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Hello, and welcome! First, a brief guide.
This blog is intended to serve as a substitute for a campaign website. My hope is that it will be more interactive than a traditional website, while being at least as informative. This entry summarizes a number of the issues facing Holyoke that prompted me to run for office, and that I think are important.*
These are the short versions, because not everyone wants to read a long analytical entry about sewers. But I'm linking entries that address these issues in greater depth, for those who want to know more about those topics -- and about how I think about these issues.
Finally, one of the great strengths of Dreamwidth is the way it handles comments. It allows long, threaded discussions, and if you know me from Facebook you know I love discussions in comments. Please feel free to comment; ask me anything. You can register for a Dreamwidth account for free, and that will let you comment with your name attached. If you'd rather not, I'm allowing anonymous non-logged-in comments here at least for now, but please sign your comments if you do that so we can all know who we're talking to.
With that said, some issues:
1. Municipal broadband.
We have the core of a municipal fiber optic broadband system already in place in Holyoke. It is long past time we built it out as fiber to the home. We have the expertise to figure out a way to do it, and it's become necessary infrastructure for a first-world city. Furthermore, our surrounding communities, which are our competitors as well as our friends, are all getting this done; we can't afford to be left behind.
2. Protect our charter, and majority rule.
For many years, the conservative faction on the Council has raised and protected barriers to allowing legislation to be passed by majority vote. As of four years ago it was just a Council Rule, and could be worked around. They've since succeeded in having it written into our code of ordinances, and are now seeking to have it written into our Charter without allowing the public to vote on it. Basically, this is the municipal equivalent of a constitutional amendment -- it sounds trivial but has tremendous impact.
At this moment, it's threatening our ability to get our finances in order, creating a genuine risk of Holyoke going into state receivership even though we've got enough money that it shouldn't be an issue. We need nine non-conservative-bloc votes on the Council to fix this.
3. Streamline communications in OPED, the Office of Planning and Economic Development, and reform the chain of command within the city, to make it easier for businesses and people interested in coming to Holyoke to do it. Right now the City Council doesn't really understand the work that all the relevant agencies and boards -- the Planning Board, the Office of Economic Development, HEDIC (the Holyoke Economic Development and Industrial Commission), the Redevelopment Authority, the Conservation Commission -- actually do, and these agencies themselves have very limited awareness of what each of the others is doing.
This puts a burden on people and businesses interested in coming to Holyoke, or in some cases already established here. It's hard on the agencies. It's hard on our political leaders, who need good, accurate information. And it's fixable.
As part of this effort, work to make sure that the City Council, which plays a central role in issuing permits for many businesses and residential amenities, understands how the relevant permits work and is able to write them as the law contemplates.
4. Support city staff in all departments, and give them what they need to do the jobs we need them to do. The city cannot afford to keep losing, or to remain unable to recruit, the dedicated, qualified employees we need to keep the city functioning.
5. Revise our zoning ordinance as necessary to support housing development, from market-rate and missing-middle through affordable housing, including opportunities for lower-income families to begin to build wealth through homeownership. Holyoke’s downtown and old industrial heart could be redeveloped as a vibrant, thriving urban community, as it once was.
This is not an impossible dream. I've had the chance to discuss this with the Realtor Association of Pioneer Valley, whose endorsement I'm extremely proud to have, and they're excited about Holyoke's potential and the moves we're already making as a city. They're experts with an interest in our success, and they see ways to succeed without displacing our people.
6. Save Elmwood Forest -- and support preservation and growth of green space throughout the city.
There are better places in the city for a giant sports complex, and that land isn't even
zoned for indoor commercial recreation. And while we’re at it, let's fix the communication issues that turned Elmwood Forest into a crisis, so we don’t keep facing avoidable conflicts between neighborhoods and projects that the city wants.
7. Fix our infrastructure where it needs fixing. We need to stop discharging sewage into the Connecticut River. Yes, this is going to cost money, but it has to be done, and we gain nothing by letting our systems fail because we can't raise our sewer rate to fund necessary maintenance.
We need to start accepting roadway upgrades when the state offers them, and not reject them because we wish the state would give us that money for something else instead. We need to get systems in place that will fix our roadways so that they stay fixed for more than a season. Again, this will cost money, but it will only be more expensive if wait.
8. Support public safety, the old-fashioned kind. Strengthen all our neighborhoods, so that we can have a city where kids can play everywhere, without parents being afraid for their safety — and so that they can ride their bikes without worrying that they’ll be stolen.
To get this done we need to work with the communities most affected, and with our public safety officers. It's a hard, complicated set of problems and it's not going to happen overnight. But we have to try, and if we listen to each other we stand a chance at success.
9. Do what we can to protect our community against federal government overreach. There's too much to say about this even for a bullet point: the lawlessness and menace so much of the country is facing from the Executive Branch and its enablers in the other branches is the crisis of our time. It affects our physical safety and our public finances and our liberties as Americans. We must do what we can to protect each other, and our city, and it will be an evolving task: I don't have a magic bullet for it, and neither does anyone else.
But saying no to the resolution introduced by Councilors Jourdain and Vacon, unnecessarily declaring Holyoke Not A Sanctuary City (unnecessary because it isn't one, has never been one, and no one is suggesting it should become one), and dangerously risking drawing the very federal attention we're trying to avoid, is a good step for now.
10: A stretch goal, because the MA state legislature is probably too dysfunctional to work with. But we could try to work with state authorities to do something about the financial vicious cycle for gateway cities fueled by the Dover Amendment.(You know the Dover Amendment: it's the state rule that says we can't use our zoning ordinance to stop certain tax-exempt projects from being sited anywhere in the city. The problem with it is that it shrinks our tax base while adding to our need to provide services.)
This kind of reform need not burden Holyoke’s ability to help people who need it; this is not clever code for Not In Our Back Yard. I do want the state to gross us up for losses to tax revenue when it requires already-overburdened communities to take taxable property off the tax rolls; it seems only fair, as well as practical. Nobody thinks this will be an easy sell in Boston, but it’s in the state’s interest as well as ours to help Holyoke and the gateway cities pay for the disproportionate impact of these policies.
*Not all of them, because there are too many: if I tried, I wouldn't be finished by election day.
This blog is intended to serve as a substitute for a campaign website. My hope is that it will be more interactive than a traditional website, while being at least as informative. This entry summarizes a number of the issues facing Holyoke that prompted me to run for office, and that I think are important.*
These are the short versions, because not everyone wants to read a long analytical entry about sewers. But I'm linking entries that address these issues in greater depth, for those who want to know more about those topics -- and about how I think about these issues.
Finally, one of the great strengths of Dreamwidth is the way it handles comments. It allows long, threaded discussions, and if you know me from Facebook you know I love discussions in comments. Please feel free to comment; ask me anything. You can register for a Dreamwidth account for free, and that will let you comment with your name attached. If you'd rather not, I'm allowing anonymous non-logged-in comments here at least for now, but please sign your comments if you do that so we can all know who we're talking to.
With that said, some issues:
1. Municipal broadband.
We have the core of a municipal fiber optic broadband system already in place in Holyoke. It is long past time we built it out as fiber to the home. We have the expertise to figure out a way to do it, and it's become necessary infrastructure for a first-world city. Furthermore, our surrounding communities, which are our competitors as well as our friends, are all getting this done; we can't afford to be left behind.
2. Protect our charter, and majority rule.
For many years, the conservative faction on the Council has raised and protected barriers to allowing legislation to be passed by majority vote. As of four years ago it was just a Council Rule, and could be worked around. They've since succeeded in having it written into our code of ordinances, and are now seeking to have it written into our Charter without allowing the public to vote on it. Basically, this is the municipal equivalent of a constitutional amendment -- it sounds trivial but has tremendous impact.
At this moment, it's threatening our ability to get our finances in order, creating a genuine risk of Holyoke going into state receivership even though we've got enough money that it shouldn't be an issue. We need nine non-conservative-bloc votes on the Council to fix this.
3. Streamline communications in OPED, the Office of Planning and Economic Development, and reform the chain of command within the city, to make it easier for businesses and people interested in coming to Holyoke to do it. Right now the City Council doesn't really understand the work that all the relevant agencies and boards -- the Planning Board, the Office of Economic Development, HEDIC (the Holyoke Economic Development and Industrial Commission), the Redevelopment Authority, the Conservation Commission -- actually do, and these agencies themselves have very limited awareness of what each of the others is doing.
This puts a burden on people and businesses interested in coming to Holyoke, or in some cases already established here. It's hard on the agencies. It's hard on our political leaders, who need good, accurate information. And it's fixable.
As part of this effort, work to make sure that the City Council, which plays a central role in issuing permits for many businesses and residential amenities, understands how the relevant permits work and is able to write them as the law contemplates.
4. Support city staff in all departments, and give them what they need to do the jobs we need them to do. The city cannot afford to keep losing, or to remain unable to recruit, the dedicated, qualified employees we need to keep the city functioning.
5. Revise our zoning ordinance as necessary to support housing development, from market-rate and missing-middle through affordable housing, including opportunities for lower-income families to begin to build wealth through homeownership. Holyoke’s downtown and old industrial heart could be redeveloped as a vibrant, thriving urban community, as it once was.
This is not an impossible dream. I've had the chance to discuss this with the Realtor Association of Pioneer Valley, whose endorsement I'm extremely proud to have, and they're excited about Holyoke's potential and the moves we're already making as a city. They're experts with an interest in our success, and they see ways to succeed without displacing our people.
6. Save Elmwood Forest -- and support preservation and growth of green space throughout the city.
There are better places in the city for a giant sports complex, and that land isn't even
zoned for indoor commercial recreation. And while we’re at it, let's fix the communication issues that turned Elmwood Forest into a crisis, so we don’t keep facing avoidable conflicts between neighborhoods and projects that the city wants.
7. Fix our infrastructure where it needs fixing. We need to stop discharging sewage into the Connecticut River. Yes, this is going to cost money, but it has to be done, and we gain nothing by letting our systems fail because we can't raise our sewer rate to fund necessary maintenance.
We need to start accepting roadway upgrades when the state offers them, and not reject them because we wish the state would give us that money for something else instead. We need to get systems in place that will fix our roadways so that they stay fixed for more than a season. Again, this will cost money, but it will only be more expensive if wait.
8. Support public safety, the old-fashioned kind. Strengthen all our neighborhoods, so that we can have a city where kids can play everywhere, without parents being afraid for their safety — and so that they can ride their bikes without worrying that they’ll be stolen.
To get this done we need to work with the communities most affected, and with our public safety officers. It's a hard, complicated set of problems and it's not going to happen overnight. But we have to try, and if we listen to each other we stand a chance at success.
9. Do what we can to protect our community against federal government overreach. There's too much to say about this even for a bullet point: the lawlessness and menace so much of the country is facing from the Executive Branch and its enablers in the other branches is the crisis of our time. It affects our physical safety and our public finances and our liberties as Americans. We must do what we can to protect each other, and our city, and it will be an evolving task: I don't have a magic bullet for it, and neither does anyone else.
But saying no to the resolution introduced by Councilors Jourdain and Vacon, unnecessarily declaring Holyoke Not A Sanctuary City (unnecessary because it isn't one, has never been one, and no one is suggesting it should become one), and dangerously risking drawing the very federal attention we're trying to avoid, is a good step for now.
10: A stretch goal, because the MA state legislature is probably too dysfunctional to work with. But we could try to work with state authorities to do something about the financial vicious cycle for gateway cities fueled by the Dover Amendment.(You know the Dover Amendment: it's the state rule that says we can't use our zoning ordinance to stop certain tax-exempt projects from being sited anywhere in the city. The problem with it is that it shrinks our tax base while adding to our need to provide services.)
This kind of reform need not burden Holyoke’s ability to help people who need it; this is not clever code for Not In Our Back Yard. I do want the state to gross us up for losses to tax revenue when it requires already-overburdened communities to take taxable property off the tax rolls; it seems only fair, as well as practical. Nobody thinks this will be an easy sell in Boston, but it’s in the state’s interest as well as ours to help Holyoke and the gateway cities pay for the disproportionate impact of these policies.
*Not all of them, because there are too many: if I tried, I wouldn't be finished by election day.