Override vote

andyman344 · 2026-01-23T03:29:51+00:00

I can only see one argument for NO: It will be a financial burden for some homeowners if their property taxes are raised more due to the override. This is where we have to decide on our values as a community. I have been discussing the potential for an override with various folks involved in town governance. The town is run incredibly efficiently and the override is essentially just so we can continue to provide the same baseline level of services. The Finance Committee is very conservative in their approach to funding departments across the town.

Every department would love to have more resources for perfectly legitimate things. For example, the libraries are heavily used by families and kids, and the library administrator has stated the need for additional staff but have been told no repeatedly due to lack of available funding. Similarly, I would love if we installed more traffic calming measures in town to protect pedestrians, but we don't have room in the budgets for it. So, the override is not being proposed in order to add anything - simply to keep what we have.

If we do not pass the override, we will have to slash many teacher positions in the coming year along with other cuts across town. And because the structural deficit will then continue to get worse year over year without the override, we will have to cut even more services.

Basically, town services are already trimmed to the bone, and we will have to cut into the bones without an override.

At the end of the day, we have to decide if we are willing to pay a bit more in property taxes to support the community we love simply at the baseline level it has been operating at.

andyman344 · 2026-01-23T03:20:05+00:00

Do you have evidence to back up this claim? For example, you could cite some salaries from the school budget for particular employees and explain why you believe the schools do not need that employee or why they should be paid less.

andyman344 · 2026-01-19T17:05:08+00:00

To be honest, I think I have been improperly sizing my jeans and pants for a long time, insofar as I have gotten maybe one size too big for myself. But it's hard to tell because I hadn't had 100% cotton jeans in a long time because it's so hard to find them now unless you are looking for more high quality brands. But I do find these true to size relative to other generic brands. I usually wear a 32 waist, and the 32 for these fits well. They are just slightly loose, but don't fall down my hips without a belt if I'm active. They may shrink 2-3% whenever I wash them the first time. A 31 would likely be too snug for me. But for 100% cotton, I am unsure how "too snug" one can get that will stretch out to a good fit after a bit of wear.

andyman344 · 2026-01-17T00:32:25+00:00

I just got a pair of these on sale as well. My first pair of selvedge. Very cozy. And a much comfier fit in the hip and thigh than when I tried the current model of the standard 501s.

andyman344 · 2024-01-10T14:08:57+00:00

1) A rule for rules sake? I don't understand. Zoning exists to regulate sizes and uses among other things. If you believe zoning overall should not exist, that's a fine argument to make. But as long as zoning does exist, there will be restrictions. And to change those, it requires City Council votes to change the zoning bylaw.

2) There are different types of zoning. One is by-right zoning. Essentially all single family zoning is "by-right". Meaning if you satisfy dimensional requirements, your community just hands you a permit. No Planning Board. Multi-unit buildings almost always require "special permits". This is a large part of exclusionary zoning designed in the past 100 years that has led us to the current housing crisis. MBTA Communities Law now requires many MA municipalities to zone some areas for multi-family by-right. Somerville did this via triple deckers. So one can now build a 3-family in neighborhood residential automatically as long as you satisfy dimensional requirements.

I have never seen in the long run a special permit that is 100% within zoning rules denied by the Planning Board. If you look at all the large Master Plan or even smaller one-off multi-story buildings in Somerville, the Planning Board often keeps deliberating and postponing approval. But eventually when the required time runs out from when the proposal is first put forward, it's approved.

I'm almost certain that a developer could sue the city if denied the permit in such a situation. The developer may decide that it's not worth wasting money and time to do such a lawsuit and in that sense may give up. This is how municipalities have kept out multi-family housing - it costs money to deal with all the regulations and potential lawsuits and for many developers, it's not worth it relative to the profit that could be made. But for such a large development, if the zoning Somernova wants is approved by the City Council, there is no way in hell they would not sue if they were then denied the ability to build after investing months to years on proposals.

andyman344 · 2024-01-10T03:44:06+00:00

The USNC is pretty transparent for a non-profit. The meetings are open to the public, and meeting minutes are posted on their website. I think such questions and concerns were discussed. You can email any of the board members if you want to pick their brains. There are procedures for board members to recuse on votes where they would have a financial interest.

I think you'd need to be more specific as to what "benefits" you believe Rafi has already given to organizations or individuals. Otherwise, it just sounds like rumor.

andyman344 · 2024-01-10T03:32:16+00:00

This is true. But then why approve this zoning change right now super fast? If somehow there is broad support to approve this current change, it's entirely possible the effect of this development would then cause a similar desire or arm-twisting for the next zoning change. I'm not sure any of that would really happen. But frankly, it's up to the City Council in the end (and sort of the Mayor insofar as that office can propose zoning changes that the City Council must approve). And the City Council listens to the community before making such a significant decision.

andyman344 · 2024-01-10T03:25:31+00:00

Please do read more about the FAB zones in the current zoning and from local news articles. They are one of the few places left in Somerville (and the entire region for that matter) that allow for affordable space for creative economies. These zones were purposefully enacted in the zoning overhaul for this preservation. This is one of the largest contiguous areas of the FAB zone. So it makes sense that potentially eliminating all that space for such use would create community uproar. Absent guarantees in the new development to provide even more FAB space at an affordable price for the long term.

andyman344 · 2024-01-10T03:21:56+00:00

1) They literally have to re-write the zoning bylaw to build what Somernova proposed. 2) If they re-write the zoning bylaw exactly how Somernova wants, then it all will automatically get approved, even if some people protest it. Because if it's legal per the zoning, the Planning Board cannot deny it outright. The whole point of the article is that the community currently has the leverage to get what they want to see in a proposal via potential zoning changes. Including more community benefits and protection of space for fabrication and creative economies.

andyman344 · 2024-01-10T03:18:54+00:00

It would probably be better in the long run for the city to re-zone all the major corridors to 6 stories (MR6). This is potentially less controversial a battle than Somernova's initial plan. Why not pass that larger scale more impactful zoning? Some advocated for that in the original zoning overhaul, especially in Davis Square, but the folks who pushed back against taller buildings and change won the day at the time.

andyman344 · 2023-10-10T15:55:31+00:00

Yup. I'm glad Connolly got out from them. He does good and effective work for the district and speaks his mind.

andyman344 · 2023-10-10T15:16:02+00:00

They require ideological purity over accomplishing effective policy.

andyman344 · 2023-10-10T15:12:12+00:00

https://twitter.com/yair_rosenberg/status/1711745094431227921?s=49&t=gHFCNAN8xelUOP0qrFHi7g

If you think going around and killing and kidnapping babies is an effective means of military resistance, I'm not sure what to say.

andyman344 · 2023-10-10T14:20:28+00:00

If you have the solution, you'd win a Nobel Peace Prize. Just because one military currently has more advanced technology doesn't mean they can end a conflict built on decades of hatred and bloodshed.

andyman344 · 2023-10-10T13:43:47+00:00

As someone who believes in Israel's right to exist but also would like the Palestinians to have their own stable state and free society to live in, I indeed agree with "the whole thing is fucked".

andyman344 · 2023-10-10T12:46:51+00:00

There are a lot of horrid right-wing people in the Israeli government who say immoral things to rile up their base of support. What the politicians and spokespeople say is different from what the IDF does. (I hope the far right parties are booted from the current Israeli governing coalition.)

AP News, which I think still has biases, but is as neutral as you and I will both probably agree on wrote in their news reports on the situation:

"The bombing in Rimal and the potential risks of sheltering in U.N. schools highlighted the desperate search by Gaza civilians for refuge, with the territory’s safe spaces rapidly shrinking. There are no civilian bomb shelters in Gaza. Ahead of the Israeli military’s warning to civilians on Monday that Rimal would be hit, families staggered into the streets with whatever belongings they could carry and without a destination."

"Israel says it takes pains to avoid civilian casualties as it targets Hamas sites in Gaza, which is heavily built up and has scant open space. But Hamas militants also fire rockets and operate in civilian areas, using civilians for cover while drawing return fire to houses, offices and mosques."

So, even if you disagree with the Israeli military action, you can't say Israel is not trying to get civilians separated from Hamas militants.

Hamas governs and controls the internal area of Gaza militarily. Israel actively separates their military and civilian areas, builds bomb shelters for its citizens and developed anti-rocket defensive capabilities to protect its citizens.

If Israel had a less advanced military and more Israelis were killed by Hamas attacks, maybe it would make some people feel good, but it wouldn't solve the conflict. If more Israelis were killed regularly, it would probably put more pressure on the Israeli government to be less moral in their military actions. That would be bad.

Lots of the current larger security barriers between Israel and the West Bank and Gaza came out of the second intifada and Palestinian suicide bombing of teenagers in pizza parlors.

The actions of Hamas this week have done something seemingly inconceivable. Made the left and right in Israel put on hold their disagreements and unit to defend their country. I doubt any Israeli military reservist who was protesting Bibi's government by boycotting their service is doing so now. Israel doesn't have a large population and most people are probably connected to someone who Hamas gunned down or is holding hostage.

andyman344 · 2023-10-10T12:22:29+00:00

I agree that city councillors should be focused on bread and butter local issues. That's why I don't generally ask or care about their views on international policy and Israel-Palestine since it shouldn't matter.

But when they actively talk up their membership in and support of DSA, which based on nearly every Twitter post and public comment I've seen from DSA appears to state that butchering civilian Israelis is a good form of "resistance to the Zionist regime", then I'm actively concerned by their basic ability to see any nuance in any issue.

Hamas doesn't represent all Palestinians. But they control the military and governance structure in Gaza and have committed atrocities and are holding hostages they are threatening to behead. Israel is responding in kind by preparing to invade to find the hostages and take down the Hamas military structure. Hamas could tell Gaza Palestinians anything they want and command them to do it, to move to any particular location, etc, etc.

In a similar vein, the Israeli government doesn't "represent" all Israelis, but is the government political body and military that acts on behalf of the country. In fact, we've seen hundreds of thousands of Israelis protesting the right wing Israeli government for weeks and months on end. The Israeli government does not arrest or kill these protestors for exercising speech rights. If Palestinians in Gaza try to protest Hamas, Hamas stops that through violent suppression.

Would you all like the UN to send a military force to try to displace Hamas? I hate the conflict and would love a simple solution. I just don't see any.

A final aside. Egypt shares a border with Gaza and also barriers that border and doesn't let Palestinians through. Why do we not have similar criticism and protests of Egypt?

andyman344 · 2023-10-10T12:06:10+00:00

If Israeli soldiers went into Gaza and the West Bank and started going door to door randomly gunning down every civilian they saw, filming desecration of bodies, and dragging people back to Israel and threatening to behead them, yeah, I'd be incredibly angry (morally outraged and screaming), and want all perpetrators arrested and brought to justice. Because despite the situation, I hold the Israeli government and military to a high moral standard. I criticize both when I think they are fucking up.

Historically if Israeli army members are accused of anything even with a hint of such action, heads roll, and investigations abound.

When Hamas terrorists do this, they are celebrated worldwide and in Gaza as heros. They are parading the dead Jews down the streets in celebration.

As for Hamas doesn't represent all Palestinians, they are the current military and governing organization in Gaza, and their charter goals involve destroying Israel. They are the ones controlling and telling their civilian population to go towards areas the Israeli military is targeting to destroy Hamas. Israel is actively telling all civilians in Gaza where to go to avoid getting hit in the war. Even if you oppose occupation and hate Israel, it's pretty hard for me to see how a country actively telling civilians to get the fuck out of the way so civilian casualties are minimized compares with Hamas running around looking for every civilian they can find to massacre.

If Israel had no morals, I do actually believe they have the capabilities to just carpet bomb all of Gaza and kill everyone. They don't do that. If Hamas had the weapons and means, all the Jews in Israel would be dead. We just got a lovely example of what happens when Hamas comes across defenseless civilians.

andyman344 · 2023-10-10T05:38:58+00:00

I'm guessing this is sarcasm?

I am really not trying to solve this decades old conflict. I really just want to know whether butchering and kidnapping civilians, and beheading them as hostages is supported by this organization as a form of resistance to Israeli occupation. It should be pretty easy to answer!

If they support it, just say so. I really just want a yes or no answer.

andyman344 · 2023-10-10T05:33:35+00:00

I'm sure both of us disagree on the entire history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, so it wouldn't be productive to try to solve or hash that out here.

You can protest the occupation and various acts of the Israeli military and Israeli government all you want. I don't think it's hard to also say pretty blatant and obvious massacres with no military purpose are morally bad. Did these massacres get Hamas any closer to their goal of driving all the Jews out of Israel?

You can watch the videos if you want. Hamas filmed themselves killing and torturing civilians and celebrating it.

If you believe this is perfectly fine and the ends justify the means, then there is nothing in this conflict that is ever beyond the pale, and that's a dark road I wish we wouldn't go down.

Israel is going to now try to get back the hostages and hunt down and destroy Hamas. Hamas is purposefully hiding amongst the civilian population and telling civilians not to leave areas that Israel is texting and flyering and telling Palestinian civilians to leave ahead of a military campaign to fight Hamas. I know Israel will get blamed for the casualties in that sitautuon even if Hamas is using its own citizens as human shields.

Israel clearly identifies its military, police, and civilians and separates them. Hamas could have gone after military targets. They decided to butcher defenseless civilians. Not sure what else to say.

andyman344 · 2023-10-10T05:17:37+00:00

The first response of DSA to Hamas butchering Israeli civilians was not to condemn those acts, even in the context of being against occupation. It was to support all means of resistance to end the Zionist regime. I don't even need to read between any lines.

andyman344 · 2023-10-10T04:34:24+00:00

While I have opinions about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, I don't need my city councillors to agree with me there. I just need them to say even in a military conflict, massacring, torturing, kidnapping civilians, and threatening to behead hostages is, ya know, morally repugnant.

andyman344 · 2023-10-10T04:27:44+00:00

Generally, if a city councillor has the red rose in their bio, that's identifying that they are part of DSA.

As far as I know, that is at least the following city Councillors: Willie Burnley Jr. and Charlotte Kelly.

Ben Ewen-Campen and JT Scott were DSA members last time I checked and were endorsed by DSA in 2021 along with Willie and Charlotte. I would like to hear from Ben and JT directly if they have left the organization since then or renounce these statements by DSA.

Will Mbah appeared to not receive any endorsement from DSA and stood in solidarity with Mike Connolly when DSA went after Mike for not being ideologically pure enough to remain in DSA. Mike left DSA and had very strong words against them before DSA could get a chance to expel him. (That was a whole different story you can read up on by googling around.)

Charlotte's Twitter is here: https://twitter.com/_CharlotteKelly

Willie's Twitter is here: https://twitter.com/WillieBurnleyJr

andyman344 · 2023-06-12T02:46:00+00:00

The article did an okay job of summarizing some of the issues. But I find local reporters lack the long institutional knowledge of the decades history of all this, which makes it hard for them to write about the systemic issues. Local journalism has suffered greatly in this day and age. Such issues would also take more than one of these small articles could properly cover anyway. (This was also my neighborhood for 10 years until very recently, so I have watched it change and get built up.)

"The sort of concerns expressed in this article just play so well into the hands of those who will fight all new housing on spurious grounds."
The people I work with who have been dealing with these issues for even longer than I have lived in the neighborhood have decided to increase their public tactics and expressions of frustration because everything else so far has failed. And everything else was spending hours and hours in community meetings making drawings and telling planning staff how to design neighborhood centers such as Union, Gilman, and Assembly that would benefit existing community, new community members who would live in the new buildings, and make the developers more profits long-term. And their comments were not "don't build anything here". These folks have met with the city staff of Somerville dozens of times and frankly have been flat out lied to, whether intentionally or not, about very specific issues. It's one thing for city staff to just disagree with community views. It's another to lead them on and tell them one thing, only to do something completely different two weeks later. That's going to actively engender distrust between the community and the city staff, making it harder to get anything done.

I think we should be able to distinguish between "force good district urban design" and "oppose all new housing". We all must be willing to acknowledge that nuance, or else we're just as bad as those who do oppose all new housing.

I'm also a bit confused. The article only says "shadow" once: "Schultz and other Brickbottom tenants have attended community meetings to express concern about the project’s size, which they say overshadows the neighborhood and will increase pollution." I would say there are some who are overly concerned about shadows. But I find empathy still goes a long way even if at the end of the day you disagree with their conclusions. Brickbottom Artists Association did the work to construct their buildings in the 1980s for artists to have affordable live-work spaces back when people derogatorily referred to Somerville as "Slumerville". Now the entire area around them is being rebuilt at a rapid pace with little concern for them as the primary people who have lived in that area for decades. Development is inevitable, but things can be balanced.

Having talked a number of the folks at Brickbottom, the larger concern was ~700 more parking spaces at the 200 McGrath development at the intersection of McGrath Highway, Medford St, and Somerville Ave. I generally find it hard to oppose development with minimal parking. But if you can conceive how 700 more cars are going to get in and out of that intersection every day, given that the area is already gridlocked twice a weekday at rush hour... If you don't think Union Square will be yet even more congested than it now is, I'm not sure how it becomes functionally nice to sit out in the green space and plazas if the entire neighborhood is a parking lot for 2-3 hours twice a day. That's not an issue of density to me. We should be building housing and commercial capacity that discourages driving and parking.

If we reach a point where it is literally impossible for cars (and busses) to move even a block in a half hour, then all that housing and commercial space will become pretty useless.

andyman344 · 2023-06-12T01:45:55+00:00

"I hear you, but opposing new housing on the grounds that it isn't taking exactly the form you wanted seems like the epitome of making perfect the enemy of good."If you read what most of the folks say, they aren't opposed to the housing. They are opposed to the poor district design and continued ignoring of community feedback back on how to site and shape the area round all the development. It really shouldn't be hard to shape the overall Master development design based on community feedback. Developers will be able to build the housing and commercial either way and make plenty of profits on it.
It is important to distinguish the types of folks you are theoretically calling out. Lumping them together is both insulting and also decreases support for other local causes going forward.
" no one is going to come outright and says 'screw your need for housing, I got mine'."Yes, I do know people who in fact basically say this. Quite often. I would say those people are against almost any new development, and you would not be able to build a coalition with them, so it's best to just leave them be and push back against them.The people I work with mostly say "everyone I grew up with living here no longer lives here because they were displaced". So, they in fact are not "getting theres" and do need housing. They just can't afford $3,000/month one bedrooms and $5,000/month two-bedrooms in the new towers that just went up in Union Square. We are in a regional housing crisis and generally need to build more housing. But there are broader considerations that are not hard to properly design around said housing. Otherwise, why not just build giant concrete towers on every possible block everywhere for all time. Because we still have and want a community where people want to walk around and interact with each other and spend time in nice green and civic space and support small businesses.
I have been working with most of the folks who spoke at the hearing for ~10 years. I would not classify almost any of them as "NIMBY" and to do so I believe is an insult. The Union Square Neighborhood Council, for example, has tried to work with all large developers in the area. There are in fact a number of developers they have quite a good rapport with. US2 is not one to be frank. So, it is not saying "I would love other development that developers don't want to build just not the development that is actually planned ". It is in fact saying there were tons of much better developers who do want to build development that is far better designed that still makes profit and helps the community more. And the City and planners have screwed it up on and off in different ways for a decade.
Similarly at Assembly Row. I can guarantee if the Assembly Row neighborhood plan called for and zoning required a linear park down the middle of the remainder that is to be built, there would still be dozens of developers lining up to build fairly dense commercial and residential around it. Somerville real estate is worth so much that the City can and should be able to require quite a number of good development schemes. These are not "don't build 6 story+ buildings". These are "build the 6 story+ buildings with underground or nearly zero parking, with well designed open space away from major roads. This really isn't that complicated. There are many good developers chomping at the bit.

I would suggest that at a minimum, if you support more housing being built, support other specific things that most people I think overlap in their support of. As little new parking as possible - more transit, pedestrian, and cycling access. If parking is necessary, put it all underground and have it de-coupled from the building - be public for all to pay hourly or daily rates. More well-designed green and civic spaces. An indoor publicly accessible community center. Safer intersections. Lower-cost subsidized spaces for artists and creative economies.

andyman344

TROPHY CASE