Flaherty Tries to Build on Alliance with Yoon

Michael Flaherty is trying a new way of building support for his showdown in the final election against Boston Mayor Thomas Menino. Instead of just reaping endorsements from his fellow challengers in the preliminary election, Flaherty has brought on City Councilor Sam Yoon as a running mate and possible deputy mayor.

The last time Boston had deputy mayors was under Kevin White. When his successor, Ray Flynn, took office in 1984, he did away with the deputies, while at the same time experimenting with a build-up of grassroots political power through neighborhood councils.

In announcing his campaign alliance this morning, Flaherty emphasized Yoon’s qualifications.

“Boston doesn’t just need an urban mechanic,” said Flaherty, “it needs a visionary to tap into the intellectual capital of this city.”

Flaherty also contrasted Yoon with Michael Kineavy, Menino’s Chief of Planning and Policy, whose deletion of emails caused a stir just before last week’s preliminary election.

“The mayor has Michael Kineavy,” said Flaherty. “I’m going to have Sam Yoon.”

But will Flaherty have Yoon’s votes? And, even if he were to have all those votes, would it be enough to unseat Menino? In last week’s results, Menino received 50.5% of the vote, more than double the percentage carried by Flaherty.

Flaherty says the results show half the voters wanted change, and 21% of them voted for Yoon. And, by having Yoon campaign with him as a future deputy mayor, Flaherty would be getting more than just an endorsement.

In last week’s election, Yoon carried 24 precincts, mainly in parts of Allston-Brighton, Jamaica Plain, the Back Bay and the Fenway. The areas are, for the most part, traditionally progressive and, with the exception of Jamaica Plain, relatively low on turnout.

In all but one of the precincts carried by Yoon, Flaherty finished behind Menino. That’s one reason why former City Councilor Lawrence DiCara says transferring support from Yoon voters to Flaherty will be a “tough challenge.”

“Where Sam Yoon received his votes, Michael Flaherty received almost none, and vice-versa,” said DiCara.

The results in November also depend on how many more people will vote than in the preliminary election. This year, Menino is facing his most competitive challenge since winning his first term in 1993. Voters will also be drawn out to fill two of the at large seats on the City Council.

Flaherty estimates the total number of voters in November will increase over last week’s figure by as much as 40 percent. DiCara says he thinks the increase will be smaller, and he predicts the greater share of the increase will occur in precincts where most voters are people of color—precincts, for the most part, carried last week by Menino.

“I don’t think those minority folks who voted for Sam are going to go for Flaherty,” said DiCara.

“It’s a cultural issue,” he said, “not so much ideological as cultural.”

Asian American Vote Breaks Young for Yoon

In his third place run for Mayor of Boston in Tuesday’s preliminary election, City Councilor Sam Yoon carried several precincts in traditionally progressive areas of Boston, but it was Mayor Menino who carried every precinct with the largest concentration of Asian American voters.

Though that much can be confirmed by a look at unofficial returns, the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund dug a little deeper in its exit polling. The survey found Menino was favored by a clear majority of Asian American voters—71%, followed by Yoon at 22% and Michael Flaherty at 6 percent. But the poll also found the voters’ preference also depended on age. Among younger Asian American voters, the winner was Yoon, at 46%, with Menino at 31 percent.

Short of confirmation by exit poll, it stands to reason that age might also help explain why Yoon was the top voter-getter in parts of Jamaica Plain, Allston and the Back Bay.

Among candidates for City Councilor at Large, the leader was another Asian American from Dorchester, Hiep Quoc Nguyen, with 39%. The next highest levels of support were for Félix G. Arroyo (30%), and for Tomás González and Tito Jackson—each with 25 percent.

Voters were asked to list the main issues affecting their choice of candidates. The largest number listed health care (49%), followed by economy/jobs (37%), housing/development policies (26%), senior care (24%), education (23%) and public safety (19%).

The Fund says there were “few problems” with the voting process, though it notes many Asian Americans needed bilingual ballots.

Boston's Preliminary: Turnout and Patterns

The turnout for yesterday’s preliminary election in Boston was impressive, but only by comparison with the lackluster municipal contests going back to 1997.

By comparison with the presidential election turnout last November—at 61.8%--yesterday’s figure for mayor and city councilors was much lower, at 23.1%. That’s still higher than turnout figures for the last two preliminary elections in years when there were votes for mayor and city councilors. In 2005, when there was no preliminary vote for mayor, the turnout figure was 15.1%. In 2001, it was 17.25%, and in 1997—when Mayor Thomas Menino was unopposed—it was 16.15%

The most impressive number in yesterday’s election was the increase in the number of people who came out to vote, 81,641. That’s more than twice the number of votes cast in the preliminary election four years ago and 86% higher than the figure for 2001. That seems to contradict the modest increase in turnout percentage. But, since 1997, the number of registered voters in Boston has grown by 49.9%.

With three opponents in the preliminary, Menino faced what was by far his most significant challenge since winning his first full term in 1993. Yesterday, he received 50.5% of the vote, followed by his co-finalist Michael Flaherty with 24%, City Councilor Sam Yoon with 21.2% and Kevin McCrea with 4.1%. In the only other preliminary comparison between yesterday and 1993, Menino received 73% of the vote in 2001, when he and co-finalist Peggy Davis-Mullen were joined on the ballot by perennial candidate Althea Garrison.

Despite his federal indictment last year on corruption charges, the District 7 (Roxbury/Dorchester) City Councilor, Chuck Turner, received 52.6% of yesterday’s vote. The next highest vote-getter was Carlos Henriquez, with 23.9%. In the final election two years ago, Henriquez received 18% and Turner received 81%.

Among the candidates for councilor at large, the two incumbents, John Connolly and Stephen Murphy, finished well ahead of the other candidates. Félix G. Arroyo, finishing third, trailed Murphy by more than four thousand votes, but the son of former Councilor Félix Arroyo was almost nine thousand votes ahead of the next candidate, Ayanna Pressley. The only woman on the ballot, Pressley finished more than four thousand votes ahead of the 5th place candidate, Andrew Kenneally. Fewer than three thousand votes separate Kenneally from the other three finalists in November: Tito Jackson, Doug Bennett and Tomás González.

In the only other two preliminary contests for district seats on the council, the incumbents finished well ahead of their competition in November. In Allston-Brighton’s District 9, Mark Ciommo received 59.8% over Alex Selvig’s 23.2%. In District 1 (E. Boston, Charlestown, N. End/Waterfront), Sal LaMattina received 73.4%, while Chris Kulikoski received 15.1%.

With a racially diverse pool of candidates, there were expectations for higher turnout in much of Boston. This year, the results were closer to the old pattern, with the highest turnouts in Ward 20 (W. Roxbury/Roslindale), at 35%; Ward 16 (Neponset, Cedar Grove, Pope’s Hill), 33.2%, Hyde Park (30.4%) and South Boston (29.8%).

Areas with the lowest turnout percentages were Ward 21 (Allston), with 11.6%; Ward 5 (Back Bay/South End), with 13.4%; and Ward 4 (Fenway/South End), with 14.7%. In between were Ward 17 (Codman Square/Lower Mills) at 25.6%, Ward 1 (East Boston) at 24.8%, Mattapan (24.1%), Ward 12 (Roxbury) at 23.6%, Ward 11 (Forest Hills/Egleston Square) at 23.4%, Ward 2 (Charlestown) at 23.3%, Ward 14 (Grove Hall/Franklin Field) at 20.2%, Ward 15 (Fields corner/Bowdoin-Geneva) at 20%.

Though Menino finished well ahead of his competition, there were some pockets of support for Flaherty and Yoon. Flaherty carried three precincts in Charlestown, all but one of the precincts in South Boston, and five precincts in Dorchester—mostly in Ward 16’s Neponset-Pope’s Hill/Neponset area.

Yoon carried one precinct in the West End, two in the Fenway, four in the Back Bay, 14 in solidly progressive Jamaica Plain and 8 in Ward 21—mostly in Allston.

The rest was carried by Menino, including Ward 20 and the precincts with the largest Asian population (in the main Chinatown precinct, the vote for Menino was 58.2%).

Two Views of Boston's Mayoral Race

Over the summer, Neighborhood Network News has been presenting interview segments with and about candidates running in this year's city election. Among the recent segments are two with candidates for mayor: City Councilor Michael Flaherty on July 23, City Councilor Sam Yoon on August 5. The next scheduled interview in the series is with mayoral candidate Kevin McCrea. It will be on Neighborhood Network News Monday, August 10. BNN airs the show at 5:30, 9:30, and 11 p.m., with live streaming at those times.

City Election 2009: In Praise of Skirmishes

We decided to cover Sam Yoon's "town meeting" last week in Mattapan, expecting little more than the snapshot of a campaign in action. But an exchange between Yoon and Mayor Menino's Chief of Staff, Judith Kurland, made the event more two-sided. It was as if, like Rodney Dangerfield at a boxing match, we ended up with a hockey game.

When someone in the audience brought up literature and handbags with the mayor's name given out by the city's Commission on Affairs of the Elderly, there was an opportunity for Yoon to score. To be sure, there's some advertising going on with the hand-outs, and that's more of a problem if it's paid for by city funds instead of campaign money. Does this apply to everything the Commission does, as Yoon comes close to arguing? Isn't there some overlap between gratuitous advertising and the good impression an elected official makes when the administration performs a service? Anyhow, Yoon reached far enough to leave an opening for a counterthrust by Kurland, who--with a deft touch of dramatization--snatched a passable look of tacit agreement from a woman sitting near her in the audience.

For details on the conext behind the exchange, read the article in the Dorchester Reporter by Gintautas Dumcius. There's also a video report on the meeting by Joe Rowland for Neighborhood Network News.

Judging from accounts of the meeting, Yoon made some good impressions, though the exchange with Kurland suggests a need to wage verbal fights more carefully, and maybe to pick battles over something more urgent (even if this topic wasn't initially picked by Yoon).

Kurland's performance, no matter how much it sprang from a genuine sense of indignation, was worthy of a candidate in a town meeting debate. The more that's noticed, the more it makes Yoon appear to be taken seriously, and the more it suggests the debate should be not with a proxy, but between candidates. And if the debate were about other topics?

This minor showdown goes some way to suggest the potential for debates to get people interested in an election. All too often these skirmishes tell us very little that's new (which may very well apply to what happened in Mattapan), and they might even be compared to fights in hockey game--a distraction at best that, on repetition, quickly becomes tiresome. But, in an election year so deprived of face-to-face confrontations between candidates in three-dimensional reality, even a minor skirmish can be refreshing.

Fall-off in Homicides: Just the Rain?

If homicides have decreased in Boston over the past few months because of the weather, that would hardly account for the fatal shooting of Soheil Turner.

The 15 year-old student was shot on a rainy morning, outside a convenience store on Dudley Street. According to investigators, the killer, who was wearing dark sunglasses, was equipped with a .380 semi-automatic handgun and an umbrella.

Since the day Turner was shot, on May 7, Boston has had an abnormally high number of cloudy days and—by comparison with last year--a decrease in rate of homicides. Some observers say the recent drop in homicides and shootings can be partially explained by the weather. But others say the reasons could include everything from efforts by law enforcement and medical personnel to anti-violence programs and the neighborhood walks by community volunteers.

From the beginning of this year through July 19, there have been 27 homicides in Boston, down 25% from the figure from the same date last year. Homicides are also down in some other large cities around the country. The weather has been cited for the decrease in New York City, but the Washington Post reports homicides are also down in cities with different weather patterns, including Washington, D.C. and Los Angeles.

In Boston, the decrease in homicides has been very noticeable in areas that have usually experienced the most violence. In Area B (Roxbury, Mattapan and part of Dorchester), there have been 5 homicides since Turner was killed, but only one since June 14: the stabbing death of a 49 year-old man on July 27. In Area C (Dorchester and South Boston), over the same period of almost seven weeks, there has been only one homicide—a 74 year-old man allegedly stabbed by a 64 year-old woman.

About a week after Turner was shot, a three-year old boy and a 70 year-old woman were struck by shots fired into a store on Bowdoin Street by a sixteen year-old suspect. The shootings were non-fatal, but the next day, Mayor Menino and Police Commissioner Ed Davis were on Bowdoin Street to announce they would increase patrols and visibility in “hot spot” areas.

Even by last December, there were plans for a violence prevention strategy with a new way of deploying street workers funded by the Boston Foundation. Instead of only city street workers who finished their shift at 8 p.m., the “Street Safe” program would have some workers be on the clock till midnight, then be available on call. The street workers are jointly administered by the city and the Boston Ten Point Coalition.

At a meeting in June, law enforcement authorities and church leaders warned gang members that violence would meet with tough sentencing. They also offered alternatives to gang activity. The approach had been tried before, but Ten Point Coalition Executive Director Rev. Jeffrey L. Brown said the newest group responded with “less bravado” and more interest in alternatives.

“This time around, the kids were really listening to us,” said Brown.

“You’ve got a younger set of shooters than before,” he explained, “so they seem more apt to listen to people approaching them out on the street, who are out there to help them rather than put them in jail.”

Over the last three weeks, Brown says, street workers have helped make it possible for members of different gangs to spend time at Washington Park in Roxbury without conflicts.

“They’re not looking to do anything,” he said. “They’re just trying to relax in the city.”

Along with the street workers, Brown credits community volunteers who walk through “hot spot” neighborhoods.

Less reassuring this year are the figures on Boston’s non-fatal shootings. As of July 19, the total number of all shootings this year was slightly higher than it was last year.

Given the fall-off in homicides without a decrease in shootings, the founder and director of the Louis D. Brown Peace Institute, Clementina Chéry, says the reason might be neither the weather nor efforts of law enforcement.

“So people get shot but don’t get killed? Who gets credit for that?” she asked. “Hospitals are doing a better job in treating victims.”

Through May 25, the total number of non-fatal shootings for this year was 89, up from the figure for the same period last year by more than 50 percent. But, from May 25 through July 19 this year, the figure was 39, down from the same period last year by 35 percent.

The executive director of the Dorchester Youth Collaborative, Emmett Folgert, notes the recent change in shootings, and the kind of people involved.

“The gang stuff is down,” he says.

But Folgert says one reason could be fewer targets on porches and sidewalks for drive-by shooters—on account of the weather.

“The rain is our best friend,” he said.

But there have also been changing trends in arrests and convictions.

A spokesperson for Suffolk County District Attorney Daniel Conley, Jake Wark, says the conviction rate for homicide has improved over the past two years, while more people are being prosecuted on gun charges.

“That takes some players off the street longer than they used to after a gun arrest,” he said.

Folgert says the Boston Police have done “a lot of good work getting guns off the street.” So far, the Boston Police report arrests for all gun-related offenses have increased this year by 8 percent.

Chéry says there should be more attention to the reasons for violence. Like other leaders of community-based programs, Chéry and Folgert have described much violence as retaliatory and cyclical. But Folgert says a cycle of violence can be moderated by a cycle of weather.

“We’ve all heard that violence begets more violence,” he said. “Well, peace begets more peace.”

New Money, New Plans for School Reform

This post appears as an article in the Dorchester Reporter.

When Boston School officials tried to save money this year by cutting costs in student transportation, they met with strong resistance from parents who put more hopes in choice, even with the need for a bus ride.

By estimates of the Boston School Dept., the parents who stand to lose from a cutback in choice and busing are a minority, while almost three-quarters prefer schools close to where they live. But the parents who cling to wider choices are a diverse population, and their support for busing as a vehicle of choice has been reinforced by other Boston parents sending their children to charter schools and parochial schools.

“You’re not going to have people give up their child’s transportation,” said one parent, “if their child is going to go to a lower quality school.”

Under a proposed student assignment plan put out for discussion in May, a disproportionate number of under-performing schools would have been in zones that include Dorchester and Mattapan. When officials decided later to slow down the change in the assignment process, Superintendent Carol Johnson asked for more information about school improvement and ensuring access to quality throughout the city.

Johnson’s comments were in a memo dated June 3, the same day another Boston Public School parent, City Councilor Sam Yoon, called for raising the cap on charter schools in Boston. These public schools operate independently of the Boston School Dept., and Yoon wanted the cap to be lifted only for charter schools that were successful.

Within a few days, there was support for raising the cap from another BPS parent and City Councilor running for mayor, Michael Flaherty. The same day Flaherty came out with his education platform, Mayor Thomas Menino announced plans to file state legislation that would allow more charter schools to open, but under control of the Boston School Committee. The charters would be conversions of schools that consistently under-perform.

The move also comes after a slow-down in the expansion of innovative “pilot schools,” though the Boston Teachers Union has agreed more recently to the opening of additional pilots. In January, a new study showed an advantage for a sample of students in charter schools over students in the BPS district schools and pilot schools. BPS officials argue the study draws mostly on a sample from the best charter schools, but they acknowledge that charters get better results in math for 8th graders.

While some question the state’s definition of under-performing schools, there is still concern in Boston about the racial gap in achievement and the number of dropouts (1,447 students last year, according to the Boston Plan for Excellence). The Plan for Excellence also reports that 56% of the BPS 9th graders were “off-track to graduate” in the 3rd quarter of the last school year, and 26% were “severely off track.”

“Although we’ve made tremendous gains in the Boston Public Schools, I am frustrated with the pace of our progress, especially in our low performing schools,” Mayor Menino said last month. “To get the results we seek – at the speed we want – we must make transformative changes that boost achievement for students, improve quality choices for parents, and increase opportunities for teachers.”

Unlike the pilot schools—innovative schools within the system—the new charters could be set up without approval by the BTU. Each school would have a performance contract, and the plan calls for failing schools to close. The plan has been described as an abrupt shift by Menino, and even as an election-year gesture with little chance of overcoming opposition at the State House from teachers’ unions.

But Menino’s qualified support for alternatives to the Boston Schools is hardly new, given his presence at ground-breakings for parochial schools and charter schools—one as far back as 2001, and another the day before announcing his in-city charter bill. The last appearance was at the future home of the Renaissance Charter School, which is relocating to an old mill and warehouse in Hyde Park with the help of financing from an agency staffed by the Boston Redevelopment Authority.

When the Boston Municipal Research Bureau took notice of the growing support for charter school expansion, it gave more reasons—the 5,264 students from Boston already enrolled in charter schools, and another 8,577 still on wait lists.

But, last week, when Menino and Governor Deval Patrick shared a podium at the Museum of Science with US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, their support for more charter schools was linked with a chance to get more federal money, a nationwide total of $4.35 billion.

Governor Patrick hopes to use some of the money in Massachusetts for additional charter schools that would have to meet conditions for inclusion, especially for English Language Learners and students with learning disabilities. The governor also hopes to use the federal money for transforming chronically under-performing schools into “Readiness Acceleration Schools.” These would be under state authority, but they would have more autonomy from local districts, and there would be new services outside the schools for students and their families.

Menino and Patrick have expressed concerns over the effect of charter school expansion on budgets for local school districts, and charter schools have also attracted students who, in past years, might have gone to parochial schools. Menino is still against lifting cap on expansion of the regular “Commonwealth” charter schools, provided the legislature allows the “in-district” charters. Even last Thursday, Patrick said the funding formula for additional charter schools “needs to be looked at.”

According to the vice chair of the Boston School Committee, Marchelle Raynor, there is no redirection of funding needed under the mayor’s proposal for “in-district” charter schools. And Raynor says the schools could be in operation as early as this September.

The mayor’s plan has been greeted with skepticism from the Boston Teachers Union and the Mass. Charter Public School Association, which represents the “Commonwealth” schools.

“We want to make sure that when he creates these ‘in-district’ schools,” said Association spokesperson Dominic Slowey, “there’s the high level of accountability as with the Commonwealth system.”

BTU President Richard Stutman called the mayor’s plan “poorly thought out.” And he described the announcement by Patrick and Menino as “nine-tenths stimulus money.”

By including merit pay for teachers in his plan, Menino has aligned himself with Duncan. When Menino announced his plan last month, he said the incentives would make teachers “jointly accountable” for results in the classroom, and help attract “more excellent educators.”

Stutman says teachers would go along with extra pay that could be shared by a team, but not with incentives for individuals. “It’s so difficult,” he said, “to measure who’s contributing what.”

The governor’s also facing some resistance to his plan from the Mass. Charter Public School Association. Though the governor stops short of setting quotas for enrollment of demographic groups in new charter schools, he wants to require best efforts in recruitment. The Association says this could be an incentive to keep students in the categories of English Language Learner or special needs even after they should be in regular classrooms.

Advocates for choice and local officials still argue some types of students are under-represented in the Commonwealth charter schools. And they blame some charter schools for shedding students who either drop out or end up in the local district schools.

“It’s easier to teach a population that doesn’t require special services,” says Stutman. “It’s cheaper, too.”

But a cutback in busing has also been viewed as a way of inadvertently encouraging more parents to choose Commonwealth charter schools. Earlier this year, Boston officials were trying to end citywide enrollment at elementary and middle schools, which they said would make it easier to apply the same restriction to students at charter and parochial schools. That plan has met with legal barriers, as well as opposition from different groups.

“It would be a hardship for a lot of parents to come up with their own transportation,” said Slowey, “plus, it would be in conflict with state law.”

The assistant director for Boston School Reform at Mass. Advocates for Children, Kim Janey, said it would be unfair to continue citywide transportation for students in charter schools while elementary and middle school students in the Boston Public Schools could only be bused within one of five zones.

“You run the risk of perpetuating a two-tier system in the city,” said Janey.

In an interview on Neighborhood Network News, Raynor said the in-district charter schools proposed by the mayor would not require additional transportation.

In his announcement last month, Menino did not specify whether the in-district charter schools could have citywide enrollment and transportation. But, if they did, Stutman says, that “would increase transportation costs by millions of dollars.”