^^ Erin Murphy and Ed Flynn : two of the Council’s remaining common sense members. More isolated than ever on a Council hell bent on deconstructing a City that used to get along well on its own citizen customs.

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It seems peevish of me, I suppose, to suggest that the incoming City Council elected on Tuesday will be worse than the one we now have. After all, the present Council has been seriously disfigured by all sorts of no-no: unlicensed driving, back room election scheming, racist accusation, name calling, a ton of avoidance of major City services. How can the incoming Council possibly be worse ?

It will be worse because Michael Flaherty and Frank Baker will not be part of the incoming. Instead we get these guys :

( 1 ) John Fitzgerald, who will probably vote for common sense but is no way the fighter that Baker has been. By his pssion and intransigence — his street fight nose — Baker, by himself rescued the latest redistricting map from a racist gerrymander attempt by the present Council’s majority. For that alone the City owes Baker as much thanks as it has it in its heart to give. Do I think that John Fitzgerald — the son of revered, late Mission Hill State Representative Kevin Fitzgerald — will confront the Council’s majority alone, in their faces, when it attempts one of its wish list absurdities ? Don’t bet on it.

( 2 ) we get Henry Santana, a veteran of Mayor Wu’s office, who will almost certaibly be a yes vote for anything Mayor Wu wants. Whereas Mike Flaherty, with his superb knowledge of the City budget and practices, and his voting strength city-wide, could stand up to the Council’s bike lane frenzies and race-based view of everything, Santana will surely be a guaranteed “yes” vote for all of that.

The current Council has four stalwarts : Mike Flaherty, Frank Baker, Erin Murphy, Ed Flynn. Now it will have only three : Erin Murphy, Ed Flynn, John Fitzgerald (maybe).

Whereas the current Council’s four were enough to occasionally persuade a fifth vote (District One’s Gigi Coletta) to vote against the majority’s anti-police views — to the left even of Mayor Wu — the incoming Council’s mere three will be ever more isolated. I doubt that three will be able to force anything that the majority doesn’t agree to.

Boston has governmental problems up the ying-yang. To name only the most talked-about : streets that never get repaired; school system scandalously mismanaged with tons of unnecessary money in its shaky hands; an unsolved drug addiction crisis; crime sprees through South Bay mall and sometimes Downtown; gang wars; an understaffed police force; development and zoning plans that make no sense at all and are grounded in economic conditions no longer the case; and a 1974 Federal Court school busing order no longer relevant but that costs us $ 130 milion a year to comply with.

Families continue to leave the City because they have no confidence in a school system that cowers to students — seems to allow students to assault teachers with scanty consquence — instead of imposing its requirements on them. (Not to mention the diminution of Boston Latin school’s admissions into zip code quotas.) Meanwhile, the City approves housing proposals for one and two bedroom units far too small to house new families. Yes, Boston is now a city for high-paid singles who can expensively cavort, shop, and dine, and work 70 hour weeks in those wonderful biotech labs that have replaced manufacturing as the City’s economic base.. But what if the biotech boom fizzles, as it now appears to ? Office space in Downtown is emptying out faster than an arena after a hockey game. (City tax revenues are hurting, we’re told.) Can all the crap housing being approved by a Zoning Board drunk with illusion ever be rented or sold ? I doubt it.

Yet none of the above — much less the City’s insistence on imposing bike lanes on major roadways, abolishing parking spaces, and development “corridors” on otherwise well-accustomed neighborhoods — eludes the new Council’s majority. The media calls them “progressive.” They call themsleves that too. Never was an adjective worse abused. The Council’s policies absurdly misperceive the actual life of Boston residents. They are a kind of home invasion, a breaking and entering, if you will, as well as a carjacking — disrupting how we live our lives according to how we think best to live it.

Talk to ordinary neighbors someday. Most say they don’t vote — because “no one listens.” Or because “the politicians only care about themselves.”

These neighbors aren’t wrong. It’s why the turnout on Tuesday was barely 14 percent of all voters in my own neighborhood (East Boston) and scarcely 18 percent city-wide. 50 years ago a Counci;l election would see 35 percent turnout — and 20 to 30 Council candidates. This year, in the city-wide race, there were barely eight, and only five candidates with a serious base of support. Not only have the voters stopped voting, they’ve also stopped running for office.

Two of our nine Districts’ voters actually had options. In Districts 5 and 6, candidates of common sense did run. The common sense choice in District 5 (Roslindale, Mattapan and Hyde Park) actually mounted a strong effort. As a retired Boston policeman, Jose Ruiz would have been a crucial voice on the Council for reviving the City’s crime-stopper force (badly neutered since William Gross retired as Commissioner). But Ruiz lost — 52 to 48, a close race — to a candidate supported aggressively by Mayor Wu, who lives in District Five and thus gave her candidate a neighbor’s endorsement as well as a Mayor’s..

To sum up ; all of the above is why the Council grows ever more out of touch, ever more devoured by sharks with crazy policy meals in their mouths, and why we accommodate a Mayor who cares more about creationg a “21st Century City” =– whatever that means — rather than attending to basic municipal services and letting housing markets take care of themselves.

No wonder that 80-plus percent of our voters didn’t vote. I can’t blame them at all.

—-Mike Freedberg / Here and Sphere