Do Library Supporters Have the Right Target in Their Sights?

The Trustees of the Boston Public Library voted earlier this month to close four of the 26 branch public libraries in the city, including the Faneuil Branch Library in Brighton's Oak Square.

Library supporters are outraged and looking to reverse that decision -- whether through additional state funding, with an attached rider that would require all the branches to remain open, or additional city funding.

Those who want the branches to remain open have top two targets for their criticism: BPL President Amy Ryan, who drew up the closing plan, and Boston Mayor Thomas Menino, who voiced his strong support for it.

Are they targeting the right people?

The answer to this question lies first in figuring out why BPL is in a funding crunch.

Menino spokesperson Dot Joyce noted that the city this year "level-funded libraries."

Budget documents on the BPL website show that the City of Boston has decreased its payments much less: from $31.2 million in FY09 to $29.7 million in FY10 and $29.4 million in FY11. That's a decrease of $1.8 million over two years, or a cut of 6%. (Note that Joyce is not quite correct in saying that the city has "level-funded libraries.")

Now let's look at the state funding side of the BPL budget.

Brighton state Representative Michael Moran is especially outraged at Menino and has co-sponsored a bill in the state House of Representatives that would restore some state funding.

Note that verb: "restore."

In the same time period that the city has cut its funding to BPL by a little bit, the state has cut heavily its own contribution to BPL: from $8.9 million in FY09 to $4.0 million in FY10 and $2.4 million in FY11. That's a decrease of $6.5 million over two years, or a cut of 73% in state funding for BPL.

The funding shortfall in BPL's budget can nearly all be traced to a decline in state funding, not a decline in city funding.

Should Brighton protesters target Mayor Menino to tell him to restore funding for the libraries to keep the Faneuil Branch Library open? That strategy appears misguided, since it is not the city that has drastically cut their funding for the libraries.

Instead, Brighton residents might find their outrage better directed at members of the state legislature who voted to decrease state spending on BPL by 73% over the past two years.

Since state representatives Moran and Kevin Honan both voted for the budget bill that included decreased funding for BPL in the FY10, shouldn't the outraged residents of Brighton be holding them accountable? (Senator Steven Tolman probably also voted for the same cuts, but I can't find a roll call vote from 6/19/09.)

Shouldn't the the outraged citizens of Brighton be demanding that Reps. Moran and Honan and Sen. Tolman restore the state's funding to BPL from $2.4 million to the FY09 level of $8.9 million?

Methinks the public's anger towards Menino is misplaced on this issue since it is the state legislature who created BPL's funding sinkhole.

And members of the public who are angry at the possible closing of the Faneuil Branch Library should hold Moran, Honan, and Tolman responsible for their June 19, 2009 votes on the FY10 budget.

Will Lowe's Continue to Misrepresent Traffic on Market Street?

Lowe's is scheduled on Thursday night to present to the Brighton Allston Improvement Association their revised plans for construction of a home improvement store in Brighton Landing. Lowe's is currently locked in a struggle with New Balance over competing development plans for those parcels.

Mayor Thomas Menino rejected Lowe's first proposal for the store in 2007 because of the traffic problems it would create.

A year-and-a-half ago Lowe's presented the first revision in their plans in which they first promised to spend $1.2 million to improve traffic signals on Market Street and North Beacon Street. If those improvements were found to reduce vehicle travel times, Lowe's representatives proposed that they should be permitted to construct their store.

In Lowe's traffic study, however, they substantially misrepresented the existing traffic situation on Market Street, stating travel times that are approximately three times longer than actual measured times. Lowe's characterization of travel times on Market Street are, simply put, way off.

Will Lowe's on Thursday continue to misrepresent the existing traffic conditions on Market Street?

In 2008 Lowe's representatives told the BAIA:

Lowe's traffic engineering consultants claim that it currently takes 14.4 minutes to travel along Market Street from Washington Street to Lincoln Street during morning rush hour, and the reverse trip during evening rush hour takes 17.6 minutes. They also claim that travel on North Beacon Street from Market Street to Union Square takes 10.2 minutes eastbound during morning rush hour or 15.0 minutes westbound during evening rush hour.

Their consultants were stating the travel times estimated from computer modeling of Market Street traffic patterns, not those actually measured in a vehicle on the street.

So what does the experimental physicist in me want to do? Measure the actual travel times. During morning and evening rush hour the past couple of weeks I made a series of timings of the travel time from crossing Washington Street to the time crossing Lincoln Street (or vice-versa). Morning timings were taken in a car and evening timings were taken from MBTA bus #86, which should be even slower than normal traffic because of the added time of allowing passengers to get on and off. [See the bottom of the post for more details on the measurements.]

Actual travel times: between four and seven minutes.

Predicted travel times from Lowe's computer models: between 14.4 and 17.6 minutes.

The results show that Lowe's predictions of travel times are three-and-a-half times too large for northbound travel on Market Street during morning rush hour, and two-and-a-half times too large for southbound travel on Market Street during evening rush hour.

The conclusion: Lowe's and their traffic consultants in 2008 massively misrepresented how bad the traffic is on Market Street.


Why Would Lowe's Massively Over-Estimate the Market Street Travel Times?

Lowe's proposed in 2008 that, if they could reduce the travel time by spending money on improving the timing of the traffic lights, then they should be allowed to proceed on constructing their box store in Brighton Landing:

[Lowe's and their consultants] claim that construction of their proposed, big box store will reduce average trip times along Market Street by 13-28% and along North Beacon Street by 3-11%...

...If there is more traffic on nearby streets, shouldn't this mean that it would take longer to go anywhere by car?

Not if Lowe's paid $1.2 million up front, prior to any approvals for construction of the store, in order to improve traffic signals in the area by synchronizing them. Lowe's insists that they will put a condition on their construction that they must first demonstrate a reduction in trip time from the signal improvements to Market Street and North Beacon Street.

But the actual travel time is already much better than Lowe's represented it to be; the existing travel times are a 50-67% improvement over their flawed computer models, much more than their proposed 3-28% improvement.

The cynical explanation is that Lowe's might be over-estimating the travel times in order to guarantee that it will appear as though their traffic signal improvements will improve the travel times. It's hard to know whether or not this is the real reason, but I am willing to bet that the BAIA asks some pointed questions at Thursday's meeting.

It's hard to imagine why a traffic consultant -- presumably paid by Lowe's for many hours, days, or even weeks of engineering work -- wouldn't bother to spend an additional hour or two driving up and down the street measuring the actual travel times. Unless, of course, the engineers made the measurements, found them less favorable than the computer model's predicted times, and chose not to make mention of the discrepancy. But that is a purely speculative conspiracy theory.

Their computer model travel times don't make any sense, either. The distance between Lincoln and Washington streets is 0.75 miles, so Lowe's model predicts average vehicle speeds of 3.1 mph in the morning and 2.6 mph in the evening. Those speeds are so slow that many young children could walk faster.

Let's hope that their traffic engineers have driver's licenses and own cars so that they can drive up and down the street a few times before Thursday's meeting.


Other Traffic Issues

Other things to look for in Thursday's presentation by Lowe's traffic engineers: whether they are using the same traffic study or a new one; if they are using the magical stroke-of-the-pen to declare "that 50% rather than 25% of the traffic would already be driving in the area on other errands"; how much the relocation of Briggs from one of the parcels is improving the traffic in the study, rather than other changes (such as a reduction in size of the store or traffic signal improvements); and how Lowe's deals with New Balance's counter-proposals to create a flyover on/off ramp to the Mass Pike and have a commuter rail station near Everett Street.


Measurements

Morning rush hour northbound [measured by car]: Average 4.0 minutes (individual measurements: 4:27 and 3:27), compared to Lowe's predictions of 14.4 minutes. Neither measurement was within a factor of three of Lowe's predictions.

Morning rush hour southbound [measured by car]: Average 4.2 minutes (individual measurements: 4:37 and 3:50); no Lowe's prediction given.

Evening rush hour southbound [measured on MBTA bust #86]: Average 6.9 minutes (individual measurements: 7:35, 5:30, 6:50, 7:30), compared to Lowe's predictions of 17.6 minutes. Not one measurement was within a factor of two of Lowe's predictions.

Evening rush hour northbound: No measurements or predictions.


[above right] Image of a traffic jam in India:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/lingaraj/ / CC BY 2.0

BC Files With Court to Enter Lawsuit Over IMP Approval

Boston College filed court papers last month in order to join the lawsuit filed by two Brighton residents against the city of Boston over it's approval of BC's institutional master plan.

Those two Brighton residents, Patrick Galvin and Mark Alford, filed their lawsuit with the city in Suffolk Superior Court in July over the city's review and approval of BC's IMP earlier in the year. The Boston Redevelopment Authority's Board voted to approve the IMP in January and the Boston Zoning Commission voted to approve the IMP in May and June; both the BRA and the BZC are named as defendants in the lawsuit. Mayor Thomas Menino signed his approval of the IMP in June, although neither he nor his office are named as defendants.

BC was not named as a defendant in the lawsuit, but in the motion they filed with the court on November 9th they seek "leave to intervene as a defendant." They assert in the motion that they meet the requirements "for both intervention as of right and permissive intervention."

No response regarding BC's motion had been filed by the plaintiffs with the court as of last Thursday.


Big Gun Lawyers Involved in Case

BC was represented in the motion by legal counsel from the large law firm Goodwin Procter LLP. In their court filings, Goodwin Procter has at least two partners -- Anthony M. Feeherry and Lawrence E. Kaplan -- involved in the case, as well as two other associates.

I reported on Friday that the plaintiffs are now themselves represented by counsel which includes Jan Schlictmann, the attorney who was the subject of the best-selling book A Civil Action by Jonathan Harr.

The city is in various documents represented by its own Corporation Counsel as well as a smaller firm Rosenberg, Schapiro, Englander, Chicoine & Leggett, P.C -- which appears to have the direct involvement of two of the named partners, Edward S. Englander and Denise A. Chicoine, in the case.

With all those lawyers involved in the case -- particularly the partners -- I would be willing to bet that quite a lot of money is being spent on both sides.

Could the Plymouth Rock Studios Fiasco Happen in Boston?

The Boston Globe's Spotlight Team reported today about substantial holes in the developer's plans to build a large movie studio on a former golf course in Plymouth. Several days ago, the developer's $550 million financing fell through, and the Globe's investigative report shows how many of the players have financial backgrounds -- bankruptcies, lawsuits, and jail time for fraud -- that are extensive and messy, even by Hollywood standards.

Could this mess happen here in Boston?

Before addressing this question, let's look at who are the winners and losers in the Plymouth Rock Studios collapse.

Winners. Governor Deval Patrick's administration is a big winner in this mess, having turned down a request for $50 million in infrastructure improvements related to the project because the developers had been unable to come up with private financing to back the project:

The state’s decision in June not to grant the studio $50 million for roads and other infrastructure was a particular blow... Patrick administration officials said last week that the state still wants to aid Plymouth Rock - if the studio comes up with long-term funding first.

The state appears to have learned its lesson after the Columbus Place hole-in-the-ground disaster.

And don't forget the other big winner: the Globe's Spotlight Team for hard-hitting reporting that may well get nominated for an award in the next year.

Losers. The big loser appears to be starry-eyed city officials and town meeting in Plymouth, who have green-lighted the project without doing much due diligence into the developers:

When Plymouth’s Town Meeting convened in October 2008 to pass judgment on Plymouth Rock Studios executives’ grand proposal to bring to town what they called “Hollywood East,’’ the results of the vote were a foregone conclusion...

Soon, it was time for Plymouth’s town meeting members to debate tax breaks and re-zoning a golf course for 2 million square feet of sound stages, office space, retail businesses, housing, and a hotel.

Except there was no debate. Members voted to cut off discussion before it started, and hoots and applause filled the hall.

And the chairman of the Plymouth Board of Selectman didn't seem bothered by any of the financial problems of the lead developer:

[Dick] Quintal has known for some time about Kirkpatrick’s bankruptcy and several of the lawsuits against him. And he accepted Kirkpatrick’s explanations.

“I didn’t pay no attention to that,’’ he said. “That’s none of my business.’’

The utter failure of city officials and town meeting members to vet fully the developers and their financing is the lesson that Boston city officials ought to learn.


Could This Happen in Boston?

Boston itself has been beset by three recent messes of financing and oversight: Downtown Crossing, where city officials approved a development plan and allowed a building tear-down despite the project's inadequate financing; North Allston, where city officials approved Harvard University's proposal for a massive science complex, under the apparently false assumption that the university's vast endowment was more than enough to fund the project; and Columbus Center, where the state approved a development, including a promise of public money that was later withdrawn, despite the project's lack of financing.

All three projects are currently holes-in-the-ground with no short-term prospect for construction.

The Downtown Crossing example is the most worrying, since the Globe reported earlier this year that the Boston Redevelopment Authority "cut corners in allowing half a city block to be torn down," "set aside requirements for key disclosures and agreements," and "did not perform an examination of the developer's financing plans, which are not required under city rules."


Prediction: Flaherty to be Wifi-ed on Performance Bonds

In the mayoral campaign this year, candidate Michael Flaherty pushed the idea of requiring performance bonds for major development projects to ensure that they have adequate financing and complete the proposed work. At least one city official scoffed at the idea, calling it "a bit of political rhetoric."

As a result of the Downtown Crossing approval mess, Mayor Thomas Menino vowed that the city would more closely scrutinize project financing in the future.

I have a prediction on this one: Flaherty will get wifi-ed on the performance bond idea. I suspect that there are city officials, behind the scenes, who are more in favor of the idea than those who have spoken on-the-record. As a result, Mayor Menino will, within six months, take up the idea as his own and push for the BRA to implement it.

Expect Boston College's first proposed project in their institutional master plan -- likely a dormitory on the current site of More Hall -- to be an early test of what I predict will be a new city policy.


Update (11/16/09): I thought about drawing a parallel with the Wampanoag tribe's proposed Middleborough casino, but wasn't up to speed on the exact details of that ongoing scandal. Dan Kennedy, an avowed opponent of the plan, tweets, "Change "Plymouth" to "Middleborough" and "studio" to "casino," and you've got pretty much the same story."


Image of proposed Plymouth Rock Studios development project from the developer's website.

Short-Term Commercial Leases Please Residents -- In the Fenway

While residents of North Allston-Brighton have been complaining for years about swaths of commercial property -- bought by Harvard University over the past two decades -- being left vacant while Harvard considers its long-term plans, the Boston Metro reports that residents of the Fenway neighborhood appear to be benefiting from short-term business leases during the current economic downturn:

"While we have significant long-term plans to build and make it a lively street, this is also not the right time to be creating new buildings," said Diana Pisciotta, spokeswoman for Samuels and Associates, which has already built up much of the [Boylston Street] block but is now securing short-term leases with retailers.

"We thought it was really important to bring in neighborhood-friendly uses to storefronts that might otherwise be empty"...

“We’re very happy that the developers have tried to make the streets active and not let the place look blighted and rundown,” said Bill Richardson, president of the Fenway Civic Association.

Earlier this summer, Mayor Thomas Menino guided a tour bus loaded with retailers and real estate brokers through the Fenway and Newbury Street, pointing out many empty storefronts ripe for new businesses. Last year, the tour went through Dudley Square, the South Boston waterfront, and Downtown Crossing.

Mayor Menino even offered business owners an incentive to open a business on Newbury Street: a free month of advertising on a city-owned space downtown.

As Harry Mattison remarked in July: "Next year please drive the bus down Western Ave" in North Allston-Brighton.


Image of vacant, former VW dealership in North Allston from the blog This Is Harvard used with permission; all rights reserved.

Ciommo Over Selvig 64-35% in District 9 City Councilor Race

With 26 of 27 precincts reporting, incumbent Mark Ciommo has defeated challenger Alex Selvig for District 9 City Councilor by a margin of 64-35%.

With 95% of precincts reporting city-wide, incumbent Thomas Menino has defeated challenger Michael Flaherty for mayor by a margin of 57-43%.

Incumbents John Connolly and Stephen Murphy, along with challengers Felix G. Arroyo and Ayanna Pressley, have taken the four City Councilor-At-Large seats.

My predictions were surprisingly on-the-mark, getting each candidates' percent of the vote to within 1-2 percentage points -- although Pressley took 4th place stronger over Tito Jackson and Andrew Kenneally than I had predicted.


Who Did Worst Against "None-of-the-Above"?

For those candidates running unopposed, it is instructive to see how many people didn't cast a ballot in their race or voted for a write-in -- together representing the "none-of-the-above" vote. This is one way of gauging which district councilor is least liked in his or her district, or who might be the most vulnerable two years from now:

• District 2: Bill Linehan 60.4%, None-of-the-Above 39.6%
• District 3: Maureen Feeney 66.9%, None-of-the-Above 33.1%
• District 4: Charles Yancey 64.1%, None-of-the-Above 35.9%
• District 5: Rob Consalvo 64.0%, None-of-the-Above 36.0%
• District 6: John Tobin, Jr. 67.6%, None-of-the-Above 32.4%

District 2 Councilor Bill Linehan won over None-of-the-Above with the lowest margin. Ouch.

Youkin' It Up at the Edison K-8 School

Red Sox all-star Kevin Youkilis was in Brighton Monday with Mayor Thomas Menino delivering a batch of books to the library of the newly-merged Edison K-8 School.

The Edison School was previously a middle school, but opened last September as a K-8 school after merging with the students and faculty of the now-closed Hamilton and Garfield Elementary Schools.

The books Youkilis delivered were collected at Fenway Park on July 11th and 12th as part of his "Batting for Books" program run through his Hits for Kids foundation. The program has already passed its goal of collecting 100,000 books for the libraries of Boston Public Schools.

One kid seems to have scored a book on Michele Obama...


Image courtesy of Christopher Horan, chief communications officer of the Boston Public Schools, who also write the All About BPS blog.

BRA Ought to Drop the Shovel and Stop Digging

One of the basic rules of crisis management and organizational communications is that when you find yourself deep in a hole, the first thing you do is stop digging.

The BRA slipped into that mistake on Monday.

The Boston Redevelopment Authority has been criticized during the last few days over a project manager's emails that were viewed as disparaging towards some Allston-Brighton residents. Mayoral candidate Councilor-At-Large Michael Flaherty, his unofficial running mate Councilor-At-Large Sam Yoon, District 9 City Councilor Mark Ciommo, and Ciommo's challenger Alex Selvig -- as well as Mayor Thomas Menino himself -- all expressed criticism of the BRA's emails on Monday.

The BRA was doing a reasonably good job at crisis management over the issue: the employee was disciplined in response to a Boston Globe reporter's inquiries; the employee offered an apology; criticism from Flaherty was forcefully rebutted by BRA director John Palmieri; etc. Political campaigns are fair game for this kind of back-and-forth; that's what the sport of politics is all about.

All of this followed the crisis management script until BRA spokesperson Susan Elsbree went beyond criticizing mayoral candidate Flaherty's proposals to reform the BRA to point her finger once again at a few Allston-Brighton residents:

Elsbree said [BRA project manager Jay] Rourke has already apologized for his statements and said his comments were not aimed at the Allston-Brighton community as a whole, but rather a product of frustration at “two or three individuals who are trying to stop the relocation of 700 residents” [in the Charlesview redevelopment proposal]. [emphasis added]

Oops.

Who might she be speaking about? I can think of some.

Four Allston-Brighton residents wrote to the BRA on October 13, 2009, stating that they "support a Charlesview relocation proposal incorporating the following revisions and recommendations." And those were some pretty substantial revisions they requested.

They wrote requesting the BRA and developer to: expand the area of land in the development to include the Brookline Machine building; reduce the number of rental units (those that are beyond the low-income units for the current Charlesview tenants); reduce overall the project's density; increase the number of home ownership units; reduce of the height of the eight-story Telford Street building; express a concern about a "lack of open and recreational space" in the project; increase the amount of retail space; and halt further development of Harvard property in North Allston-Brighton until "significant development of the Holton Street Corridor is realized." Pretty broad stuff which will take a while for the BRA and the project's developers to modify and accommodate.

Who are these obstructionist A-B guys who are "trying to stop the relocation of 700 residents"?

State Senator Steven Tolman, State Representative Kevin Honan, State Representative Michael Moran, and Boston District 9 City Councilor Mark Ciommo. (Cambridge State Senator Anthony Galluccio was also a co-signer of the letter to the BRA.)

That hole just got a bit deeper. I think the BRA needs to drop the shovel again and stop digging.


Image of Digging in the Dark by Wessex Archaeology provided through a Creative Commons license.

Whacking the Knees of the Mayoral Debate

For those of us who have been spending many waking hours trying to prepare for a series of city councilor candidates forums -- er, fora -- and debate, lots of those hours are spent figuring out the logistics: what days venues are available; religious holidays to avoid; candidate appearance schedules; food and drink for attendees and setup/cleanup crew; arranging for, and setting up, the sound system; publicity; setting the format; arranging the hall, including tables and/or podiums; convincing someone to take audio and/or video, then getting it online; talking with people and researching questions; etc. And then actually running the event that night.

A lot of work, only a small amount of which is substantive about city and neighborhood issues.

John Carroll watched the debate last night between incumbent Mayor Thomas Menino and challenger Councilor-At-Large Michael Flaherty and has some sharp criticism of the event. Carroll, a professor of mass communications at Boston University, can always be counted on to see through the clutter and posturing to judge how effective the various tools of the media work -- or don't -- to further the political process.

Two thumbs up for Carroll, who invented a new term by saying that he was "dead blogging" the event, i.e., to wait until the event is over to write about it. He brings in analogies to trailer parks ("doublewide podiums"), Halloween ("Spooky World" lighting), arcade games (so many moderators "had sort of a pinball effect on the proceedings"), and Homer's Odyssey (Menino was more incoherent than usual, such that he was "totally channeling James Joyce").

And then the coup de grâce:

Was the most uncomfortable moment of the night when Menino was pressed about the lack of diversity in his administration by an all-white panel of journalists?

Ouch. Clever, biting, sarcastic... but totally fair criticism. I only hope Carroll doesn't watch our district 9 city councilor debate tonight, sponsored by the Brighton Allston Improvement Association.


Image of Menino [left] and Flaherty [right] taken from a screen capture of NECN's video feed of the debate.

A Crackpot Email Archive Design for 21st Century City Halls

How should a city archive its employees' emails in a 21st century information technology environment?

As an astrophysicist, I deal with large datasets which can be updated daily with 10s or 100s of GB every day; the next generation of projects will create TBs of data daily. We need archives in astronomy, and are constantly searching ("querying") them in order to select out data of interest. Some datasets go public immediately; others are always private; while others have a proprietary period (such as the standard NASA 1-year) after which the data become public to anyone. And we store lots of additional parameters in the archives, not just the data themselves, which allow for robust searches for unusual astrophysical objects, date ranges, keywords, etc.

Archiving at city hall shouldn't be much different -- it's just a lower bandwidth problem.


Delete-Delete-Gate

Michael Kineavy, the chief of policy and planning in the administration of Mayor Thomas Menino, daily deleted all of the emails in his inbox and then deleted them again from his trash folder before the automated computer backups would run at midnight every day. The problem with his deletions is that the emails are public records which are illegal to destroy under the state's Public Records Law; Kineavy has taken an indefinite, unpaid leave of absence until the matter is resolved by Secretary of the Commonwealth William Galvin and Attorney General Martha Coakley.

On his Media Nation blog, Dan Kennedy pointed to some archival ideas in an article in the lifestyle and tech magazine Blast. The city has already announced that they are no longer solely relying on nightly backups of individual employee desktop computers in order to save copies of all the email; instead, they have started an archival system where email that is sent or received on the city's servers is instantly saved in a centralized database:

The city implemented a comprehensive program that immediately creates a record of all user messages sent and received no matter what each individual does with them. All journaled messages are kept in the archive for three years.

While I don't know the details of the city's newly deployed archival system, it sounds relatively similar to the Blast article's suggestion.

Lost in this technological solution, however, is how the storage and retrieval system can be designed in a manner that serves the public interest while reducing governmental waste.

The design of the archive is dictated by the "requirements document," i.e., the text of the state's Public Records Law. The whole current system is arcane, to put it mildly. In this 21st century, we could easily require through state law that electronic public records are archived and served to the public in a seamless, cost-effective, and transparent manner.


An Archive Design to Serve Public Documents in Real Time

A few points about the state's Public Records Law, and how it might be addressed in designing a transparent electronic archive:

• Some public records can be withheld from release according to 16 exemptions listed in the PRL. These exemptions range from personnel matters to personal information (home address of a public employee) to pending litigation. Any archival system should include a classification tag as to whether the document is fully public, or if it is exempt (along with the particular classification).
  
• Documents (letters, emails, etc.) become public records the moment they are created or received. The logical time to classify those documents as either public records is when they are first read by a person. The email application (MS Outlook, Thunderbird, Evolution, etc.) could be configured so that a user must always classify the email as public or exempt before allowing him to move to the next email in the inbox; that classification then gets stored in the archive.
  
• Once a document has been made public it is always public. If someone accidentally released a document, then the person must continue to release it. (No Uruguay Round of copyright law where works in the public domain can be reverted back into copyright.) Once a document is released, it can be tagged in the archive as such, freeing it from ever needing another review.
• State law does not require electronic documents to be provided in electronic form. The city has delivered Kineavy's 5,018 emails in paper form, then scanned the paper versions, and finally put the PDF scans on the internet. This is time-consuming, wasteful of paper, and annoying since the PDF documents are no longer electronically searchable -- a 20th century way that government offers the public its middle finger.
  
• The cost of searching and reviewing documents in response to a public records request can be charged to the requester. This is the most frustrating part of the PRL, since some records requests generate estimated costs of thousands -- or hundreds of thousands -- of dollars mostly in the charge to review all those documents one-by-one. If the search could be done using automated tools available to anyone -- inside or outside government -- then many man-hours could be saved; the member of the public now wastes his or her own time using the search tool, while the government employees are left to go get a cup of coffee instead. Or do their other job duties. The search tools are easily designed so that they only release documents that are public, and can generate summary lists of emails that are being withheld because they are exempt.
  

What does this mean in practice?

A government employee: receives an email; clicks on it to read it; when he clicks on the next email a dialog window asks him to classify the previous one first as either public or exempt; and so on. (The same goes for outgoing email: the employee has to classify it before the mail system will send it out to its recipients.) When the email was received by the city hall server it is immediately archived; when the employee classifies it, the classification is immediately entered into the city hall archive. If the email is a public document, then it is served up on the internet immediately.

A member of the public: wants to obtain some public documents; goes to the city's website; runs a search using a set of criteria (date range; email to/from/cc name[s]; keyword search; etc.); inspects the two sets of documents returned by the search engine (the public records resulting from the query and a summary table of the exempt documents); and downloads the documents he wants or starts a new query. No government employee has to waste a single moment of time responding to the public records request. Now that is efficiency in government!

What are the obvious holes in such a 21st century system? It has to be designed with the idiot government employee in mind. I don't mean to imply that all or most government employees are idiots, but that any system has to be designed in a way that the least clever employee can't release everyone's health records onto the internet. I can also imagine that some employees might think twice about sending so many three word emails when they have to classify each one before it is sent.

All the employees will complain at first about how much time it takes for them to read their email and classify each one when they're done -- although it will become quick and easy-to-do in no time. Nearly all the emails are public, not exempt, so it's usually pretty routine. (97.5% of Kineavy's emails that were found were released, with only 2.5% being withheld due to one or more exemptions listed in the PRL.)

And employees who like to make rude comments about members of the public will think twice before doing so in an email. Actually, that's a good thing.


Reality?

I am under no illusion that any politician would be so crazy as to vote yes for a law that would require government electronic records to be served up in real time on government web servers. Remember: the state legislature has already exempted themselves from the state's Public Records Law. But it is a neat thing to think about.

In this Year of Astronomy celebrating the 400th anniversary of Galileo pointing his telescope at the heavens -- and President Barack Obama gazing at Jupiter from the White House lawn -- city hall might strive to reach the heavens by creating a transparent government whose electronic public records are served seamlessly to the citizenry.


Image of a desk inside the National Archives in the 1950s by C. Getts provided by The U.S. National Archives, and image of the National Archives by marttj, both provided through a Creative Commons license.

Councilor Ciommo Running Reconnaissance for Mayor Menino?

In Mayor Thomas Menino's escalating Delete-Delete-Gate controversy, the Boston Globe reported that the city released on Friday a set of 5,018 emails sent by, or received by, Michael Kineavy, chief of policy and planning and one of Menino's top aides. The emails appear to be those found on city backup servers that were saved by other city employees, not Kineavy; the city's forensic contractor has not yet retrieved additional emails from Kineavy's computer hard disk.

In the newly-released emails, Allston-Brighton District 9 City Councilor Mark Ciommo was apparently tipping Mayor Menino off about what two of his competitors in this year's mayoral campaign might be planning to do:

Some city councilors, including Allston-Brighton District Councilor Mark Ciommo, also offered Kineavy a heads-up about separate issues that the mayor’s reelection challengers, [Councilors-At-Large] Michael F. Flaherty and Sam Yoon, were preparing to raise in council hearings.

This is not particularly surprising, since "Ciommo is considered a Menino ally," according to politics reporter David Bernstein of the Boston Phoenix.

Earlier this year, Councilor Ciommo ran interference with Councilor Yoon over a hearing about the Boston Redevelopment Authority's review process of Boston College's Institutional Master Plan, where Ciommo got Yoon to scale back the language of the hearing order in order to "remove politics from the discussion and focus on the BRA process," according to Ciommo. Ciommo's actions minimized the potential fallout from hearings that could have been critical of the BRA -- as well as the mayor's oversight and control of the agency.

Meanwhile, the city's computer forensics contractor has estimated the cost of the email recovery work to possibly reach as high as a quarter of a million dollars. Since the recovery is the direct result of Kineavy's own failure to save his emails as he is required to do under the state's Public Records Law, will he be asked to foot the bill himself?

Winship Elementary Accredited in Early Childhood Education

Two schools in the Boston Public Schools system have recently been accredited in early childhood education by the National Association for the Education of Young Children, including the Winship Elementary School in Brighton.

Winship joins the Baldwin Early Learning Center -- which gained accreditation in 2007 -- as the second public school in Allston-Brighton to receive this distinction. The North Zone, which contains Allston-Brighton, also boasts a third school with the accreditation -- the East Boston Early Education Center.

Said BPS Superintendent Dr. Carol Johnson:

“NAEYC is the gold standard by which all early childhood education programs are judged, and we are pleased to see so many BPS schools undertaking this rigorous process to strengthen and improve teaching and learning for our youngest students."

Mayor Thomas Menino has set a goal to provide universal pre-kindergarten in the Boston Public Schools. The accreditation process evaluates the curriculum, assessment, and environment of the school against national standards.

Via All About BPS.

Cost Per Vote in A-B District 9 Preliminary Election

Incumbent Mark Ciommo yesterday sailed into a first-place win in the preliminary municipal election for Allston-Brighton District 9 City Councilor.

But challenger Alex Selvig outspent him by nearly three-to-one in the cost-per-vote metric. Selvig's expenditure of more than $26 per vote cast for him puts him in the same ballpark as mayoral candidate Michael Flaherty and incumbent Mayor Thomas Menino.

Ciommo took 3,493 votes compared to second-place Selvig's 1,353, third-place Abigail Furey's 784, and fourth-place Benjamin Narodick's 188.

Comparing these vote totals to the money spent by the campaigns as of the last reporting period (through September 4th), the candidates rank differently in the price per vote:

• Selvig: $26.57 per vote
• Ciommo: $9.41 per vote
• Furey: $7.46 per vote
• Narodick: $2.45 per vote

Of course, none of this money was directly handed to voters in exchange for their votes. The big expenditures were primarily mailings, polling, phone banking, consulting and staffing, get-out-the-vote efforts, and so on.

There were some significant expenditures in the last couple of weeks -- i.e., bulk mailings -- that have not yet been accounted for in the campaign finance reports to date, so this estimate of cost-per-vote will be revised upwards next month upon receipt of the new reports.

The A-B District 9 City Councilor expenditures compare to the city-wide costs of $26, $25, $17, and $4 per vote for mayoral candidates Flaherty, Menino, Sam Yoon, and Kevin McCrea, respectively.


Image of "Day 4 - Paying off debt" by quaziefoto provided through a Creative Commons license.

Brighton's Russian Jewish Elderly Vote: Menino, Ciommo, Connolly, Murphy, Arroyo

Russian Jewish elderly voters in Brighton (e.g., at Wallingford Road, Ward 21, Precinct 13) have received their directions as to whom to vote for in the preliminary municipal election:

• Mayor: Thomas Menino, incumbent
• District 9 City Councilor: Mark Ciommo, incumbent
• City Councilor-At-Large: John Connolly, incumbent; Stephen Murphy, incumbent; and Felix Arroyo, Jr. (no fourth vote)

These directions usually originate from the precinct boss, Ukrainian-born Naakh Vysoky, and indicate for whom the many elderly residents of the senior housing should vote. A sample ballot for the precinct -- in Russian and filled out with the names of these candidates filled-in -- was obtained from an elderly voter and is shown here [right].

These voting directions normally move up to 500 votes for the favored candidates in the elderly Russian Jewish community in that heavy-voting precinct.

In the 2007 District 9 race, Greg Glennon carried 21/13 in the preliminary, but Mark Ciommo was able to work the vote hard to win the precinct in the final. This year, it appears that Ciommo has a clear edge to rack up these votes.

Given Mayor Menino's influence in that community, and Councilor Ciommo's experience as former director of the Veronica Smith Senior Center, it is not surprising that they are on the voting directions. Councilors-At-Large Connolly and Murphy are not so surprising, either, given their incumbency status.

But why is Felix Arroy Jr., the son of former Councilor-At-Large Felix Arroyo, also getting their vote? I haven't figure out the answer to that one yet.


UPDATE: A Russian speaker has kindly made the following translation of the Cyrillic at the top of the flyer:

The Russia-speaking community calls on you to take part in the elections
On September 22, elections will be held in our city, and we ask you to show your support for the candidates involved with our community. You may address them if you need any help. Please mark in the bulletin the names printed in bold.

No-Shows at Allston-Brighton Day Parade

The Allston-Brighton Day Parade normally occurs one or two weekends before the fall primaries or preliminary municipal election.

Sure, crowd-wise this parade is nothing compared to the St. Patrick's Day Parade in South Boston. But the timing has, in recent years, made it a popular event for political hopefuls to attend a public event and gain publicity before the A-B voters.

This year was no different -- except for a surprising number of no-shows, particularly among the candidates for councilor-at-large.

Little did they know that we in A-B would be taking attendance -- and broadcasting it on the intertubes.

You know, if Mayor Thomas Menino himself thinks a parade important enough to show up, then it is probably important enough for a councilor-at-large wannabe, too.

[right] Mayor Menino, his wife, and state Representative Michael Moran lead the parade ahead of the Boston College Marching Band.


Mayor's Race

In attendance:

• Thomas Menino, incumbent
• Michael Flaherty
• Sam Yoon

No-show:

• Kevin McCrea

McCrea as a no-show is not too surprising. He's running a gadfly-like insurgency campaign, not following conventional wisdom in his unconventional campaign. His anti-BRA message had the potential to resonate with A-B voters bothered by the issue of institutional expansion, but he doesn't appear to have been spending much time in the district and spent the afternoon at the Allston Village Street Fair and Moran's barbecue.


Allston-Brighton District 9 City Councilor

In attendance:

• Mark Ciommo, incumbent
• Abigail Furey

No-shows:

• Alex Selvig
• Ben Narodick

Narodick's absence is not surprising, since he is running a very-low expense campaign that probably couldn't afford the parade entrance fee given the Rosh Hashanah holiday season.

But Selvig's absence is very surprising because of family commitments (attending a nephew's birthday). Two years ago he ran the 5-K race and then marched in the parade.


Boston City Councilor-At-Large

In attendance (in order of appearance):

• Stephen Murphy, incumbent
• Andrew Kenneally
• Ayanna Pressley
• Doug Bennett (no, he does not look like a auto-dialer-machine)
• Robert Fortes
• update: John Connolly, incumbent

No-shows:

• John Connolly, incumbent
• Ego Ezedi
• Tomas Gonzalez
• Tito Jackson
• Sean Ryan
• Jean-Claude Sanon
• Scotland Willis
• Bill Trabucco
• Hiep Nguyen
• Felix Arroyo, Jr.

Most surprising was Connolly's absence as an incumbent in the race. He has been seen periodically in the last two years at community meetings in A-B, so we know that he's not ignoring the district. He has a politically-savvy team, however, and may have calculated that he would get better exposure elsewhere. On the other hand, could Connolly's no-show have something to do with an imminent bundle-of-joy?

Update: Connolly's team tells me that he was, in fact, in the parade. He had no banner, only a small group, was marching out-of-order (nearer the front), and I obviously missed him. Sorry!

Another surprising move is the absence of Nguyen, since A-B has a substantial Asian-American population -- not just Chinese-American, but a growing number of Vietnamese-Americans, too.

The bottom six candidates in cash-in-hand as of the end of August were all among the ten no-shows in the A-B parade. That can't be a coincidence, suggesting that a parade entrance fee (and the effort/expense of organizing people to attend) was considered by many of them to be a poor use of limited resources. But Felix Arroyo, Jr., is wallowing in cash -- and his father attended the parade back in 2007 -- so his absence is hard to explain.

Delete-Delete-Gate

More questions were raised by a follow-up story in the Boston Globe that described the procedures that Michael Kineavy, chief of policy and planning in the administration of Mayor Thomas Menino, used to delete nearly all his emails over one particular six-month period, in apparent violation of the state's Public Records Law:

[Boston Corporate Counsel Bill] Sinnott said that all e-mails are supposed to be backed up in the city’s computer systems, but a glitch, which he said the city was fixing, allowed users to delete messages and then empty a “deleted items folder,’’ thus circumventing the nightly backup process...

Kineavy told [city officials] that he deletes all his e-mail on a daily basis and does not allow his e-mail to be saved on city backup computers, according to officials.

Note how Kineavy was not just deleting emails in his email application's inbox -- he was also going into the "deleted items folder" (or the "trash folder") to delete those backed-up versions of the emails.

And, on top of that, Kineavy was so systematic that he managed to delete all but 18 emails over that six month period so that they would not appear in the automated, nightly backups made of city hall computers. That deletion record is impressive: Kineavy must have had an incredible attention to detail, because he deleted both his inbox and his trash folder regularly and thoroughly at the end of each day before he left work for home, otherwise one or the other would have appeared in the backups.

I dub this scandal "Delete-Delete-Gate," since the issue is not just Kineavy deleting emails but then deleting them from his trash folder so that they would not be archived in city hall backups.

The Boston Herald is playing second fiddle catch-up on the story, missing how Kineavy also deleted "deleted items folder" content:

In an effort to tidy his inbox, Kineavy was deleting his e-mails every day before he left work, unaware that those e-mails were gone for good, the city insists. Until the Globe’s request, the city archive system didn’t copy records until well after the end of business each day.

Peculiarly, WBUR's Morning Edition today reported that city officials say that the deletion of emails was "unintentional."

Calling delete and then delete again unintentional? That explanation does not pass the sniff test. I smell a stinker here.


Image of "Miscalculation" by .::HIMU:: provided through a Creative Commons license.

Hey Globe, Where Have You Been for the Past 16 Years?

The Boston Globe buried a story on page 20 of their paper that is probably the biggest shot of this election campaign: that several of Mayor Thomas Menino's top officials have been deleting all their emails on a daily basis, thereby likely violating state law by destroying those public records.

A quick look through my own email shows nineteen emails either to or from two specific city officials cited in the Globe article -- and a twentieth email on mayoral candidate Kevin McCrea's blog -- that should have been archived during the past two years, but appear not to have been. On the face of it, those are possibly twenty specific violations of the state Public Records Law that each carry a potential penalty of up to $500 and/or one year in prison.

After reading the story, I am left with a jaw-dropping question: Why did it take the Globe 16 years to figure out that Menino's closest adviser was deleting all his electronic records?

I am dumbstruck that the paper of record in Boston does not appear to have requested such electronic public records from Michael Kineavy or Thomas Tinlin during all this time -- or at least realized what was going on when all their public records requests came for naught.

Hey Globe, where have you been all this time?

The Globe deserves some credit, nonetheless, for doing some serious investigative reporting this year leading up to the mayoral election later this month. It is important for residents to know what their city and elected officials have been doing so that they can make an informed choice to re-elect Menino or choose someone else.

The Globe mentions Michael Kineavy, the city's chief of policy and planning, and Thomas Tinlin, the commissioner of the transportation department, as producing zero emails in a request for all emails from a specific time period -- i.e., no incoming or outgoing emails. The Globe story states that the city has admitted the problem, and the corporation counsel, William Sinnott, is in the process of addressing it.

Public records of all kinds must be maintained for a minimum of two years under the state's Public Records Law. While it might appear at first to be difficult to prove that a person has deleted public records -- because the files are, by the nature of the violation, deleted -- there are independent ways to determine if such public records should exist, because other people are on the list of recipients or senders of those emails.

A quick look through my email indicates:

• Thirteen emails, written by other people, addressed to Tinlin in the time period 7/23/07 - 8/24/08;
• Two emails written by Tinlin on 8/11/08; and
  
• Four emails, written by other people, addressed to Kineavy between 12/14/07 and 5/15/08.
  

That's 19 specific cases of emails that should have been archived as public records under state law, but appear not to have been; McCrea's letter makes it an even 20. I'm sure that other people around the city can produce their own lists of emails, sent to or received from these two city officials, that ought to be archived by the city as public records. An easy way the Globe could find more such emails would be to submit a public records request, say, to the Boston Redevelopment Authority for all emails written by or received by BRA employees that include Kineavy and/or Tinlin in the To/cc/From header fields.

Left unanswered in the Globe story was the motivation of both Tinlin and Kineavy in systematically deleting these email public records. Were they trying to hide the trail behind controversial (or worse) actions on their part? Until we hear more from them directly to explain their actions, this story will not likely go away.

There is no question that city employees should be saving their emails. An easy way? Move them into folders when you are done reading them in your inbox. That's what most other people do.

As for the Globe? When you finally get a scoop like this, why do you bury it on page 20 of the Sunday paper?


Update: Boston City Councilor-At-Large and mayoral challenger Michael Flaherty has announced that on Monday he will request state Attorney General Martha Coakley and Suffolk County District Attorney Daniel Conley to investigate the allegedly improper or illegal deletion of electronic public records by officials in the Menino administration.

Update 2: Flaherty will be joined by both of the other mayoral challengers, Kevin McCrea and Councilor-At-Large Sam Yoon, in calling for the investigation during a Monday morning press conference.


Image of a paper shredder by Shane Vigil provided through a Creative Commons license.

Two Brighton Residents Sue City Over Boston College Expansion

Two Brighton residents, Patrick Galvin and Mark Alford, have jointly sued the City of Boston over its approval of Boston College's expansion plans into the former St. John's Seminary land purchased by BC in 2004-7 from the Archdiocese of Boston.

The suit was filed in Superior Court Thursday afternoon. It names three defendants, all official governmental bodies of the City of Boston: the Boston Redevelopment Authority, whose Board approved BC's Institutional Master Plan in January 2009; the Zoning Commission, which approved the IMP in May 2009; and the BC Task Force, an official advisory body to the BRA Board (and appointed by Mayor Thomas Menino), who wrote a letter to the BRA Board generally supporting most of the elements in BC's IMP.

Mayor Menino was not named as a defendant in the suit, which is a bit surprising (to this non-lawyer) given that he also had to approve BC's IMP. He objected to several details of the IMP as initially approved by the Zoning Commission; the ZC later approved modifications, and then Mayor Menino formally signed off in June 2009.

The plaintiffs own property on Lake Street abutting the former St. John's Seminary land BC refers to as their "Brighton Campus." BC's approved IMP calls for construction on that land of athletics facilities (baseball stadium, softball stadium, support building, tennis courts), an auditorium, museum and new building for their fine arts department, and a parking garage. A related Article 80 large project at 188-196 Foster Street (also part of the land bought from the Archdiocese of Boston) to build housing for BC's School of Theology and Ministry was submitted by the Jesuit society and approved in November 2008 by the BRA Board, although it was initially included in BC's IMP. The Zoning Commission changed the zoning at the property as part of its June 2009 IMP approval process.

No monetary figure for damages is specified in the suit.


Image of the scales of justice in Haarlem, The Netherlands by lant_70 provided through a Creative Commons license.


UPDATE: The Boston Globe now has a story on it.

Former Allston-Brighton State Rep Goes to the BRA

Former State Representative Brian Golden will be named by Mayor Thomas Menino as the Executive Officer of the Boston Redevelopment Authority, according to today's Boston Globe.

Golden is no stranger to Allston-Brighton, having represented one of the district's two seats (18th Suffolk) for 1999-2005.

While a was registered a Democrat, Golden raised a lot of eyebrows by not only endorsing (and actively campaigning for) George W. Bush for president in 2000 and 2004, but also heading to Florida in 2000 to assist Bush's legal team in the recount process. The conservative National Review asked Golden in a 2004 interview why he is still a Democrat and not a Republican. Some people in the community have called Golden by the derogatory term DINO (Democrat In Name Only; online examples here and here), and MassScorecard gave him a "D" grade in 2003-4 for adherence to Democratic positions on the issues.

Golden's positions opposing abortion rights and gay marriage, supporting school vouchers, opposing the Massachusetts clean elections law, and supporting Bush's election, put him at odds with a neighborhood that is trending progressive. Golden's protege, Gregory Glennon, openly stated some similar political views in his 2005 bid to fill Golden's vacated seat, but by 2007 had become completely mum on these issues in his 2007 bid for District 9 City Councilor. Allston-Brighton's Wards 21 and 22 went 78%-20% for Obama-Biden over McCain-Palin in 2008, by the way.

The oddest aspect of Golden being named to the BRA position is that a number of Ward 22 neighborhood activists opposed to Boston College's institutional expansion proposals were actively supporting Golden's protege and former staffer Gregory Glennon in his failed 2007 bid for District 9 City Councilor. Since those activists supported the protege -- presumably at least in part for his positions on institutional expansion -- I wonder if they also support having the mentor in a lead role at the BRA? Somehow, I doubt it. Politics makes strange bedfellows, but affairs ain't the same as marriage.

Where will Golden, now a resident of Newton, come down on the issue of institutional expansion now that he is one of the leaders of the BRA, an agency tasked both regulating and promoting development? I haven't found much in the public record on this issue, particularly since he stepped down as state representative when these issues were really gearing up in Allston-Brighton. We'll see.

Is 'Clark Rockefeller' Trying to Get His Trial Moved?

Media coverage of Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter, aka 'Clark Rockefeller', is likely to ramp up leading to his May 11th trial date on kidnapping charges.

If the trial doesn't get moved somewhere else, that is.

I got a phone survey call Wednesday night related to the case, media coverage of it, and the public's awareness of its details.

While these phone survey companies are bound not to disclose who hired them (according to the caller ID, this one was done by a company in Oregon, 503-977-6714), there is little question in my mind that it was contracted by Gerhartsreiter's defense team -- and that they are hoping the survey provides data that could justify moving the trial elsewhere.

Questions in the survey probe public opinion about (not exact wording of the questions):

• What words first come to mind when you hear the name 'Clark Rockefeller'?
  
• Do you think the insanity defense is a legitimate defense in a criminal case? Do you know that 'Rockefeller' will be asserting this in his defense?
• Do you have an opinion already of whether or not he committed the crime [of kidnapping his 7-year-old daughter]?
• Is there too much media coverage of him, too little, or the right amount? What is your primary news source (local paper, TV, etc.)?
• Are you aware of other allegations against him elsewhere in the U.S.?
  

The answers to these questions would all be germane to the issue of whether or not Gerhartsreiter would likely get a fair trial here in Suffolk County. That is why I suspect the opinion poll to be one paid for by his defense team in advance of asking to have the trial moved to another jurisdiction.

Note that some of the questions were posed poorly, particularly in relation to each other. The question of whether or not there is too much media coverage of him came before the question of your primary news source, but did not specify if you thought your primary news source was covering him in an appropriate amount. You can simultaneously think that there is too much coverage -- for example, by tabloid journalism sources that you don't read -- while still believing that your primary news source (local newspaper) has covered it appropriately.

The survey only used the name 'Clark Rockefeller' throughout the interview. The guy administering the survey appeared not to have ever heard the name Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter when I mentioned it -- he needed repeated help spelling it. That is an indication that few of the survey respondents knew his original (German) name -- instead only knowing his 'Clark Rockefeller' alias that he used here in the U.S. -- which undercuts any potential defense argument that there has been too much media coverage.

By coincidence, the Boston Globe ran a front-page-story-above-the-fold in today's edition about a grand jury investigating the death of two San Marino residents that may be linked to Gerhartsreiter. Universal Hub hasn't had a story on him since December 3, 2008. But neither sounds like saturated media coverage to me.

For those with longer memories, the media circus descended upon Brighton last year when he was flown in -- following extradition from Maryland -- and arraigned at Brighton District Court. I saw the craziness outside the Allston-Brighton D-14 station last year on my way to Mayor Thomas Menino's bicycle lane press conference.