. The city “progressives” who want the traffic challenge to be their entry into a state of higher taxation and controlled movement cannot be allowed to stampede us, nor to fool us by their street theater of emergency. Alleviating metro Boston’s traffic density can NOT be hurried, MUST not be hurried, nor should it engender “temporary” taxes and other crisis suspensions of regular order. Patience here is not only required, it is wiser than you may think. In patience come suggestions that might actually pass muster with the voters rather than rushing into places much to be regretted later.

Nor is metro Boston’s traffic density likely to recede any time soon. It results from the new urban prosperity that has transformed Boston from an empty downtown surrounded by ethnic residencies to an international entrepot of enterprise, social life, community, shopping, and fun. Immigrants are making money here, young tekkies are inventing new devices and interfaces, businesses that serve them are prospering, and everybody wants to be part of it. Our big problem is that wages have lagged the rest of the boom, prices especially. Traffic and T antiquity impose time burdens on those who want to get around, but the burdens exist because the City is alive, dynamic, cool. Hopefully, if we make good decisions, it will remain alive, dynamic, and cool — and a bastion of liberty, not control by others.

—- Mike Freedberg / Here and Sphere

^ the coming man in Salem city politics : Ward Four City Councilor Tim Flynn

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About once a year I feel the need to write about the politics of Salem, a city of some note in American history and which also happens to be my Father’s home and that of his family before him. This year, however, I may write not only this column, for the hotly contested city Council elections under way in Salem signal significant change.

For the past 14 years, the city has been directed basically by one person, its powerful and very hands-on Mayor, Kim Driscoll. Now in her fourth term, “Mayor Kim” has overseen enormous development of Salem’s downtown and of its waterfront (and adjacent streets). Almost an entire new city has been built: now busily peopled with tons of tourists who come not only to see where Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote The Scarlet Letter or to visit the various points associated with the witchcraft accused of 1692. Kim Driscoll’s Salem features a dozen or more fine dining restaurants, European-style terrace bistros, bric a brac shops, banks and investment letter offices, and the vastly expanded Peabody-Essex Museum and its smaller sister, the Essex Institute, wherein as a kid I browsed the family records and gossip chronicles of Salem’s past. Into this trove of memories and garden of impulse purchases come those thousands — tens of thousands — of visitors who I mentioned. Some even come to live. Driscoll’s Salem has draw into it more newcomers in 20 years than chose Salem in the previous 60. By all measures, Driscoll’s Mayoral record is one of growth and triumph, of rebirth and more for a city which even 25 years ago smelled as dead as it looked.

In 2017 Driscoll won another term by better than two to one, against fierce competition supported by much of the city’s pre-Driscoll establishment. Long-term residents conspicuously set the tone of an opposition whose message was “no more of this, we’re going too far.” Driscoll’s decisive win seemed to close forever the power hopes of those who had set the city’s pace and direction in the decades before her.

It now looks that I was wrong, very wrong to assume so. There are 11 candidates seeking the city’s four at-large Council seats, and several of them represent long-term Salem, the very Salem which got electorally crushed in 2017, but newly led. Then, and for years before, the opposition leaders featured Paul Prevey, Steve Pinto, Todd Siegel, Elaine Milo, Steve Lovely, Jerry Ryan, Lenny O’Leary, Kevin Harvey, and Arthur Sargent — all of them City Councillors or former. This time most of the names one hears most are new to the scene or of recent arrival : Belle Steadman, Jennifer Brown, Melissa Faulkner, Bob Camire, and, above all, Tim Flynn, a City of Salem Fire Department lieutenant who was first elected as Ward Four’s Councillor in 2017.

Flynn’s win was noteworthy, as was Ward Four’s vote generally. On the ballot in 2017 was the question whether Salem should be a “sanctuary city,” proclaiming its refusal to assist Federal immigration officers seeking to arrest persons illegally resident. The question was voted Yes by about 58 percent to 42: Flynn’s Ward was the only one in the City to vote No.

The Sanctuary City ballot question divided the city as intensely as any political issue had done in my entire lifetime observing Salem politics. It created ideological factions within the city. Barely two years prior to this vote Salem had unified, without any controversy at all, as a “no place for hate” community, featuring then well-loved drag queen “Gigi” Gill as its symbol of unity and peace; now the city found itself riven, more or less along lines of long-term residents versus newcomers. (There were of course plenty of long-term residents voting Yes on the ballot question, as did I; but there were very few, if any, newcomers voting the No side.)

Flynn was a strong advocate of No. That fight is over, and he never now mentions it. But he has gathered into his camp all the No” activists — who were, mostly, opposed to Dtiscoll as well — and has outreached to support candidates running city-wide, well beyond his ward, who now look to him as their leader. Being a city firefighter, born in Salem, and in complete charge, politically, of his own Ward — a ward which has, historically, sent major city leaders to the Council — he seems stronger than Paul Prevey, a former Ward Six councillor, ever was — and his timing is excellent, for the current sentiment one hears a lot in Salem is that development has reached maximum benefit and henceforth a new direction is needed.

This is not to say that the Sanctuary City activists — “progressives” —  and the catalysts of downtown innovation, have lost their mojo. Far from it. They too have a slate of Council candidates — Alice Merkl, Jeff Cohen (who ran in 2017), Ty Hapworth. All three impress me. Each would be a diligent City Councillor. It also appears that Conrad Prosniewski may become a “no place for hate” candidate. Even if not, he’s a formidable candidate, known by all from his years serving as Salem Police’s community outreach officer. The problem with the “progressive” side is that they’re fighting 2017’s battles still. They’re the candidates of no change, of “give our side another term doing what we do.”

Affordable housing has become the issue of the day. The “wait a minute !” team wants less development, Mayor Kim wants passage of Governor Baker’s Zoning reform so that the City can approve more of it. But will any potential development be affordable ? The record in Boston suggest that every affordability measure does not really work, in fact may aggravate the situation. The progressives believe in residential affordability, and Mayor Kim is obsessed with it, but as I just noted, no one has a good or workable answer. As a result, the election may turn not on the issue but on a simple feeling that new faces and new voices should be elected.

This is not to say that the Flynnites do not have an agenda. They do. What they want is for Salem politics to detach from the national madness and become basic again : keep water rates low, use every tax dollar wisely, involve the long-term residents in every decision, take care of city workers, slow down the planning and developing process. Flynn is also skeptical of Mayor Driscoll’s “temporary” bike and scooter lane program for some of Salem’s main streets, a skepticism which I share: government shouldn’t be favoring one form of transportation at the expense of another.

The Flynnites not only have an agenda, they seem to have brought to their side Councillor Domingo Dominguez, leader of Salem’s Hispanic community, who finished first in the 2017 at large Council race and could well do so again. Dominguez is an old-school politician who believes in helping people and is effective doing it. In 2017 he befriended both sides. The “progressives” seem not to have liked that, and Dominguez this time has thrown in his lot more or less with Team Flynn. Salem’s Hispanic vote is small, at most five per cent, but five percent matters quite a bit, and having the city’s most visible immigrant community on your side is  a powerful way to sway the votes of people who may be skeptical of the Flynnites because of their 2017 opposition to the Sanctuary City question.

Of course only pundits are likely to see the Salem election in the light I have cast upon it. Most voters will do what voters have always done : vote for the candidates they know personally and like, for character, experience, and campaign diligence. Most voters do not live and breathe ideology, thank goodness; and at the City Council level, it’s much more usual for an election to be decided on personalities than agendas. That said, I do sense that many, many voters, the Salem-born in particular, want a return to “small ball” elections. (I think the same feeling may well govern next year’s national election, which is why Joe Biden looks so likely to win it all.)

So — who will be the four at-large winners ? It’s not easy to tell. The field of eleven is a very strong one. My own guess is that Domingo Dominguez, Arthur Sargent, George McCabe (a former Councillor and son of a former Councillor as well), and Elaine Milo will be hard to beat, with Alice Merkl coming fifth, then Belle Steadman, Conrad Prosniewsi, Jeff Cohen, Ty Hapworth, Gary Gill, and Melissa Faulkner, in that order. Yet I could just as easily be wrong. It would not shock me to see Steadman win, or Prosniewski. Alice Merkl ran for Register of Deeds last year; she has some name recognition from that race,m and this year she’s running one of the most diligent and imaginative Council campaigns. In a less strong field, she’d win comfortably. Jeff Cohen finished eighth last time; can he move up to fourth ? Not out of the question, though he may this time be on the wrong team. The same is true of Gary Gill. Ty Hapworth and Melissa Faulkner depend on slate voting by their respective sides. Their day is likely to be in the future, not now.

AS for my own votes, I wish I could vote for them all. I like them all. All do credit to the city. There isn’t a nuisance candidate among them — and in past Salem elections there have been nuisance candidates and less. I know which four I’m going to vote for, and I hate having to disappoint seven. I’m not telling you who my four are. Very likely you have a different four in mind, and in no case would you be making a mistake.

I do hope, however, that you will vote for at least one Council candidate from the “wait a minute,” Tim Flynn side. The City needs to embrace its long term residents and multi-generational Salemites in a way that it has neglected to do these past two decades.

— Mike Freedberg / Here and Sphere