Into the Fog of Student Assignments

If there’s anything clear about changing student assignments in the Boston Public Schools, it’s that two key political figures—Mayor Thomas Menino and the chair of the City Council committee on Education John Connolly—want to see more children going to school in their own neighborhood. And Boston still has plenty of parents dissatisfied with the current system of school assignments.

But, as parents, advocates, and elected officials at a new round of meetings look at five possible new plans, with more details and overlays, the nature of assignment policy becomes more complex and elusive.

Officials made their first presentation of alternative plans Monday night in Dorchester, at the Lilla G. Frederick Pilot Middle School. Despite several pages of maps and information about school performance and popularity, people in the audience, along with members of the advisory council appointed by the mayor, asked for even more information.

Since any new assignment plan is supposed to ensure access to quality schools from any subdivision of Boston, there is concern over measures of performance. Maps provided at the meeting referred to MCAS scores at each school, but BPS Superintendent Carol Johnson noted it would also be important to see a measure of school improvement.

There have been some examples recent dramatic improvements, whether at the Orchard Gardens K-8 School in Roxbury or the Henderson Inclusion School in Dorchester. MCAS scores were also much improved at a new in-district charter school, UP Academy in South Boston, compared with results from the middle school it replaced in the same building.

In his presentation of the five options at the meeting, Deputy Superintendent Michael Goar said schools throughout the city “have improved tremendously” since the last significant change in assignment policy was considered five years ago. But one of the maps handed out showed that, regardless of student performance, schools had different levels of popularity, with many of the least chosen schools in neighborhoods that are home to the most BPS students.

The co-chair of the advisory committee, Hardin Coleman, Dean of the Boston University School of Education, said any of the new options would still pose “some big challenges,” including access to quality schools for students from the poorest families.

One remedy to help improve access would be to change the schools themselves. This has already begun with recent school turnarounds and the expansion of popular and high-performing schools. Officials argue there’s potential for more improvement, thanks to provisions in the new contract with the Boston Teachers Union. And, following outside legal pressure, the BPS has taken steps to strengthen programs for students with learning disabilities and English language learners. Speaking Monday night, Goar said there are also plans to increase another popular choice—dual language schools, even combining English with Vietnamese and Haitian Creole.

 “Quality must be dealt with, no matter what,” he said.

 Another way to improve quality would be to spend money saved on busing on improvements such as extended learning time, a system-wide goal the new teachers contract failed to achieve. But that only raises more questions: how much money each assignment option would save, and whether it could be guaranteed that savings would go back to the schools.

Charter schools also provide options in some of the poorest neighborhoods, and their supply is growing. Despite some strong performance, they still lag behind the BPS when it comes to share of enrollment consisting of students with disabilities and English language learners.

Though they are public schools that accept students by lottery, the charters operate on a different standard. Their enrollment is citywide, and any busing needed for students in the primary grades is protected by state law and—if the school is in Boston—paid for by the city (along with transportation for parochial and private schools). It can also be argued the two kinds of public schools are judged by different standards: if racial diversity and inclusion are a prime goal in discussion about assignments for the BPS, the focus for charter schools in Boston is more on getting strong performance with a high percentage of students of color.

For all the uneven competition they might offer, charters are part of the assignment equation in the minds of parents. And that equation could change with any new expansion of charter school supply, or any accommodation that might potentially develop around transportation or enrollment.

For the BPS schools, Goar argued the points on a fixed map were less important than an annual “execution plan,” that is, adjusting the educational content to fit the needs of a given zone.

Advisory board member John Nucci, a former member of the School Committee and City Council, said any of the options would be better than the three zones in the current plan. But one Boston parent of a two year-old child, Meghan Doran, said, “If I look at all these maps and where I live, I see that my options are limited.”

Even with the best possible boundaries, overlays, and improvements, officials also spoke of the options as a choice among trade-offs. Increasing the number of zones would mean more access to a neighborhood school and more predictability, but also fewer schools to choose from and less racial or socio-economic diversity. And there could also be trade-offs concerning convenience and safety.

A long-time education advocate, John Mudd acknowledged that trade-offs had to be considered in deciding on a plan, but only if enough facts can be made available. “Do people understand and are personally empowered to give feedback?” he asked. “Or are they confused?”

Kim Janey, Senior Program Director for the Boston School Reform Project at Mass. Advocates for Children, also said there was a need to know more. “So, here we are again,” she said. “We have a bunch of maps and we have no idea what access to quality is for parents.”

For information on the schedule of community meetings on the assignment plan: http://bostonschoolchoice.org/

Kevin White: A Neighborhood Perspective

Kevin White reached the end of his tenure as Mayor of Boston in 1984, and the last 28 years have done little to change the thumbnail biography. Widely hailed as a visionary who did so much to reshape and revitalize downtown Boston, he inspires admiration, sympathy--and no small measure of criticism--for his dealings with the surrounding neighborhoods in the grip of polarization and dramatic change.

But White's reputation as the downtown innovator who often clashed with Boston's sometimes contentious grassroots elements overshadows the way he reshaped Boston's neighborhoods. Even when the results were unsatisfactory, similar ideas would re-emerge later, sometimes applied more successfully with a different cast of leaders and political climate.

When White won his first term in 1967, the city's racial divide was already sharply defined. The city's economy and population were still in decline. Though two previous mayors--John Hynes and John Collins--were pushing the city toward a "New Boston," the side-effects on surrounding neighborhoods were sometimes neglect, disruption, or displacement.

With the renewal of Quincy Market in the 1970's and developments along the Boston Waterfront, White helped redefine the city as a new, post-industrial hub for a knowledge and visitor economy.

"The thing that people forget is that Boston was really on its knees," said Larry DiCara, an attorney who served on the Boston City Council from 1972 to 1981.

"He refused to accept that and looked beyond where we were to where we could be," said DiCara. "And made a lot of people mad in the process."

DiCara says White's refashioning of Quincy Market as a visitor portal helped lay groundwork for other changes in the Boston landscape, from the depression of the Central Artery to the creation of the Rose Kennedy Greenway.

For White's predecessor John Collins, the vision of a "New Boston" also included an express route between downtown and the suburbs--the multi-lane extension of Route I-95 that was supposed to cut all the way from Readville to Lower Roxbury. The extension was later dropped by Governor Francis Sargent, partly because of grassroots opposition.

Sargent took a stand against the highway in 1970, when he and Kevin White were running for governor. The former state representative from the South End, Mel King, credits the decision to the power of community action, but he also credits White for joining ranks against the highway.

By April of 1987, more than three years after White had left office, the path of the highway would be the new route for a depressed Orange Line. Though commuters from Dudley Square lost a quick ride to downtown Boston, the relocation had some advantages--from more sunlight on Washington Street to the creation of a new Southwest Corridor Park, joining neighborhoods that used to be divided by two sets of rail lines above street level.

Said Fred Salvucci, White's transportation advisor and later architect of the Big Dig, "It's a major achievement of Kevin's that continues to benefit the city, in my view."



White's tenure overlapped with the development of community health centers in medically under-served neighborhoods. These were also products of community action, but their incubation required help from City Hall. During the same time, there were also grassroots initiatives coming from non-profits in social services, from the earliest versions of community development organizations, and from neighborhood leaders at community centers, launched by White as community schools.

The most crucial problems with city leadership were in the Boston Public Schools. White correctly insisted that his control over education was limited by powers of the Boston School Committee, which had resisted pressures for voluntary desegregation. But King says White should have done more about concerns over education being raised by parents and leaders in the black community. As the city went down the path to desegregation under a federal court order, there would also be friction between the mayor's office and predominantly white neighborhoods.

Boston election results show signs of friction between the city's white majority and its mayor. Though a Republican, Sargent won his election for governor by carrying Boston and its heavily Democratic electorate. White enjoyed more solid backing--if with lower turnouts--from Boston's black and liberal voters, and he is remembered for a cast of appointments that was markedly more diverse than its predecessors. But the racial split among voters would register dramatically once again in the 1976 presidential primary, when the top vote-getter among Democrats in Boston was the notorious foe of desegregation, former Alabama Governor George Wallace.

Later in the same year, two years into the turbulence of court-ordered desegregation, White tried to increase his leverage over the school system through a proposal for charter reform that was placed before the City Council in December. By including district seats, the reforms were advanced as a way to allow more diversity among city office-olders on the School Committee and City Council. At the time, both bodies were all-white, until the election of 1977. But, with scant backing from any community, White's modified version of the recommendations from a charter reform commission was widely denounced as a power grab.

As it turned out, some of the ideas in charter reform would be adopted within little more than a decade. Voters approved a mostly district-seat City Council and School Committee in 1981. The elected School Committee would finally be abolished, in a campaign led by White's avowedly populist successor, Ray Flynn.

The turbulence around the schools overshadowed other areas where Boston's elected officials had to be pushed by grassroots pressure or legal challenges. One was example was public housing. A law suit by tenants over deplorable conditions resulted in the Boston Housing Authority being placed in receivership. There was also a lawsuit over alleged racial bias in the distribution of community development money from the federal government.

Another area that required court intervention was the city's assessing of property values. White did mitigate the burden on homeowners throughout the city, thanks to his 1978 referendum campaign to allow higher tax rates on commercial property. But, before the tax classification campaign, the city lagged in reflecting the loss of values in neighborhoods the most severely affected by disinivestment and abrupt racial turnover. In response, Fair Share organized tax abatement campaigns and staged confrontational actions, including a bus trip to the home of a deputy mayor in the suburbs.

Even when the intent was to benefit the neighborhoods--through Infill Housing or access to mortgages for people of color under the Boston Banks Urban Renewal Group (BBURG), the results were often blighted properties or vacant lots. Years later, some of the same affordable housing goals would be approached more effectively through cooperation between City Hall and non-profit developers more attuned to their neighborhoods.

Though White is lauded as a neighborhood ally against Logan Airport expansion and the aborted plan for I-95, his administration was also criticized when urban renewal plans went too far as a force of displacement. In the South End, renewal meant a new infusion of investment and neighborhood pride in 19th century brownstones, but there would have been even more displacement of black and Latino residents if not for grassroots campaigns leading to affordable housing at Villa Victoria and Tent City.

It can said that there were similar struggles at the time in other cities. And White's task was sometimes made more difficult by a climate of distrust and polarization at the grassroots level. Making the job even more difficult was statewide referendum that imposed a cap on property taxes in 1980--only a few years after a spike in taxes in response to a budget shortfall caused largely in connection with desegregation. And before the vote on Proposition 2½, taxpayers also became rate-payers, funding a new agency doing a sorely needed upgrade of the city's water and sewer system.

When former Governor Michael Dukakis tried to head off the voter rebellion by tapping the state surplus for aid to cities and towns, White absorbed the allotment for Boston without passing on savings to the taxpayers. It's impossible to say whether acting differently would have kept "Proposition 2½" from passing. But, when the necessary budget cuts took effect the following year, the closings of police stations, fire stations, and schools meant even more strains in White's relationship with the neighborhoods.

By White's last term, there was a noticeable fall-off in the quality of some appointees at Little City Halls. His earliest ambassadors to the neighborhoods included Fred Salvucci and Kirk O'Donnell, who later became a top aide to former US Speaker of the House "Tip" O'Neill. In White's last term, there was Jack Williams, the city's neighborhood liaison for development, caught in a shake-down over a proposed project in Dorchester's Upahms Corner.

Between the top-down flow of money from Washington, and the norms of governance at the time, White may have decided the best way to be more effective was to increase leverage for his agenda was by building a machine. If the current mayor, Thomas Menino, credits results to partnerships--often developed over long periods of time--White's tenure was more characterized by crises and pressures for swift action.

But there were times when White tapped connections and showed openness to ideas of other people--as when he followed up on the suggestion by City Councilor Tom Atkins to minimize violence after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. The city's relative calm, in contrast with other cities around the country, has been widely credited to White's managing to have a Boston Garden performance by James Brown telecast live on WGHB-TV.

In his last term, White did turn attention to neighborhood regeneration in parts of his "Plan for Boston" and through a new effort to combat hate crimes. He also gave approval to an early version of a policy for more residents, women and people of color to get jobs on major development projects in the city.  City officials would be prodded for many years to put more teeth in a policy that originated in grassroots activism and gained momentum in Mel King's first run for mayor in 1979.

If White failed to meet the goals of his neighborhood vision, he did lay a path for development with more results under the next two mayors, as was the case with Blue Hill Avenue. Even when pursuing goals of their own--Flynn along Dudley Street and Codman Square, Menino in Dudley Square and the South Boston waterfont--the parallel with White is hard to miss.

In judging White's performance and legacy, it would be a mistake to overlook the role of Boston's grassroots leaders as agents vision and power. There were times when White showed his respect for that role. And that may have been done in grandest fashion at White's last inauguration, when he took the oath of office with  city councilors on the stage of the Strand Theater, an old movie palace trying to make a comeback in Uphams Corner.

Council Results Show Boston Vote Shift

If you go back twelve years in Ward 18, the at-large vote for City Council looks like the politics of a different century. Even in 1999, the ward--comprising Hyde Park and Readville, along with parts of Mattapan and Roslindale--was racially mixed. But the top four candidates were (in order) Hyde Park resident Steve Murphy, Mickey Roache, Albert "Dapper" O'Neil, and Peggy Davis-Mullen. 

As it turned out, 1999 was the last hurrah for O'Neil, a racially divisive figure who in earlier votes had topped the ticket citywide. But, in November of 2011, the top four vote-getters in Ward 18 were (in order) Ayanna Pressley, Felix G. Arroyo, John Connolly, and Steve Murphy. Even excluding the ward's six precincts in Mattapan, the top four were the same, only with Pressley behind Arroyo and Connolly behind Murphy. 

But the most recent numbers show more than racial change. In the previous year with a vote for City Council only, in 2007, the vote was off in the ward's precincts in Hyde Park and Roslindale, though up in Mattapan. On Tuesday, the number of votes was up throughout the ward, and especially in the predominantly black Mattapan precincts, where the number of votes was more than 91% higher than it was in 1999. 

Boston's 2007 election is notorious for low turnout (13.59% citywide), and this year's figure of 18.13% hardly looks impressive compared with the figure for 1999, at 24.49 percent. But the steady increase in voter enrollment, plus growth in Boston's population, have also produced a larger electorate. That's one reason why a modest improvement in the turnout figure obscures the dramatic increase over 2007 in the number of votes cast--a jump of of more than 36 percent. 

Overall, the number of people voting Tuesday wasn't much higher than the figure in 1999--by only 5.72 percent. But a breakdown of the citywide figure shows some dramatic changes in the distribution of votes. For example, in the high-turnout Ward 20 (West Roxbury and part of Roslindale), the number of votes was down from the figure in 1999 by more than 20 percent. In South Boston, despite an increase over four years ago with this year's competitive race for a district council seat, the number of votes was still down from the figure in 1999 by 7.69 percent. In the same district, the number of votes from the largest piece of Chinatown (Ward 3, Precinct 8) was more than five times the figure in 1999, going from 124 to 825. 

Also posting substantial increases over the vote counts in 1999 were Ward 14 (Grove Hall, Four Corners, Franklin Field), by 62.62%, and Ward 17 (Lower Mills, Codman Square) by 70.22 percent. And, in Roxbury's Ward 12, the figure was up by 13.25 percent. 

Though the changing composition of Boston's active voters owes much to the mobilzation for the last presidential election in 2008, there is still a good deal of change to be found in the elections with the weakest draw, for City Council only. In 2011, as in 2007, there was no citywide preliminary vote to give the race added visibility, though this year's final vote had ideal weather for maximum turnout. If there was any political boost expected for turnout this year, it was supposed to be among predominantly white voters drawn to competitive races for district seats (in Dorchester, South Boston, the South End, Chinatown, Bay Village, and the Leather District), or to the best-known at-large challenger, former councilor and mayoral contender Michael Flaherty. 

In pre-election coverage by local media, there was speculation that Flaherty's campaign could be at the expense of the council's first and only woman of color, Ayanna Pressley. As it turned out, Pressley would finish ahead of all the other at-large candidates. Pressley and colleague John Connolly got some attention for making campaign appearances jointly. And this year's incumbents sometimes made appearances and statements expressing mutual support. 

The campaigns also resulted in votes that crossed the racial boundaries of the past. For example, in Ward 20, Pressley came in second, behind only Connolly, who lives in the West Roxbury. In Ward 19 (Pondside, Jamaica Hills, part of Roslindale), with its normally progressive tilt, Pressley came in first, even surpassing Jamaica Plain resident Felix G. Arroyo. 

Though Flaherty came close to matching his vote in 2007, when he topped the field, he failed to match shows of strength two years ago, when he campaigned for mayor with fellow councilor Sam Yoon as a running mate. This year, Flaherty finished behind the top four positions in Ward 5 (Back Bay/Beacon Hill/South End), which he carried in 2009, and in Jamaica Plain, where he lost that year with almost 49% of the vote. 

If Pressley showed it was possible to pick up votes across racial lines, then so did the the other winners at large, especially Arroyo and Connolly. Another example was the challenger for the council in District 2, Suzanne Lee, who fell short of beating the incumbent from South Boston, Bill Linehan, by only 87 votes. 

As expected, Lee carried almost all the District 2 precincts outside South Boston, with almost three-quarters of the votes in those precincts. Linehan carried all of South Boston and two neighboring precincts in Dorchester with less than two-thirds of the vote. In these precincts, Lee had more than thirty percent of the vote. 

In the race to fill the seat being left open in District 3 (Dorchester) by Maureen Feeney, Frank Baker took almost 56% of the vote against John O'Toole. Both candidates had their share of union endorsements and well-known political supporters--Mayor Menino's organization and an official endorsement from Maureen Feeney for O'Toole, and Dorchester legislators--including another Columbia-Savin Hill resident, Marty Walsh--for Baker. 

It was Baker who showed more strength outside his base in Columbia-Savin Hill, even carrying precincts in Port Norfolk and in Lower Mills, where he had support from State Rep. Linda Dorcena Forry--and where O'Toole might have been hampered by disenchantment with Feeney over plans (later reversed) to close a branch library. For all the contentious campaigning, the results in District 3 were also explained by Baker's ability to make contact with voters, even close to O'Toole's base in Cedar Grove, with its high-turnout polling place at Florian Hall. O'Toole carried the precinct (Ward 16, Precinct 12), but union backing and direct contacts helped him get 308 votes, his fourth highest precinct tally in the district. 

The two other district races were much less competitive. In District 7 (Roxbury, parts of Dorchester, Fenway, the South End), Councilor Tito Jackson won his first full term, taking 84% of the vote over Sheneal Parker. In District 4 (Dorchester/Mattapan), Charles C. Yancey was re-elected over perennial candidate JR Rucker with almost 89% of the vote.

*****

One reason has been given for the decrease in the number of votes this year--compared with 1999--from Ward 20: the lack of competition for the district council seat. In the earlier election, there was a strong but unsuccessful challenge to the City Councilor for District 6 (covering most of Ward 20), Maura Hennigan, by John Tobin. In the next off-year elections, there would be two other incumbents, John Tobin and Matt O'Malley, who were unchallenged. And there was little speculation in the media that West Roxbury's at-large councilor, John Connolly, was in danger of losing his seat. Though vote numbers could also reflect a drop in population or voter engagement, it has to be noted that the number of people registered to vote in Ward 20 (26,283) is higher this year by about 8 percent.

Comparing this year's figure for Ward 20 to that from November of 2007 shows an increase of almost 14 percent. But, in some areas of Boston without a competitive race for a district council seat (in Roxbury, Dorchester, Mattapan), the numbers were up anywhere from 47% to 62 percent.

Challenger Makes Splash in Council Race

There's no doubt the most remarkable result from yesterday's preliminary elections for Boston City Council was the first-place finish for Suzanne Lee. Running in District 2 (South Boston, South End, Chinatown, Leather District, Bay Village), she received 39% of the vote. The incumbent from South Boston, Bill Linehan, received 35%, followed by another South Boston candidate, Bob Ferrara.

After reuniting with her parents at age 11, Lee grew up in Grove Hall and eventually became well known for her accomplishments as an educator and community leader. And she went into yesterday's election with endorsements from the Ward 5 Democratic Committee and the South End News.

Another way to view the results in District 2 is to say the two candidates from South Boston got more than 60% of the vote. That's greater than the share of the vote for Linehan in the final round of the special election to fill the vacancy left by the death of Jim Kelly. In that earlier contest, Linehan won with less than 53% of the vote. His co-finalist from the South End, Susan Passoni, received more than 46 percent.

One significant difference in the vote this year was in the largest subdivision that includes Chinatown, Ward 3, Precinct 8, which is also Lee's home neighborhood. The precinct gave her 484 votes, for 80% of the total. In May, 2007, the precinct vote was split, with Passoni getting 52% and Linehan almost 48 percent. Before yesterday's election, much of the precinct vote was thought to have been controlled by allies of Boston mayors. If that element was somewhat offset in Passoni's showing, then yesterday's election stood out for being the first district race in which people in the precinct could vote for one of their neighbors.

But figures from recent elections also show the precinct has more voters, partly as a result of mobilization by an organization Lee helped form in the 1970's, the Chinese Progressive Association. By comparison with the figures from May, 2007, turnout rates in most of the District 2 precincts throughout were down. Those figures will probably go up in this year's final election, November 8, when the ballot will also have 7 candidates running for the council's 4 at-large seats--including South Boston's Mike Flaherty.

Within South Boston, Linehan carried 11 out of 15 precincts, with the other 4 carried by Ferrara. In the preliminary round of the special election for District 2, Ferrara came in last place, in a field of 7 candidates, with less than 5% of the vote. This time, he got 25% of the vote throughout the district. And, in three South Boston precincts carried by Linehan, Ferrara still managed to get more than 40% of the vote.

Another draw for voters in Boston will be the final round to fill the seat being left open by Maureen Feeney in District 3. The district covers most of Dorchester, from Columbia-Savin Hill, Fields Corner and Meeting House Hill, to Pope's Hill, Cedar Grove, and Lower Mills. The race had long been viewed as mainly a competition between three candidates, and that proved to be the case. Frank Baker came in first place with almost 32% of the vote, followed by co-finalist John O'Toole, with almost 26 percent. Finishing 150 votes behind O'Toole was Craig Galvin.

The two finalists come from opposite ends of the district. Baker grew up in what is now Blessed Mother Teresa Parish (formerly St. Margaret's), in a family of 13 children. A former shop steward in the city's printing department, he has also worked on other political campaigns and served as a leader of the Columbia-Savin Hill Civic Association.


A realtor and former plumber, O'Toole served 14 years as the president of the Cedar Grove Civic Association. He also came into the race with an official endorsement from Feeney and, many believe, the unofficial support of Mayor Menino.

In line with the geography, both finalists carried the bulk of their precincts closer to where they lived. For O'Toole, these were in areas such as Cedar Grove (including the high-turnout polling place at Florian Hall) and Lower Mills. In addition to prevailing in the Columbia-Savin Hill area, Baker carried precincts in Uphams Corner, Jones Hill, Meeting House Hill and areas near Fields Corner.

In other races, the results for candidates believed to have the mayor's unofficial support have been mixed. And the transfer of votes from other candidates, especially Galvin, could also be driven by other factors. Come November, any machine vote should be higher, but there could also be more voters drawn out by Flaherty, who's casting himself as the at-large candidate most likely to differ with the mayor.

The competition was much less intense in District 7, which covers Roxbury, along with parts of Dorchester, the Fenway, and the South End. After succeeding Chuck Turner in the special election in March of this year, Tito Jackson received 76% of the vote in yesterday's preliminary. His opponent in the final election will be Sheneal Parker, who placed ahead of two perennial candidates with 11% of the vote.

Yesterday's turnout figure was 13.77% That represents voting in only 3 of the 9 City Council Districts, so it's hard to find a recent comparison. But in the last final election for City Council without a concurrent vote for Mayor, in 2007, the turnout citywide was an abysmal 13.55 percent.

How Federal Budget Showdown Affects Boston

As President Obama and both houses of Congress negotiate over spending cuts and the national debt limit, advocates and providers of health care and social services are trying to get more attention for the possible toll on the needy. In a demonstration yesterday outside Government Center in Boston, they turned the heat on the state's Republican Senator in Washington, Scott Brown.

The next day, Brown would vote for the more stringent cuts that would have been required by the "Cut, Cap and Balance Act." The measure was defeated by a vote of 51-46, and liberal advocates were quick to denounce Brown for voting to "gut" Social Security and Medicare while protecting tax breaks for millionaires and "big oil." But a nationwide survey newly posted in the Rasmussen Report shows Republicans doing better than Democrats in handling debate over the debt ceiling. Even if that hardly proves Brown's vote would have a similar level of support in Massachusetts, he does have whatever political advantage there might be in favoring the GOP measure, yet without the disadvantage of its full range of cuts taking effect.

Should there be a political compromise along more moderate lines, that would still probably result in dramatic changes in federal spending. As of last night, President Obama and Speaker of the House John Boehner were reportedly trying to get support for a deficit reduction of $3 trillion over the next ten years. If that fails to appease many Republicans in the House, it could also be tough to swallow for many Democrats.

As for the effect of reaching an agreement before the deadline for action on the debt ceiling, the best scenario would have the advantage of a financial crisis averted and a more sustainable pace of federal spending, with benefits for the economy at some point. But, even in that scenario, there would be short-term disadvantages, with job losses and cuts in federal money for everything from publicly supported health coverage to grants for higher education--even for people working their way out of poverty at community colleges and programs offered by Action for Boston Community Development (ABCD). In response to the federal budget developments this week, ABCD President and CEO John Drew issued a memo, which included these observations on the possible range of budget cuts:

Our elected officials in Congress are battling in budget negotiations tied to an agreement to raise the debt ceiling. President Obama has convened ongoing meetings to reach a budget compromise. On the table are severe cuts in federally funded domestic programs, including CSBG. The two sides find themselves at an impasse over the President’s insistence that tax increases as well as spending cuts be included in the legislation. Thus ABCD programs and many others – including Medicare, Social Security, Food Stamps, public housing and other “safety net” programs – could be sacrificed in the budget compromise.

If Congress does not reach an agreement and the debt ceiling is not raised, then the government will be unable to pay its bills and ABCD programs along with Social Security, government pensions and salaries, and other programs will not receive the federal payments due them.

At a time when the economy is in desperate straits, when unemployment remains high and people struggle to pay their mortgages and rent and put food on their tables, our national leaders in Congress and the White House should not be putting Americans – especially our most vulnerable citizens – at this terrible risk. I call for our elected officials to get together and act responsibly so that increased misery is not inflicted on the most vulnerable in society. At a time when increasing numbers of Americans are at economic risk we should be investing in job creation, boosting programs that help the most vulnerable in society, and doing what is necessary to keep the country going. We should not be gambling with people’s lives.

Thus we are in a position similar to that of last spring – when the new conservative majority in the House of Representatives proposed huge domestic cuts including elimination of our critically needed Community Services Block Grant (CSBG) monies – in the budget that would continue funding America. At that time we let Congress and the world know that Community Action is too important to cut and that the work of ABCD and the 1,000-plus CAPs across America is essential to the survival and upward mobility of the huge numbers of Americans struggling in poverty and to the nation’s economic recovery.

Personal Rounds Through a Public Golf Course

I first experienced the George Wright Municipal Golf Course as a six year-old intruder. Since I had no understanding of golf whatsoever, I only knew that the course, like earthly paradise, was a gated landscape. And what impressed me above all was the size. My family had just moved to Hyde Park from a two-family house in Dorchester, so I was used to much smaller worlds, with more pavement and much less open space.

Like other kids in the neighborhood, I considered any stretch of woods or grass a potential playground. After school, during weekends, and throughout the summer, we spent hours of unstructured time roaming the fairways and the rough, dodging the golf balls and the police on the motorcycles (reviled if not exactly identified, by names such as Hackett and Hogan). Along with burning calories, these excursions begged for plot lines, whether it was about soldiers at war, criminals on the run, or explorers on the frontier. From here, it was only a small leap of imagination to believe it when someone told me the water in a brook near the 18th fairway came through mysterious underground channels all the way from Texas.

Since our family lived on a hill that overlooked George Wright, the course was how I placed the neighborhood on my earliest maps of the world. From certain vantage points, it was possible to see the course stretching into Roslindale, toward a high point on the horizon marked by the water tank on Bellevue Hill in West Roxbury. In the other direction, the fairways rolled out toward the Neponset River, the main commercial center of Hyde Park, and eventually the Blue Hills.

In the spring, we could hear the night music of peepers from the urban wilds in the Stony Brook Reservation. This was separated from the course by stone walls that were stained with years of rust from miles of chain-link fencing. In the fall, when people on our street burned piles of dead leaves in the gutters, there would also be smoke from the golf course, where patches of rough were turned, by design, mischief, or accident, into scorched earth and, months later, a fresh patch of overgrowth.

After snowfalls in the winter, there were sleds and toboggans streaking down the 12th fairway. Like other kids from the neighborhood, I went down the hill many winter afternoons, and even at night. On some winter nights, from the window in my bedroom, I could see fidgets of light on the part of the fairway known as "Suicide Hill." I still remember going out there one night when someone had built a fire, and a radio was playing a hit song from the Beatles "Sergeant Pepper" album.

My next phase at George Wright was a brief attempt at caddying. At the time, I was 14 years old. Though I still had little interest in playing golf, I had a keen desire to make even a token amount of money on my own. That's how, on at least a few early mornings, somewhere along the stairs between the clubhouse to the first tee, I passed the time waiting for employment.

I mostly remember my competition, especially the kids who seemed to snap up bags of clubs with little fuss and strap them on with little sign of strain. No doubt, some of them were regulars who had proven their ability to haul their weight for the full 18 holes and track down shots that were so readily devoured by encroachments of wild grass and trees.

Though a designer might have intended the wilderness features of George Wright to evoke the natural splendors of the Scotland, even a caddy knew that golf was supposed to be a triumph of civilization and geometry. Braving hazards of water and sand, golfers had to adjust the arcs and lines of their shots to dips and swerves of terrain. After this came the treacherous nuance of a green. Aside from being a beast of burden easily replaced by a golf cart, an effective caddy was potentially the difference between order and chaos: the difference between just another retiree with a bad lie, and a raving trek through the heath with King Lear.

My waiting for assignments usually ended in rejection, or passively watching a procession of golfers who avoided eye-contact altogether. It didn't help that I wore glasses, which must have made them expect I would miss balls (and I certainly missed my share) or fail to keep my mind on their game.

As we waited for our luck to turn, my fellow day-laborers would advance theories. Maybe the caddies were supposed to have been assigned from a list kept in the clubhouse by another mysterious figure of authority (sometimes referred to as Delaney). A thing apart from the course, the clubhouse itself was almost palatial in its underutilized spaces, with their lingering smells of beer, perspiration, and cleaning solvents. Somehow, I construed all this as an outpost of administration, kept going by a troupe of interchangeables who might just as well have been named Murphy, Molloy, and Malone.

Despite the rejections, I did manage to service a few golfers and make it through 18 holes without too many losses. Among the clients were the owner of a pub in Jamaica Plain and an affable teacher of high school Greek, a regular at the course whose exotic attire even included a pith helmet. I also remember a couple of golfers who seemed dressed for a course with more prestige. One of them, according to rumor laced with schadenfreude, was a supermarket visionary and Harvard grad who, because he was Jewish, wasn't allowed to play on a private course more on par with his income. Though a municipal course had to be less discriminatory, I sensed that legal requirement could also seem utterly stigmatizing, if only through its inability to disguise a reasonable claim to something better.

It would take me decades to figure out why the kind of discrimination that seemed outdated almost anywhere else could flourish on a golf course. I should have taken a hint on the fairway when I overheard a joke about the Irish that didn't seem funny. After all, this was one of the few places, outside of a barroom, where men (for the most part) could be free from the constraints of mixed company, and where the only rules that mattered were part of a game. As a caddy, I was supposedly old enough to be exposed to off-color verbiage, but still young enough for people to expect I should behave differently. Like any good servant, I was also obliged to keep the indiscretions under wraps. In such a way, I defended civilization as a guardian of appearances.

It was only after a chance for practice on a driving range that I started going to George Wright for golf. Since I happened to live in Boston and went to one of the public schools, I was allowed to play quite a bit for free. I could borrow a set of clubs from an older brother, so the only other thing I needed was a supply of golf balls, which came from the course itself--and my countless hours of rummaging. If I broke a rule by not returning stray balls to the pro shop, I obliged by losing all of them somewhere else in the course. You might even call it borrowing or recycling. Whatever it was, it was part of a routine that allowed me to burn off a couple of summers by playing as many as 27 holes a day.

With a couple of exceptions, my golfing days were over by August of 1969. By then, at age 16, I was old enough, and lucky enough, to get a year-round part-time job. From that point on, I never really missed the game, and I sometimes felt golf was an activity for which I was temperamentally unfit. Aside from a lack of discipline, technique, or brute strength, it seems my physical motions were hobbled by some mental circuitry I couldn't shut down. Instead of being motivated or diverted by the companionship of a team sport, I was often playing the course by myself, tangled up in some internal conflict. In a fit of desperation, I even painted my golf balls orange. I thought a change of color might improve their trajectory or make them easier to locate, but the paint only seemed to add more drag to the sluggish air of a hot summer.

Every so often, there were things that worked, if only from sheer luck. I really did come within inches of a hole-in-one on the short 17th fairway, though that was badly tarnished by a rash of wayward putting. On the longest fairway, the 15th, there was a drive from the tee that sailed at least 150 yards, clearing a downslope to a lower plane of grass. The shot would also be spoiled by what happened later. But there was still that one moment of a boundary cleared by something that was still on track as it dipped out of sight.

In more recent years, I have come back to the course, if only for walks, with or without a dog. I pay little if any attention to golf, though it's hard to resist picking up a stray ball, whether for luck, or as something like a rare mushroom after heavy rains. If I do pay attention to something, it's more likely to be the smell of freshly cut grass, a torrent of wind in the trees, or the drizzling pulsation of crickets on a Friday afternoon in June.

I’ve also walked the course in winter, puzzling over tracks in the snow, or picking out remote specks of Christmas lights from the 12th fairway. So let's say I'm at the top of the hill, looking out toward Fairmount and, off to one side, the highest of the Blue Hills. The sledders have all gone home, but the course is draped with snow, and there's a moon overhead, nearly full. The light reflects off the snow, not as it does from the glossy matrix of a golf ball, but as something more subdued, yet also less contained or even earthbound. Almost weightless, it extends past all borders in all directions and, for all I know, indefinitely through outer space.

Last Respects to a Voice of the Neighborhoods

A funeral service is being held today for Clyde Whalen, a long-time contributor to BNN's Neighborhood Network News in Boston, who passed away Friday, at age 91. In more than two decades with NNN, Clyde kept to his beat with utmost dedication. He reported the news from his long-time neighborhood, Allston-Brighton, then also from his new territory in the Fenway. He did his job as a correspondent with considerable care, whether gathering information from sources, processing stories from newspapers, or practicing his script to make sure he got it right--with his own hyper-local flavor. As a seasoned performer who had traveled the world entertaining on cruise ships, Clyde knew the toil and calibration needed to make something look natural, and he kept on in the same spirit even through his last segments with us earlier this year. By swapping impressions and observations in the newsroom, he helped keep us all more engaged in a neighborhood’s life and atmosphere. Not just another face on a learning curve, Clyde had his own brand, a way with the facts of the day that could arouse the sense of outrage, admiration, or absurdity. And, when it was sorely needed, he was an ambassador who could vouch for NNN’s authenticity as a local phenomenon, and not just a farm team for bigger leagues. All this, plus his inquisitiveness, his sense of humor, and even a daring to be downright puzzled by what's going on, will be missed.

Obama Rallies Boston Supporters to "Steep Climb"

Some things had changed since Barack Obama rallied Boston supporters more than two-and-a half years ago at the Seaport World Trade Center.

At the earlier event, Obama was trying to become the Democratic nominee for president. When he stood on the platform, he was the newest figure in a constellation that included Deval Patrick, Ted Kennedy, Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg, and John Kerry. Speaking on the eve of the Massachusetts presidential primary, he was a sum of possibilities, associations, and mystique.

Last Wednesday, in a fundraiser at the Cyclorama in the South End, Obama appeared after a series of warm-up speakers, including Patrick, but he gave his address as one figure on a platform, with a presidential backdrop of American flags.
Since this was a stump speech by an incumbent, there was a list of accomplishments, from partial progress on the economy, to health care reform, the killing of Osama Bin Laden, and the end of "don't ask don't tell." There were still echoes of campaign speeches in 2008, especially words about the country's historic march toward greatness through adversity. This time around, there was also talk about the grind of governing, with its compromises, setbacks, and detours. And, given the expected showdown with Republicans in Congress over the debt limit, Obama was compromising enough to talk about cutting waste and living within the nation's means.

"We're going to have to make some tough decisions about things we can do without," he said, "and we'll all have to make some sacrifices."
So the difference between Obama and Republicans was to be over how the sacrifice would be distributed. Though public opinion surveys show support for some of Obama's positions--ending tax cuts for the wealthy and subsidies for oil companies--there is also the poll by MassINC showing confidence in economic recovery in Massachusetts is slipping, despite the steady but modest improvement in employment figures.

Anxiety could also mean a chance for Republicans to advance a recovery plan with less government spending and regulation. Even if their steeper cuts in the budget eventually prove a stronger boost for the economy, the near-term result could still require more public sector layoffs and more out-of-pocket spending on what used to be covered by entitlement programs. And that, too, could be a source of anxiety, added to the continuing slippage the housing market.
With the beginning of the calendar year for the next presidential election still more than seven months off, polls show there is no single Republican challenger who can beat Obama. At the same time, Obama has been shown trailing a generic challenger with a Republican orientation. And Massachusetts is no exception to at least some shift in voter sentiment, with its Democratic governor re-elected by less than 50 percent of the vote and with Ted Kennedy succeeded by Scott Brown--also still without a strong challenger.
So, as he stood on the platform last Wednesday, Obama was trying to mobilize supporters for the grind of campaigning. Snapping tweetable photos with their smart phones, they looked ready to channel the team spirit personified on the podium by Kevin Garnett and Bill Russell. But this moment in the calendar and this gathering of (mostly) young professionals, as Obama acknowledged, was still a long way from the multitude of decisions by the less fortunate and less networked to bother voting.

"This is just the start," he said, "of what is going to be a steep climb."

Boston Residential Tax Bills Increase

The rate’s going up for Boston’s property taxes. For residential property, the increase is from $11.88 per thousand dollars of value to $12.79. For commercial property, the increase is from $29.38 to $31.04.

The average tax bill for residential property will increase by 7.5%, from the previous year’s $2,935, to $3,155. As in past years, there will be an exemption for owner-occupants of residential property. This year’s exemption will be $1,594.85.

The administration of Mayor Menino say it’s raising total property tax revenue by the maximum amount allowed by Proposition 2½. Also affecting the rate is a slight decrease in the city’s overall property values.

The tax bills coming out will be calculated on property values as of January 1, 2010. The date precedes changes in market values caused by the tax break for first-time home-buyers, and by the fall-off in sales when the break expired.

In recent years, residential values in some parts of Boston have held firm or even started going back up. But, in other parts of the city, values are still falling. As in past years, city officials note the average residential tax bill in Boston is lower than the same bills in many other communities. And they say the bill for FY 2011 is 30% below the average residential bill for all of Massachusetts in FY 2010.

After School Closings, Still More Hurdles

With 5,600 vacant seats in the Boston Public Schools, there must be room for saving money on buildings and, possibly, transportation. If the money can be used for longer school days and incentives for more effective teaching (which would have their price in a new teachers' contract), then there’s all the more reason to consolidate.

That’s the case for closings made by most of Boston’s public officials and business leaders, and even by advocates for students. The argument has been made for at least three years.

But, instead of consolidating in phases and spreading out disruption, the School Committee voted this week to close nine buildings and merge another eight schools. That’s the largest single downsizing in the Boston Public Schools since the early 1980’s, a time of economic recession after newly approved limits on the city’s property tax and a drop in enrollment with the start of desegregation.

Over the weeks leading up to the vote on this year’s round of closings, school officials have emphasized the big picture. Repeatedly they brought up the expected savings on facilities—$10 million—and the coming year’s expected budget faces a shortfall—as much as $63 million. And they kept saying that money saved could at least make surviving schools with empty seats more attractive.

“Many of those empty seats are in high-quality schools,” School Committee Chair Rev. Gregory Groover told BNN News, “so if we can relocate some of those children to those high-quality schools, you’re talking about hundreds of more students, if not thousands of more students who will have access to better schools.”

One reason officials backed off from earlier attempts to consolidate schools and transportation was that the remaining options increased educational inequality in a way that was hard to miss on a map. Under one plan to increase the number of school zones from three to five, many families in the poorest neighborhoods would have faced a disproportionately high probability of being stuck with an under-performing school.

So, instead of just leaving access to sub-standard schools more randomized, the goal is to bring more schools up to standard, even with more options among charter schools.

But, as in the 1980’s, many people most directly affected by closings view them as a new uncertainty, and possibly a step backward. At a series of hearings before the consolidation was approved this week, parents and students spoke about what they valued in the schools being closed, and they combined personal narrative with statistics.

At a hearing in November, before more schools were added to the consolidation plan, Boston Teachers Union President Richard Stutman turned his back on the School Committee and told a hall mostly filled with parents and students, “The schools chosen are not under-performing schools, and not in any way dysfunctional schools.”

This week, the day before the vote, in a speech to the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce, Mayor Thomas Menino weighed in and put the emphasis on the big picture: “Will we as a city have the courage to stop doing things that limit students’ achievement, so we can grow the strategies that accelerate it?”

The day after the vote, the mayor pointed out that the closings are only the start of a longer process. Along with providing space in other buildings, school officials are faced with the challenges of redesigning the assignment process, improving performance at more locations, and finding the right programs and teachers for English language learners and students with learning disabilities.

At a hearing last month, the assistant superintendent for English language learners, Dr. Eileen de los Reyes, said the aim would be to “move the strength” of the special programs. “We are hoping to move the faculty with the students,” she said.

But, as the West Roxbury Patch reports, plans for English language learners affected by the closing of the Agassiz Elementary School in Jamaica Plain are being questioned by parents of students at one destination school in West Roxbury, the Patrick Lyndon.

Another school being closed, the Emerson in Roxbury, has the only structured immersion class for Cape Verdean students. And one opponent warned that splitting up students in the language program would also interfere with daily routines of going to school in groups. “You’re breaking up not only the programs,” she said, “but the families.”

Some of the mergers in the plan involve high schools sharing the same buildings in South Boston and West Roxbury. Though officials say mergers will add strength overall, the chief academic officer, Irvin Scott, denied the change would mean the expansion of one school and the total disappearance of the other.

“The goal,” said Scott, “is to take what’s great in both schools and replicate it.”

With the new combinations yet to be defined, some students from high schools being merged in West Roxbury left class this week to protest in downtown Boston. They talked about being faced with changes in curriculum and possible conflicts with a different mix of classmates.

The mergers of subdivided high schools also signal disillusionment with what once seemed a promising concept—that smaller, more tight-knit schools, would improve student performance. Though some of the innovative schools, such as Excel High School in South Boston—have been hailed as improvements over the standard district high schools, the assistant superintendent for research, assessment and evaluation, Kamalkant Chavda, said that, overall, they showed “no significant” academic improvement.

If nothing else is changed, a smaller number of schools would create more demand for student transportation. That means savings will have to come from other measures. One possibility is to have some middle school students take MBTA buses with discount passes. Another would be to let fewer students within a walk zone have the option of a bus ride.

Demand for busing will also be affected by any redrawing of zones, and the resulting changes in the number of options for school assignments. If there were enough improvement at enough schools, it would be possible to increase the number of zones without increasing inequality of options. And Deputy Superintendent Michael Goar said last month the five zones proposed a couple of years ago are “not enough.” In the best possible outcome, there could even be more families satisfied with a school’s performance and a convenient location in their neighborhood—qualities valued by many of the parents who spoke out against school closings.

But, getting to that outcome will involve difficulties, including some posed by the expansion of charter schools. Along with contributing to a shift of state money away from district public schools, charters have an advantage in transportation. Currently their students are entitled to busing anywhere in the city, and this is paid for by the Boston School Dept. Even with the current assignment plan, busing is only provided within a zone—for students in the BPS and Catholic schools.

Though school officials say the consolidation will stop short of exceeding student-to-teacher ratios in each classroom, some fear there will be more classes where the influx will hurt performance. And, after the vote, Stutman even questioned the determination of Boston officials to stem the exodus of potential new students to charter schools.

By speaking to the Chamber of Commerce instead of parents at the School committee, Mayor Menino chose a setting that was almost certainly less confrontational. And he used the occasion to bring up one other challenge to educational improvement—the rising cost of health care for teachers and other city employees.

As the president of the Boston Municipal Research Bureau, Samuel Tyler, points out, the budget for the Boston School Dept., minus the amount for insurance coverage, is getting smaller. Menino and the Bureau favor a change of state law that would let the city impose a less costly form of coverage without having to get separate agreements from all collective bargaining units—something allowed to the state since 1955.

It stands to reason that give-backs for unions would go over well with business executives, but that has so far been little match for the reluctance of the state legislature and Governor Patrick, or even the Boston City Council, to dramatically increase leverage over health plans for local communities.

Given the media exposure for Menino’s speech, it could be said he was trying to rally a broader public. This could include many people with less generous coverage, and maybe fewer options for educating their children. And, judging by The Boston Globe’s account of new population trends, the audience could even include actual or potential “New Bostonians” whose pursuit of good schools prompts them to move out or avoid the city altogether.

Pariahs, Pantheons, and Chuck Turner

It was a little after the City Council vote to expel Chuck Turner when I got off the trolley at Government Center. As I was on the way up the stairs, I saw a descending face that looked familiar yet puzzling.

Not only that, but this figure on the escalator seemed to recognize me. I still don't know who this was, but it was only a couple of seconds before misplaced resemblance became a reminder of a tarnished political figure in Boston's past. That's why, as I headed across the wet brick plaza toward a funereal mass of people outside City Hall, I thought of the late state representative from Mission Hill and Jamaica Plain, Kevin Fitzgerald.

Unlike Chuck Turner, Fitzgerald was never convicted of a crime. But Fitzgerald was entangled in a civil action over money he came by after helping an elderly woman described as being mentally impaired and having bags of cash containing thousands of dollars. Though Fitzgerald was a beneficiary in the woman's will, there was no proof beyond all reasonable doubt of stealing money that, sooner or later, should have gone to someone else. And Fitzgerald denied that it was a case of private compensation for public service. Though the case was widely reported in the Boston media, Fitzgerald kept being re-elected. For the rest of his political career, he would also be saddled with a familiar nickname, "Money Fitz."

As he made his defense before yesterday's vote, Chuck Turner compared himself to a more famous figure who went from humble origins in Roxbury to Jamaica Plain--Boston's "Rascal King," James Michael Curley. Along with rising as high as mayor, governor and congressman, Curley would be convicted twice, and on the second occasion for a federal crime. Not only that, but he continued serving as mayor of Boston after his release from prison.

As a Roxbury politician who spent some time helping local constituents--including ex-offenders--Curley certainly has some things in common with Turner, who has lived in Roxbury for decades but was born in Ohio. To be sure, Curley had his attractive traits and admirable accomplishments. Unlike Turner, the son of immigrants moved to the Jamaicaway and lived in a mansion with servants (plus legendary lines of supplicants at his door).

The author of The Rascal King, Jack Beatty, offers plenty of detail about the dark side of Curley, as off-and-on demagogue and possible crook. When asked if Curley might have done any garnishing along the way, the author of a more recent book on Curley, former State Senate President William Bulger, strongly disagreed.

Two years before he died, Curley moved from the mansion to a smaller house in Jamaica Plain. He was diminished materially and, more importantly, by the death of all but one of his children. The combination of accomplishments, misdeeds, and misfortunes made him seem larger than life.

When Curley died in 1958, there was what has been called "the largest funeral in the history of the City of Boston," maybe surpassing even the turnout at Columbia Point last year after the death of Ted Kennedy. Likewise, Fitzgerald was remembered before and after his death as a strong champion of human services. He would eventually be honored by the naming of a scenic park looking out on the office towers of downtown Boston and the spires of Mission Church.

Further on in Boston's political afterlife, Chuck Turner will be remembered as a leader of campaigns for jobs, reform around criminal background checks, and for putting a spotlight on the persistent achievement gap in the city's schools. If he was remembered in yesterday's vote for taking a wad of cash at his office in Dudley Square (as the federal jury saw it), he might also be remembered for spending time there to help individuals trying to get their lives back on track.

When Turner invoked Curley yesterday in the City Council's Iannella Chamber, some found the comparison fatuous or offensive. If it was a plea for being allowed to stay in office, it was certainly wishful. If less than fully persuasive, it did open the door to more comparisons with elected and non-elected officials who, despite serious lapses, managed to keep their positions.

But the view of Curley in Boston is like an image in a cracked mirror, or a pair of images that don't quite match. So it is with the two pieces of sculpture near City Hall. One shows Curley standing proud--Curley the beloved, the admirable, and perhaps shrewdly mythological. The other shows an old man on a bench, a fellow mortal, not so much enthroned as deposed.

Yes, Curley the ex-offender was allowed to serve the remainder of his term as mayor. He ran again more than once but was never again to be elected. While he was a strong candidate for immortality, the voters of his last decade confirmed he had outlived his usefulness as a public official.

By voting to expel Chuck Turner, his colleagues might seem to have been slighting the positive elements that people might remember in years ahead. If Turner were to have continued serving, the sting leading to his conviction might have gotten more life as a public issue--with voters in Roxbury's District 7 left to see his behavior as principled defiance or colossal stupidity.

But, instead, the expulsion left the district's voters to concentrate on something else. That takes the spotlight off the afterlife of other officials who go on to work for interests with business before the city or the state. And it dims the glare on the more roundabout--though usually quite legal--ways of rewarding people in the public realm for benefits in the private realm. What Turner's exit also makes less apparent is any resemblance to the lingering presence of Curley on the bench.

Dorchester Swing Voters Find Way to Surprise

We chose to do a report on the November election in Boston by going to Florian Hall in Dorchester. The main reason was that Ward 16, Precinct 12 had the makings of a swing vote.

In the last final election for governor, in 2006, the precinct gave Deval Patrick and Tim Murray more than 48% of the vote, with a tally of 397. That was in a four-way race, with the Republican team, Kerry Healey and Reed Hillman, getting almost 41% (336 votes). The remaining 11% went mostly to Christy Mihos. But, in January of 2010, when the special election was held to fill the seat left vacant by the death of US Senator Ted Kennedy, the precinct was carried by Scott Brown.

Given the drift of public opinion surveys around the country, it seemed that a precinct carried by Patrick four years ago could tilt in a different direction this time around. Even though Patrick was clearly favored in most of Dorchester, the mix of voters at Florian Hall was different even from that even in most other predominantly white precincts—with more firefighters and police, and with many elderly, especially from the nearby Keystone Apartments.

Though one voter in this year’s mix expressed sympathy for the Tea Party, the results had Patrick on top, if with a smaller margin over the rest of the field. The governor received almost 44% of the vote, and his tally was 369—28 votes less than four years ago. Incidentally, almost 44% was exactly the precinct's share of the vote in January for Martha Coakley, when Scott Brown received 55% in what was much more a two-way race.

As it turned out, the biggest difference from four years ago was the drop in support for the Republican ticket. Charlie Baker and Richard Tisei got a little more than 33% of the vote. As the managing editor of the Dorchester Reporter, Bill Forry, noted, the reason was the level of support for independent candidate Tim Cahill, at more than 22%—well above his showing statewide.

If the showing for Patrick in the precinct was less than triumphal, there’s a case for saying he did better than other Democrats around the country, especially if he’s judged on votes by the elderly. According to Nonprofit VOTE, there was a dramatic shift in the tilt among elderly voters, compared with November of 2008. Two years ago, Democrats had the edge with these voters—by one percent. This year, the advantage was to the Republicans, by 21 percent.

One explanation for the shift among elderly voters—aside from general discontent over the economy—could be the portrayal of national health care reform as coming at the expense of Medicare. If Democrats and AARP tried to make reform seem less threatening to the elderly, there was certainly a different spin from Republicans in campaign advertising (even back in January, when Brown was on his way to victory).

There’s still the caveat that comparing this year’s vote to that of 2006, let alone 2008, is tricky. In the presidential election year of 2012, the common assumption is that the turnout will include many more young voters, which should help Democrats. Less clear is whether the elderly vote of 2012 will be more like the national tilt in 2008 or the national tilt this month, not to mention the presumably greater tilt in favor of a Republican at Florian Hall in January of 2010.

Boston Vote: Higher Numbers, Lower Turnout

Before the polls closed, it looked as if support for Deval Patrick in cities throughout Massachusetts might be outweighed by a surge of votes from the suburbs. When the counting was over, the Patrick-Murray ticket was re-elected by a tighter margin than in 2006, yet with a higher number of votes from Boston. By comparison with 2006, Boston's turnout was down considerably--from 56.22% to 43.99 percent. But only going by those percentages would be to overlook the dramatic change in the city's number of registered voters, an increase which includes many voters signed up for the election of 2008. So the other comparison is to say the number of people voting in Boston yesterday was still up from the figure for November, 2006 by 6765 or 4.33 percent.

By sections of Boston, Ward 20 (West Roxbury and part of Roslindale) had the highest turnout, at 59.50 percent--which was down from November of 2006, when the figure was 66.36 percent. This year, following primary contests for two open seats in the state legislature and a special election for district city councilor, the number of registered voters in Ward 20 was up by 13.97%, but the number of votes cast, compared with four years earlier, was up by 2.19 percent. Along with a strong showing in Boston for state senator by West Roxbury State Representative Mike Rush (76.62% of the vote) over West Roxbury Republican rival Brad Williams, there was a small change in the break-down for Patrick. Four years ago, he lost one precinct in Ward 20. Yesterday, he carried all 20 precincts.

Citywide, Patrick carried all but 8 of 254 precincts, losing precincts only in South Boston. He also lost most of these precincts four years ago, when Kerry Healey won 10 precincts in the city. There was a larger jump in enrollment in South Boston (up from November, 2006 by 39.34%), partially fueled by competition in September for the seat being vacated by State Representative Brian Wallace. Though the turnout percentage was down, the number of votes cast was higher, by 14.87 percent. As in past years, the final election results for state representative proved to be lopsided, with the Democratic nominee, Nick Collins, getting 73.13% of the vote over Republican rival Patrick Brennan.

As it turned out, the strongest showing by a Republican running for a local seat in Boston was in the Back Bay and Beacon Hill. That's where Brad Marston received 30.38% of the vote against Democratic incumbent Marty Walz.

Patrick wrapped up his campaigning Monday night with a rally in Roxbury's Dudley Square. The main question, even at the rally, was about getting out the vote. Compared with November of 2006, the figures from predominantly black precincts in Roxbury, Dorchester, Mattapan, and Hyde Park show the vote was up modestly--by 3.35%, though the percentage of enrolled voters at the polls was down--from 54.59% to 42.09 percent.

By comparison with four years ago, the Patrick-Murray share of the Boston vote was slightly smaller, down from 72.86% to 70.28 percent. The number of votes they picked up this time in Boston was slightly higher, by less than one percent.

From Blitz Conversion to Scratch and Dent

This article appears in the Dorchester Reporter.

There was a time when Peter Power knew some of the people who lived in the six-family houses across Parkman Street. But that changed after mid-September of 2007, when the three buildings were converted into condos, all within less than four weeks.

“The next thing I knew,” said Power, “nobody was living in them at all.”

By mid-October, a developer had bought all three buildings in separate transactions for a total of $2.2 million dollars. The units then sold, on paper, for a total of almost $4.9 million. All but one of them were sold within three days the after sale of their building. Lenders put up mortgages totaling $3.8 million.

Even more unusual was the assortment of condo owners—from the manager of the Bank of America Branch in Fields Corner, to buyers from Brooklyn, the Bronx, and even as far away as Atco, New Jersey and Norfolk, Virginia. On paper, some of them were owner-occupants. Others supposedly bought units as their second homes, or for investment—at a time when the condo market in much of Dorchester, and many other places, was in decline. Yet, judging from the difference between sales prices and mortgage amounts, the down payments for the units ran as high as $75,000.

Less than three years later, the developer, Michael David Scott, is under federal indictment for mortgage fraud, along with the bank manager, an attorney who worked on many of the transactions, and two other people accused of being recruiters for straw buyers. Scott and two other defendants pleaded not guilty last week. In the indictments, they are accused of paying the straws to buy units at falsely inflated prices, and making false statements to lenders about the buyers’ assets and down payments. Also pleading not guilty is the now former bank manager, Arthur Samuels, who stands accused of producing false documents and recruiting a straw buyer.

Before the first indictments were handed up late August, foreclosure petitions had been filed for 8 units in the buildings on Parkman Street. But, even without, in most cases, going all the way into foreclosure, the units that Scott sold for as much as $299,900 apiece would later be scooped up for as little as $55,000. Some were turned over for a nominal fee, with the buyer assuming the mortgage. In the interim, the buildings were painted on the outside and filled with new occupants.

But Power says the buildings still have problems. He mentions rodents attracted by trash containers that some residents don’t put out on the curb for collection. Plus, during the summer, there was a shooting in one of the buildings that, according to police, resulted in four arrests.

“It just brings the value of your house down,” says Power.

A lifelong resident of Dorchester, Power describes the buildings as a “flophouse” with “revolving tenants.” Saying he and his wife are thinking moving, he adds, “I actually do like Dorchester, but I don’t like what’s coming down the street right now. It’s not safe."


Federal authorities list fraudulent transactions by Scott and his collaborators on 48 units, all but six of them at locations in Dorchester—including the ones on Parkman Street. Most of the units have since been turned over to new owners. In at least one case, in a three-decker on Centre Street, there was a period when the doors and windows for one unit covered with plywood.

But there were also problems at another building listed in the indictment, a three-decker at 672 Adams Street.

“The lawn was disgusting. There was broken glass everywhere,” said a neighbor who described the building as “an eyesore.”

“We own our condo,” she said, “and we were afraid it would bring the price of ours down.”

Records show units in 672 Adams Street were all sold within a few days after it was bought under the name of Astoria Realty Trust. One unit was sold to Arthur Samuels. The others were sold to buyers from Virginia and Pennsylvania. Last year, foreclosure petitions were filed on two of the units. By February, all three units—which had sold less than two years earlier for a total of $870,000—were sold in separate transactions to a buyer from Quincy for a total of $140,900.

To buy all the properties listed in the federal indictment, Scott and his associates paid almost $6.2 million. On paper, the separate units sold—mostly within a few weeks—for a total of $13.9 million, while the mortgages put up by lenders came to almost $11.8 million. The highest loan totals were from Salem Five—more than $3.3 million—and Gateway Funding Diversified Mortgage Services—$4.4 million. And sources at both lenders say a loan officer who played a role in some of the transactions for Gateway later went to work for Salem Five.

Records show Scott and his associates, overall, sold more than one hundred units in Boston, mostly from condo conversions in Dorchester and Roxbury. Foreclosure proceedings were started on at least 80 of the units, while even some of the other units would be turned over in distressed sales. One lender—Gateway—wrote mortgages totaling more than $13 million for 44 of the units. Out of these, there would be foreclosure petitions filed on 35 units.

Many of the buyers purchased multiple units at multiple locations, and the same pattern can be found in multifamily transactions by other sellers. A partial review of records in Boston over the past few years shows foreclosure proceedings on more than 240 units against more than 100 owners of anywhere from 2 to 8 units. Some of those owners also turned over other units in distressed sales, without the filing of foreclosure petitions.

Researchers disagree about the effects of foreclosures on surrounding property, and they caution that poor conditions and price declines can also make distressed sales more likely.

The Rappaport Institute estimates a discount of 28% on sales of foreclosed (REO) properties, with the steepest discounts in areas where lenders have the most fear of property being damaged by vandalism.

According to a study by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, small multifamily properties make up less than one-quarter of the housing stock in Massachusetts, but they account for 33 percent of the post-foreclosure sales. Researchers say the REO property discounts were steepest in areas with lower income levels, a higher percentage of minority residents, and a sharper decline in overall prices.

In multifamily REO properties that were converted into condos, potential buyers face even more obstacles. With staggered foreclosures on individual units, observers say financing is more difficult to arrange in buildings without functioning condo associations.

“You’re going to be left with someone who’s going to be willing to buy for cash,” said one appraiser based in Dorchester, “and, when you’ve got the cash buyer, you’re going to be left with considerably less for it.”

Monthly reports by The Warren Group show that the sharp declines in the median prices for Dorchester condos have since been reversed, even if prices are still below the levels at the height of the housing bubble. In July and August of this year, after the expiration of federal tax credits, there was a fall-off in condo sales, though the median price was still getting higher.

According to a report by In Realty, housing prices strongly rebounded in the second quarter of this year in all areas of Dorchester. In the area where the market had been the weakest—between Blue Hill Avenue and Washington street—prices were going up, but volume was down. According to the report, one reason was the decrease in foreclosures.

Helping to bring down the number of foreclosures are the efforts to keep buildings occupied, sometimes through loan modifications or sales to occupants. The non-profit Boston Community Capital has arranged this kind of turnover for 85 units of housing, mostly in Dorchester, Roxbury, Mattapan, and Hyde Park.

“If we let nature and the market run its course, we have a real issue because of the inventory and the amount of time it’s on the market,” said the president of lending affiliates for Boston Community Capital, Patricia Hanratty. “If the people who are in one of these units can afford to buy it back at $70,000 or $80,000,” she asked, “why is that not under consideration?”

One reason is that, as speakers said last month in a Dorchester symposium on REO properties, non-profits are often outbid by for-profit competition. Though observers say the quality and intentions of the buyers are mixed, the competition increases demand for the housing supply. And, as the director of the city’s Dept. of Neighborhood Development, Evelyn Friedman explained, that can keep the property values from going too low to make repairs unprofitable.

At 672 Adams Street, the new owner of the condo units sold the whole building in June to another buyer from Quincy for $235,000. With recent signs of repair work, the neighbor says, “In the end it turned out OK.”

At a three-family house on Bernard Street, in the Franklin Field area, the people who bought units from Scott and his associates in late 2005 even managed to stay in the building, after getting help from Boston Community Capital. Records show the units, including one with less than 1,000 square feet, sold for more than $900,000. Foreclosure petitions would later be filed on two of the units.

Hanratty said Boston Community Capital intervened at Bernard Street and other locations because the mortgages had monthly payments that were “incredibly high,” adding that “nobody looked to underwrite these loans to say this is what somebody could afford.”

Despite renovations, Hanratty said, the units, as they sold almost five years ago, were “vastly overpriced."

"They were very high, even then,” she added. “Just thinking about a three-decker on Bernard Street as being worth almost a million bucks is pretty challenging.”