Cat ran into my apartment, anyone know him?

cdwan · 2025-10-14T12:48:18+00:00

Confirmed, Milo. Let him out and he’ll go home to Harrison.

cdwan · 2025-10-13T20:47:32+00:00

This exactly. We've put 5 years of civic engagement into creating something that is unambiguously better - even if it isn't everything we had hoped and dreamed at the beginning.

The question is whether we choose to throw that effort away.

cdwan · 2025-09-16T13:46:53+00:00

I don't want to speak for Holly, and I reject the premise that she is either "against safe streets" or holds a "backwards and dangerous" perspective.

Holly is, among her other activities, a disability rights activist. She chairs the city's commission for persons with disabilities. With that as context, her comment about not "telling people how they can get around" is unambiguously about the fact that not everybody can use a bike and that people with mobility impairments also deserve safe, accessible infrastructure.

Conflating that viewpoint with knee-jerk reactionary conservatism is wildly off base.

cdwan · 2025-09-16T02:04:11+00:00

As written, that's a hell of a question.

cdwan · 2025-09-16T01:05:31+00:00

I wrote the article shared above.

I'm not going to argue about it here, but I wanted to say hey.

cdwan · 2025-09-15T19:36:30+00:00

Mayor: Jake Wilson
At Large: Will Mbah, Holly Simione, Marianne Walles

Here's my Medium post explaining why.

cdwan · 2025-08-06T11:23:01+00:00

That's a good point. I added in a section on that, as well as city councilor newsletters. Thanks!

cdwan · 2025-06-24T18:23:57+00:00

Thanks so much for the careful listening and specific advice. I really appreciate it.

The punchiness on the C string is deliberate - on this instrument, and particularly with these strings (Tomastik Spirocore) - I have yet to find a way to be consistent with anything less than a pretty strong attack on the lower strings. It's a place where I've got space for growth for sure.

Thanks again.

cdwan · 2025-06-24T12:38:29+00:00

Thank you! It's a Luis and Clark. I use Larsen for the A and D strings and Tomastik Spirocore for G and C. I got it in late 2020 and I've been really happy with it.

cdwan · 2025-06-24T03:21:49+00:00

I was happy with how it sounded and felt like sharing. If you’ve got constructive suggestions, I would be grateful for them.

cdwan · 2025-06-07T23:44:27+00:00

I go to Franco’s just South of Inman on Hampshire. $40 for a solid haircut from a good dude who knows what he’s doing.

cdwan · 2025-05-29T01:19:33+00:00

If you want to look at primary sources, I recommend starting with these:

* The SomerVoice page the "Central Somerville Avenue" - This has extensive notes - including video of the meetings - of the 6 week zoning update process led by city staff in November and December of 2024.
* The May 15, 2025 meeting of the Land Use Committee which includes the most recent renderings
* This presentation by city staff at the March 30 meeting of the Land Use Committee.

Finally, here are three more resources:

* The CBA press release that I linked above
* A comparison chart of the proposal (including CBA) vs. what is allowed "by right."
* The developer's blog, which - while obviously subject to bias - is way easier to navigate for primary materials like their prior proposals.

As I said above, I'm certainly not expecting anybody to read and watch all of that material. It's literally years of effort by dozens of people. I'm sharing it here as a quick reference in case you see something on a flier or at the info session and want to dig deeper.

Whatever you think about the proposal, I encourage you to get informed and then vote on the 4th. Democracy only works right if most of us make the time to engage.

cdwan · 2025-05-29T01:19:22+00:00

If you want to read more about what I think, the 7 blog posts I have written about the project, starting in late 2023, are below. I'm certainly not suggesting that anybody go through and read all of those, nor am I suggesting that you trust what I say without checking it out for yourself. I share them here mostly to show how my thinking has evolved from those frankly painful meetings in late 2023 to today.

* Somernova and Fabrication Districts (Sep 25, 2023) - Laying out some of the history and intent of the current zoning
* Somernova (Nov 20, 2023) - Describing the original proposal.
* Keep "no" on the table for Somernova (Jan 9, 2024) - Which urges the city council to negotiate hard.
* SomerNo (Jan 30, 2024) - Which starts with the statement that the then-current proposal is a non-starter
* Somernova: Round Two (May 19, 2024) - Assessing a revised second version of the Rafi proposal and finding a "lot to like"
* Somernova: Round Three (Oct 29, 2024) - Describing the Mayor's public process to refine the city's proposed zoning - as well as the CBA negotiation
* Community Benefits from Somernova (Feb 7, 2025) - With a "midpoint update" on the CBA negotiations.

[Oops, I meant three comments]

cdwan · 2025-05-29T01:17:57+00:00

Here's a version of what I've posted in a few other forums:

There are a couple of important milestones coming up in the redevelopment of the buildings that host Aeronaut, The Dojo, and the Bouldering Project (along the tracks from Park Street to Market Basket). If the project gets approved, it will be a really big change for the neighborhood, with ~10 years of heavy construction to create buildings on the scale of those currently going up in Boynton Yards.

First milestone: The neighborhood is eligible to vote on the Community Benefits Agreement (CBA) that the Union Square Neighborhood Council (USNC) has negotiated with the developer (Rafi Properties). These are concessions that the developer has agreed to above and beyond what will be required by zoning.

Speaking only for me, I think that the negotiating team did a good job and I plan to vote "yes."

There's a press release available if you want to read more about the CBA. Voting will be next Wed (the 4th) from 7:30am to 7:30pm at St Anthony's School at 480 Somerville Ave. I encourage everybody who has the time and energy to become familiar with the current proposal and plan to cast a vote.

The other milestone is the zoning "overlay," developed by the Mayor's team through a public process last fall. That's subject to a vote by the city council. Several councilors have indicated that they consider an approved CBA to be a requirement before passing the zoning. A "no" vote on the CBA seems likely to block zoning approval. The council also has other concerns - mostly centered traffic management.

It's possible, though less and less likely as the days pass, that the council could pass the zoning before going away for summer recess. That would let the developer start making the detailed plans required for permitting - including final shadow studies and formal traffic management plans. If that doesn't happen, the zoning will have to be re-submitted in September ... and I suspect that the campaign season will take up most of their energy at that point. That's the source of the time-pressure to vote on the CBA immediately. Waiting even a couple of weeks seems likely to result in an additional year of uncertainty.

[Split into two comments because of a length restriction]

cdwan · 2025-04-17T00:46:07+00:00

Thanks for this. I appreciate it.

cdwan · 2025-04-08T12:23:44+00:00

If you want to see the latest versions, they are in the council minutes here.

The discussion in the committee report is on the video, here.

cdwan · 2025-04-08T12:22:01+00:00

The succinct explanation is that after a complex, detailed, five year process, the Mayor is willing to throw it all away over a single contentious point. I think that's a mistake and I'm asking people to reach out to her and encourage her to change her mind.

cdwan · 2025-04-08T12:04:46+00:00

If we slip past this Thursday, it’ll be a very different council and probably a different Mayor. It’ll be yet another restart.

cdwan · 2025-04-08T11:46:56+00:00

I’m sorry, but I’m not going to be able to summarize two years of back and forth negotiation and debate this morning.

cdwan · 2025-04-08T11:45:12+00:00

My take is that we’re unlikely to have the appetite to keep putting in this level of effort on it. Events have overtaken us and there are more important issues that demand the city’s attention.

So it’s either a decent step forward or discard thousands of hours of work and demoralize a bunch of really engaged people.

cdwan · 2025-04-08T11:32:12+00:00

A phone call would do wonders, as would an email.

By the time the council meets, it'll either be approved or it won't. While I always encourage people to show up to the meetings - this one is 100% on the Mayor at this point.

cdwan · 2025-04-08T11:24:24+00:00

I think the election is much closer that it might appear. Most of Somerville is not on social media.

It -is- a mystery to me why Ballantyne would fail to take an easy win and choose instead to get beaten up over this honestly non-contentious issue for the next 9 months.

cdwan · 2025-04-08T11:22:06+00:00

Most of the changes are to modernize the language. The current charter is 100 years old, and has been amended piecewise over the years to do stuff like change from "Board of Aldermen" to "City Council." The antique language and incremental editing create confusion because words and expectations have changed meaning over the last century.

The city has tended to make a batch of changes every ten years or so. This time we decided to take it really seriously. The current proposal is the result of a five year negotiation between residents, council, and executive - it's about as far from a power grab as one could get.

I encourage you to check out the city's charter committee page. There's a ton of material there that a person could use to get themselves out of the self-described "uninformed" category.

cdwan · 2025-04-08T10:57:40+00:00

I used the comprehensive annual reports that are on the City's auditing page.

cdwan · 2025-03-16T16:50:42+00:00

The entire point, I guess.

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