When hundreds of Newton families were displaced by the Mass Pike

October 9, 2021March 27, 2022 Boston Legal, Newton

I’ve been reading a fantastic book on the history of the Massachusetts Turnpike: Building the Mass Pike by Yanni K. Tsipis. Growing up in Newton, this road has been a part of my life since an early age. It was the main road into Boston and west to New York. Walking to and from Newton North High School I would cross over the Lowell Ave. bridge. One summer, I even worked in the Star Market suspended over the Turnpike.

But Tsipis notes the dark side of the Turnpike’s history: From Auburndale to Newton Corner, hundreds of families and small businesses were uprooted by construction, many of whom were bullied by staff and contractors on the way out:

Families whose properties stood in the way of the new highway received only 30 days’ notice to vacate before the Turnpike Authority took title. The extension’s construction displaced some 550 families in Newton. … One irate neighbor cited their ‘terror, nastiness, and insults.’

Nowadays, this type of abuse is not possible when it comes to new construction. That said, one thing has remained pretty much the same: developers always seem to get what they want, no matter what residents say. And once again, it is residents in the north side of the city who feel the brunt of the plans of rich developers like Robert Korff (Mark Development) and their allies in Newton City Hall and the City Council, especially the southside wards (5, 6 and 7).

Why does someone in Newton’s Public Buildings Division want to be my Facebook friend? (updated)

September 30, 2021June 12, 2022 Boston development, Newton

In the middle of the summer, a strange thing happened. Someone in Newton’s Public Buildings Division sent me a Facebook friend request.

I get friend requests from time to time from people I don’t know, but this was suspicious, as the same person had recently started relentlessly spamming practically every community Facebook group across the city, including Auburndale Village, Newton Community, and the Newton Civic Action forum. The posts were trumpeting public announcements from the Mayor’s Office about various public works projects, such as this one:

This post was immediately shared or cross-posted on other Facebook groups, including People who grew up in West Newton and Newton Parents.

Looking at the Newton Community Facebook group, the posts by the same Public Buildings Division employee commenced on July 22 (Gath Pool). It was followed by similar posts relating to these projects:

July 23 – Newton Free Library’s Children’s Room Expansion
July 26 – Lincoln Eliot
July 27 – Franklin School
July 29 – Newton Center for Active Living Project Community
July 30 – Newton Early Childhood project
August 2 – Horace Mann
August 4 – Athletic fields city wide
August 11 – Gath Pool
August 12 – Carbon Neutrality
August 19 – NewCAL
Sep 1 – Newton Early Childhood project
Sep 3 – Newton Early Childhood project
Sep 10 – Lincoln Eliot
Sep 15 – Oak Hill
Sep 16 – Gath Pool

Many of these were cross-posted in other more local Newton Facebook groups, along with other positive announcements. I don’t know if they also appeared on Nextdoor or other local forums (comments welcome below, if you know the answer).

In addition to the municipal employee, one other city official has also been very active on electronic media, too. I have subscribed to Mayor Ruthanne Fuller’s weekly newsletter for years, but a funny thing happened around the same time the Public Buildings employee began touting all of the great news from the Mayor’s Office. On July 21, the day before the Public Buildings Division employee started excitedly posting on Newton’s Facebook groups, the mayor sent five newsletters in less than five hours:

Newton mayor newsletter

It’s no coincidence that Fuller and one of her employees started sending out so many messages at the same time.

The first one – “Welcome to the Interactive Newton Network” gives a clue as to what’s going on (emphasis mine):

We know people are hungry for information about what is going on in our neighborhoods, villages and across our City. We in City government are also eager to hear from all of you. City projects are always better when we listen carefully to the people who live and work in Newton and shape the projects accordingly.

To that end, welcome to the INN, an interactive map that allows you to focus in on your neighborhood or any place of interest across the City and see what improvements and investments are in the works.

The mayor, a Chestnut Hill resident, has been hammered for years by complaints that she doesn’t listen, particularly from residents of northside wards disproportionately affected by development plans, including Newton Corner, the Lake, Newtonville, West Newton, and Auburndale. For instance, she was put on the defensive on this point in the past, as the Newton Tab reported in 2019:

“We are listening,” Newton Mayor Ruthanne Fuller said in response to questions about whether the community’s feedback will be taken seriously. “We all care desperately about Newton. We care about this site. I, too, want the right size here,” referring to the green “RightSize Riverside” stickers distributed by the Lower Falls Improvement Association’s Riverside Committee.

I’ve also criticized the mayor on this blog for putting on a charade of listening and then doing pretty much what she, her consultants, and luxury housing developers seek to have built:

Another side of this trend is the tactics used by some of our own elected officials and the city planning department to steamroll opposition and discussion. A few years back, it was holding neighborhood feedback sessions (“Hello Washington Street“) in which the mayor, planning department officials, and highly paid consultants made a big show of listening to local residents in West Newton and Newtonville about the plans. After the sessions were over, they promptly turned around proceeded to ram through the high-density plan that they and big developers wanted all along.

Then there’s the issue of the Fuller administration not even bothering with “stakeholder input,” as local businesses in West Newton and Newtonville discovered last fall when hundreds of parking spaces along Washington Street suddenly disappeared to make way for bike lanes. Even the Newton-Needham Chamber of Commerce, which has loved having the mayor on its side when it comes to high-density luxury development in Newton, was surprised:

Greg Reibman president of the Newton-Needham Chamber of Commerce said he thought the city made a mistake by not communicating the decision in advance or giving stakeholders a chance to weigh in.

But the Fuller administration claimed that it didn’t need to “go through the stakeholder process” because the project was temporary. It was forced to backpedal owing to the outcry.

Why now?

Keep in mind that the flood of social media posts this summer from the Public Buildings Division employee haven’t just been about listening, they’ve also been shouting to the rafters the accomplishments of the Fuller administration:

“In less than 18 months we completed the design and construction of the fossil-fuel-free addition to the Oak Hill Middle School”

“We’re hard at work with our design team, friends from Newton Public Schools, City Council, and parent community to deliver a wonderful project for the Lincoln-Eliot School.”

“It was a beautiful morning as we set the new temporary pedestrian and bicycle bridge at Albemarle in place.”

Regardless of the posts’ contents, the longstanding concerns about Fuller’s listening habits kind of makes one wonder why INN, the coordinated social media press releases, and Facebook friend requests didn’t get going years ago. Why did the communications frenzy start in July?

Maybe it has something to do with this announcement on June 16 that Fuller has a serious contender (former Auburndale city councilor Amy Mah Sangiolo) in the Newton mayoral race this November?

I read through the Massachusetts State Ethics Commission Advisory 11-1: Public Employee Political Activity and did not see how a flood of positive social media posts about city business by a Newton municipal employee reporting to the mayor running for reelection would constitute an ethics violation.

But it still doesn’t feel right.

Update: The election is over, Fuller won, and as if by magic the Facebook spam from this Newton employee have largely disappeared.

Harvard Extension School success stories from the past year

July 1, 2021June 30, 2021 Harvard Extension School education, Harvard, Harvard Extension School

A question that comes up a lot about Harvard Extension School degrees is whether they can lead to better opportunities in academia and working life. They absolutely can, and frequently do. Harvard Extension School graduates have gone onto get advanced degrees at Harvard and elsewhere (even Yale!), and have taken high-profile jobs in government, science, and the non-profit world. The Harvard Extension School website and Harvard Gazette sometimes feature wonderful success stories, but in the course of writing about the Extension School a number of people have shared their own experiences in the comments on this blog. Here are a few from the last year:

Leonard, February 2020:

My ALM degree in government proved extremely useful in getting an entry-level position as a CIA analyst. Several hiring officers commented positively on my thesis on Yugoslav politics. I initially served as an East European analyst and later spent a decade following Middle East politics. The Agency loaned me to the Dept. of State on several occasions and I served in Cyprus, Israel and Lebanon. I retired from the CIA after 25 years.

Myles, July 2020:

I graduated with my ALM in 2017 with a concentration in History. I had the opportunity to work with a highly respected emeritus historian from the Divinity School, who supervised my thesis. I am active duty Air Force, and my HES master’s degree enabled me to get hired on to teach at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado. I’ve been on the faculty at USAFA for the past two years. The Air Force selected to me pursue my PhD in History, and I’ll be started at Oxford University in October.

Roger, June 2020:

My son completed the [post-bacc] program in 2011 with a near 4.0 GPA. He worked his butt off to maintain those grades! His undergrad was in Computer Science and, following a lay-off during the Great Recession when his job was off-shored to a low wage country, he enrolled in Harvard’s program as a career re-direction. He subsequently received a full-ride scholarship to attend Med School and is now a third year Pathology Resident.

These are not exceptions. A cursory search through the Harvard alumni directory shows many people who received advanced degrees from other Harvard schools after finishing their Extension School ALB or ALM degrees. The Extension School bulletin used to publish about a dozen such names every year, often from the Graduate School of Arts & Sciences or the Harvard Graduate School of Education, but also from the Harvard Law School and the Harvard School of Public Health.

Publishing on Amazon KDP: Use a free ISBN, or pay Bowker?

June 16, 2021July 14, 2022 e-books Advice, Amazon, Books, Business

Someone asked: “I’m about to publish on Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing … should I just use the free ISBN, or pay for one?” It’s a good question, and one that has real financial considerations, as ISBNs registered with the “official” U.S. ISBN registry are very expensive (see “Bowker ripoff: A 12,500% ISBN markup for new authors“). On the other hand, using Amazon’s free ISBNs come with a cost, too. Here’s my take on how to navigate this question.

First, KDP ebooks (Kindle editions) don’t require ISBNs. Amazon will assign its own numbering system known as an ASIN to the ebook.

But if you are using KDP to print paperback books, you will need an ISBN. As a publisher with long experience dealing with Amazon and Bowker (the U.S. ISBN registration agency) I would say use the free one Amazon provides only if you anticipate this being a one-off book with low sales. This is what happens to almost all self-published titles, no matter how good the book is. Amazon is swamped with self-published books, and most of them will languish in obscurity without superior marketing or promotional efforts.

If, on the other hand, you are a U.S. resident and have serious plans for bookstore distribution, a series, or an imprint, bite the bullet and pay Bowker’s outrageous registration fees for ISBNs. The current price for a single ISBN is $125, rising to $295 for 10 and $575 for 100. As a publisher with multiple titles, it makes sense to purchase 10 or 100 to start.

bowker isbn ripoff pricing

For people or companies with serious publishing aspirations, the Amazon KDP-provided ISBNs will be a liability. Why? Amazon is a dirty word in this business (see “Why Amazon’s Buy Box policy attracts counterfeit books and cheaters“). Bookstores have been decimated by Amazon for 25 years. Many will never order titles from Amazon on principle, even if it is from a famous author on an Amazon imprint. I once listened to Tim Ferriss lament this issue on his podcast – he discovered when he published one of his books on an Amazon imprint that bookstores wouldn’t touch it, for the most part.

As for series and imprints, any serious publishing venture should have free and clear control over their own ISBNs. Amazon-assigned ISBNs will forever be associated with Amazon in databases and may interfere with future legal agreements, including distribution via wholesalers (see “Pros and cons of traditional book distributors“). If series/imprints are part of the publishing plan, it is advisable to register ISBNs via Bowker, despite the rip-off pricing.

The number of Harvard Extension degrees triple in 13 years. Why?

June 5, 2021March 27, 2022 Harvard Extension School education, Harvard, Harvard Extension School

In 13 years, the number of degrees awarded by the Harvard Extension School has nearly tripled to 1,340 degrees in 2021, most of them ALMs. What’s going on? This blog post will analyze the trends taking place at the Harvard Extension School.

Here’s a screenshot of the Gazette article from my 2008 graduation, showing the breakdown of degrees.

“In Extension Studies” are liberal arts ALB/ALM degrees; at the time professional ALM degrees were labelled by concentration. Certificate programs no longer exist.

How did HES go from 481 to 1,340 in 13 years?

First, it dramatically expanded online courses.
Then, it added more concentrations outside of the liberal arts.
Finally, it reduced or eliminated “Harvard Instructor” requirements, greatly increasing faculty and class pool.

According to a letter sent to me by the Extension School in July 2010, the professional programs’ “Harvard affiliate requirement” was replaced by “advisory board oversight,” which the Extension School suggested would provide “better quality control”.

The letter stated the change would allow the Extension School to recruit more talented faculty from other area schools as well as working professionals from outside Harvard, which is exactly what happened.

The Harvard Extension School did this because it wanted to expand the professional programs but couldn’t do it, even with the loose “Harvard Affiliate” standards at the time, which included Harvard’s professional staff counting as a Harvard instructor.

The 2010 letter, which came out during the tenure of former Dean Michael Shinagel, was addressing a problem HES encountered in expanding its professional degree programs. Unlike the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences, which includes Harvard College and the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, some professional Harvard schools did not want its faculty or instructors to participate in any Extension programs, even if it was at night.

This was the case with the Harvard Business School. For years, the only HBS faculty teaching HES classes in finance, management, or business were retired. Even now, there is only a single faculty member listed in the Extension School instructor list:

The Extension School also decided to offer degrees in areas in which no Harvard faculty exist, such as journalism and digital media arts.

Expansion of learning opportunities across the globe has been a positive trend, as has new degree types serving the needs of students and industry. The HES biotechnology degrees are a great example of this.

But the idea that you can receive a degree from Harvard without ever taking a class with Harvard faculty members is a major mistake. It’s a sharp deviation from the Extension School’s mission to offer a Harvard academic experience led by Harvard faculty members, and opens up the school and alumni to criticism that HES degrees aren’t “real” Harvard degrees.

I’m not knocking the hard work of students or the non-Harvard faculty teaching such classes. I too have taken classes with non-Harvard faculty that counted toward my degree, and some were top-notch and truly global experts in their fields, such as the late Thomas J. O’Connor. This was sometimes through the Harvard Summer School, which is also open to Harvard College students. And Harvard certainly has a long history with visiting faculty from other institutions.

But the idea that it’s possible to get a Harvard degree without taking any classes with Harvard faculty? The school might as well just let students transfer in 100% of class credit from other schools.

And that’s not right. As I stated in my final post on the old Harvard Extended blog:

While recruiting professors from Boston University, Bentley, Boston College and UMass will improve the quality of the instruction in these programs, it is a tacit acknowledgment that the professional degree programs have failed to fit the model established by the Extension School to offer a Harvard academic experience led by Harvard faculty members to students. It further sets a precedent for launching new professional degree programs that have no connection to the University’s existing areas of study, and opens the door to criticism that Harvard Extension School degrees aren’t “real” degrees because they no longer represent study under Harvard’s top-notch faculty.

Harvard Extension School students are already treated like second-class entities by the University and even the Harvard Extension School’s own leaders and staff. Watering down requirements may make things more convenient and profitable for the Extension School, but it hurts the goals of matriculated students and alumni who want equal treatment, respect for our hard work, and a true Harvard educational experience.

What can the Extension School do to make things right? The solutions should be obvious.

First, double efforts to encourage faculty from other Harvard schools to participate in HES programs. This is particularly an issue for the Harvard Business School, which has its own priorities, competitive considerations, and brand considerations. But dangle revenue shares or other profitable incentives/partnerships – such as requirements that ALM degree candidates must successfully complete an HBS certificate – might help in this regard. This latter scenario would also align the ALM Management degrees with some of the cutting-edge research and teaching at the Harvard Business School.

For programs that don’t have any available Harvard faculty, hire dedicated HES instructors responsible for teaching, curriculum, and research. HES has money, thanks to the growth of the degree programs, and it has done this in the past for some liberal arts fields. However, as it’s also part of the Harvard Faculty of Arts & Sciences, there may be some additional considerations for instructors outside of the liberal arts.

See also: Harvard Extension School success stories from the past year

Ray Kurzweil on long-term document storage and the genealogy connection

May 5, 2021July 10, 2022 technology Business, genealogy

In 2008, I interviewed author, inventor, and futurist Ray Kurzweil for Computerworld. The focus of the published interview (no longer online, sadly) were some of the more startling concepts in his book The Singularity Is Near. But there were a few other bits and pieces that were just as interesting to me, including his thoughts about long-term document storage.

In my mind, I’ve gone back to that interview several times in the past 13 years, mulling over the implications for innovation in my own genealogy business, which sells paper genealogy charts and forms as well as genealogy PDFs. I decided to dig it out the transcript and share an excerpt below, and give some follow-up commentary about the implications for long-term document storage for genealogists.

Ian Lamont: In the Singularity is near, you also discussed an intriguing invention, which you called the “Document Image and Storage Invention”, or DAISI for short. But you concluded that it really wouldn’t work out. Could you talk a little bit about that?

Ray Kurzweil: That’s interesting. I don’t usually get asked about that, because it doesn’t seem like that interesting an issue.

Ian: It’s interesting to me, because I think I fall into the same category as your father, someone who likes to save all the documents and things related to their lives. I’d buy it!

Ray: Well, we have the same inclination, I inherited that from my father, and I inherited 50 boxes of his documents which was all his letters and so on. And I’ve kept … I have several hundred boxes of documents, and now of course I have a lot more stuff electronically, which is also not very well organized.

The big challenge, which I think is actually important almost philosophical challenge — it might sound like a dull issue, like how do you format a database, so you can retrieve information, that sounds pretty technical. The real key issue is that software formats are constantly changing.

People say, “well, gee, if we could backup our brains,” and I talk about how that will be feasible some decades from now. Then the digital version of you could be immortal, but software doesn’t live forever, in fact it doesn’t live very long at all if you don’t care about it if you don’t continually update it to new formats.

Try going back 20 years to some old formats, some old programming language. Try resuscitating some information on some PDP1 magnetic tapes. I mean even if you could get the hardware to work, the software formats are completely alien and [using] a different operating system and nobody is there to support these formats anymore. And that continues. There is this continual change in how that information is formatted.

I think this is actually fundamentally a philosophical issue. I don’t think there’s any technical solution to it. Information actually will die if you don’t continually update it. Which means, it will die if you don’t care about it.

That’s true of our own lives. People don’t care about themselves, don’t in fact survive very long. We have to continually maintain ourselves as biological entities, when we can make that transition to nonbiological, we’ll still have that same issue.

Ian: You said there’s no technological solution. What about creating standards that would be maintained by the community, or would be widespread enough that future …

Ray: Well, that helps for awhile. We do use standard formats, and the standard formats are continually changed, and the formats are not always backwards compatible. It’s a nice goal, but it actually doesn’t work.

I have in fact electronic information that in fact goes back through many different computer systems. Some of it now I cannot access. In theory I could, or with enough effort, find people to decipher it, but it’s not readily accessible. The more backwards you go, the more of a challenge it becomes.

And despite the goal of maintaining standards, or maintaining forward compatibility, or backwards compatibility, it doesn’t really work out that way. Maybe we will improve that. Hard documents are actually the easiest to access. Fairly crude technologies like microfilm or microfiche which basically has documents are very easy to access.

So ironically, the most primitive formats are the ones that are easiest.

So something like Acrobat documents, which are basically trying to preserve a flat document, is actually a pretty good format, and is likely to last a pretty long time. But I am not confident that these standards will remain.

I think the philosophical implication is that we have to really care about knowledge. If we care about knowledge it will be preserved. And this is true knowledge in general, because knowledge is not just information. Because each generation is preserving the knowledge it cares about and of course a lot of that knowledge is preserved from earlier times, but we have to sort of re-synthesize it and re-understand it, and appreciate it anew.

As a genealogist, I have thought a lot about solutions to preserve data for the long term that don’t have physical limitations of microfiche or paper media, or the problem of computers crashing, subscriptions lapsing, or for-profit online services shutting down (see “Ancestry deleted 10 years of my family’s history“)

Maybe 10-15 years ago, a few people in the Silicon Valley futurist community came up with the idea of a ball or disc etched with gradually smaller text an excerpt from the Old Testament, translated into multiple languages. It was actually called the “Rosetta Disc.” The plan to seed the discs across the world so even if there was some great calamity or the loss of written languages, future civilizations could resurrect them. Here’s what the disc looked like:

Here’s how the concept was described:

The Rosetta Disk is the physical companion of the Rosetta Digital Language Archive, and a prototype of one facet of The Long Now Foundation’s 10,000-Year Library. The Rosetta Disk is intended to be a durable archive of human languages, as well as an aesthetic object that suggests a journey of the imagination across culture and history. We have attempted to create a unique physical artifact which evokes the great diversity of human experience as well as the incredible variety of symbolic systems we have constructed to understand and communicate that experience.

The Disk surface shown here, meant to be a guide to the contents, is etched with a central image of the earth and a message written in eight major world languages: “Languages of the World: This is an archive of over 1,500 human languages assembled in the year 02008 C.E. Magnify 1,000 times to find over 13,000 pages of language documentation.” The text begins at eye-readable scale and spirals down to nano-scale. This tapered ring of languages is intended to maximize the number of people that will be able to read something immediately upon picking up the Disk, as well as implying the directions for using it—‘get a magnifier and there is more.’

On the reverse side of the disk from the globe graphic are over 13,000 microetched pages of language documentation. Since each page is a physical rather than digital image, there is no platform or format dependency. Reading the Disk requires only optical magnification. Each page is .019 inches, or half a millimeter, across. This is about equal in width to 5 human hairs, and can be read with a 650X microscope (individual pages are clearly visible with 100X magnification).

The 13,000 pages in the collection contain documentation on over 1500 languages gathered from archives around the world. For each language we have several categories of data—descriptions of the speech community, maps of their location(s), and information on writing systems and literacy. We also collect grammatical information including descriptions of the sounds of the language, how words and larger linguistic structures like sentences are formed, a basic vocabulary list (known as a “Swadesh List”), and whenever possible, texts. Many of our texts are transcribed oral narratives. Others are translations such as the beginning chapters of the Book of Genesis or the UN Declaration of Human Rights. …

I looked into the details of this project, and wondered if it could be applied to genealogy. I was also thinking about the ancestor tablets found in many home shrines in Taiwan, long-lasting physical manifestations of a person’s lineage which are brought into people’s religious beliefs and ceremonial practices.

However, whether it’s stone, wood, or high-tech micro-etchings, there are practical limitations of applying this idea to genealogy or any written record, including cost and the inability to update the text. For instance, a separate project, NanoRosetta, is a fantastic application of microetching digital images on nickel to create a permanent archive, but it can’t be updated and requires a fair amount of file preparation (PDF and TIFF) that not everyone is capable of doing.

It made me think that a more realistic solution to the genealogy preservation problem aligns with Kurzweil’s “most primitive” take: Preserve core records on paper, share them widely with relatives and cousins, and use an easy-to-understand versioning system. This could also be applied to other family records, including letters, manuscripts, and more.

We know high quality paper can last hundreds of years. It can be easily copied and spread, potentially allowing the information to last thousands of years, as evidenced by Roman, Greek, and early Chinese dynastic records and literature that can still be read today.

The Harvard Extension School teaches a terrible lesson in democracy

April 6, 2021October 18, 2021 Harvard Extension School Harvard Extension School, HESA, Legal

I write a lot about the erosion of democracy in my hometown of Newton Massachusetts, but today I am going to switch things up and talk about the erosion of democracy at the Harvard Extension Student Association (HESA), the student government organization of the Harvard Extension School.

Bottom line up front: The Harvard Extension School has rigged HESA elections to exclude a certain activist from running this year, and will prevent other idealistic students from running for leadership positions in the future. As a student of modern Chinese history, it mirrors (on a far smaller scale) the abuse of democracy taking place right now in Hong Kong, in which Communist leaders in neighboring China rewrote the rules to eliminate activists and rivals and maintain political control (Quoting the New York Times: “New rules imposed by Beijing will make it nearly impossible for democracy advocates in the territory to run for chief executive or the legislature.”) It’s a terrible lesson for Harvard Extension School students, but is also yet another example of how HES students get second-class treatment that other Harvard schools would never impose on their own students.

Student government is not glamourous. There are no perks, leaders oftentimes find themselves criticized by students for not doing enough on certain issues, and school administrations tend not to take them very seriously. Nevertheless, groups like HESA are an opportunity for students to come together and work on issues that are important to the student body. For many, it is their first elected leadership role, experience that will serve them in their future careers or volunteer activities.

I never participated in HESA when I was a student at the Extension School. We had two young children at the time, and between home life, my full-time job, and my studies, I didn’t have the extra bandwidth. But I did vote in elections, and watched the organization under successive administrations.

Over the years, I have seen some fantastic HESA leaders and volunteers come and go. I have also seen a lot of drama. But nothing compared to what happened in the past month, in which Harvard Extension School administrators under the Dean of Students Office (DSO) and several staffers forced HESA to adopt a new set of election rules that effectively prevent new students from running for leadership positions.

This was clearly done to exclude a certain student activist from running for HESA President or Vice President or any board position. This student is the founder of the Extension Studies Removal Initiative, which seeks to remove the ridiculous and demeaning “in Extension Studies” designation from Harvard Extension School degrees. But the new Extension School rules, forced on HESA by the Harvard Extension DSO, will affect hundreds of other students in the years to come, disenfranchising a large segment of the Harvard Extension School student body.

Signs that something were amiss came in March with the news that the HESA president had abruptly left a few months before his term ended. No explanation was given. Then came the bombshell at the end of March that, just as the new HESA elections were getting started, a new set of eligibility rules were being instituted. Here’s what they said:

Going through the highlighted sections above, the first shocker is ALB students (undergraduates) were excluded from running for HESA President. Note that almost all matriculated ALB students are working adults, including some who are older and have more life experience than their ALM (graduate) counterparts. A typical ALB academic profile is someone who is returning to school to complete a college undergraduate degree later in life.

The next point: Two full terms are required. Because the first rule says only admitted degree candidates can participate, this must mean two terms after matriculation, which requires completing three courses with a B or higher. Practically speaking, this means students would need to have at least three terms and at least five courses to participate in HESA elections.

This would be roughly analogous to the Harvard College Undergraduate Council suddenly announcing (at the direction of Harvard College administrators) that first year students are no longer eligible for the Executive Board, the central leadership org within the council. Currently, 3 of 5 Harvard UC EB members are from the class of 2024. Of course, there would be outrage from every first year student at the College if this were forced upon them.

The third point about not mirroring DCE organizational efforts can mean a few things. Before this year, I would have assumed it means HESA leaders can’t campaign on a platform to improve, say, online educational tools used for distance classes because that’s the bailiwick of the school itself. But I now think this line was inserted to specifically exclude the ESRI founder from running – because according to the DCE’s new dean, Nancy Coleman, removing “extension studies” from degrees is one of the goals of the Harvard Extension School.

The fourth point is clearly designed to prevent people like the ESRI leader – or a leader/board member of any other Harvard club – from concurrently serving in a HESA leadership role. It would be akin to the Harvard Law School suddenly declaring that leaders of Disability Law Students Association or Environmental Law Society couldn’t also run for elected representative positions in the Harvard Law School student government.

Keep in mind these HESA rules weren’t implemented by an inexperienced student leader who is vague on democratic concepts. It’s not even within the new HESA constitution or bylaws for HESA leaders to unilaterally rewrite the election rules. It came directly from the Dean of Students Office (DSO). When students pushed back, DSO walked back the rule against ALB students from running, but kept the other restrictions in place. Here is a screenshot from the DSO explaining the reasoning:

If ensuring “leaders are knowledgeable about the needs of the students they serve and about the School,” then by the same bizarre logic Dean Nancy Coleman and her predecessor Dean Huntington Lambert – both outsiders who had zero experience with the Harvard Extension School before being hired – should never have been tapped for leadership roles here. Similarly, if this is part of Harvard’s culture, then every school at Harvard – including Harvard College and the Harvard Law School – should have similar rules in place to keep out the inexperienced first-year students. Of course, only the Extension School does.

What the Extension School should immediately do is rescind these discriminatory eligibility rules for HESA leadership positions and reschedule a new election.

One final thing: In the course of researching this post, I discovered that the Harvard Extension School DSO Dean and at least one other DSO staff member are listed as Title IX coordinators at Harvard with responsibility for overseeing an important federal civil rights program that governs gender discrimination. I find it hard to believe that people who were assigned such important roles to protect the civil rights of Harvard students, can turn right around and deny the rights of Harvard students by rigging election roles to exclude an entire class of people from participating in elections for student government.

Update: The Harvard Extension School reached out to me after I contacted FAS to complain. The response:

Elections for leadership of the Harvard Extension Student Association (HESA) are student-run, and the Dean of Students Office (DSO) serves in an advisory role, only. Hence, changes made to this year’s eligibility requirements were not orchestrated by the School or the DSO, as you suggest.

This was immediately contradicted by more reporting from The Crimson, “Jura Wins Extension School Student Government Election, Commits to Transparency After Election Rules Dispute,” and statements made by HESA and DSO staffers:

Kenneth “Ken” Downey, Jr., the outgoing HESA director of communications, told The Crimson last week that the Extension School’s Dean of Students Office was responsible for the changes, though Division of Continuing Education spokesperson Harry J. Pierre has repeatedly denied the DSO was involved. … Downey Jr. said the Dean of Students Office was responsible for the changes and referred to statements made by [DSO staffer] Addison during a virtual “Meet the Board” event posted on HESA’s Facebook page on April 14. ‘HESA does not oversee any of the elections,’ Addison said during the event. ‘They [HESA] don’t make any decisions with regards to elections.’”

When multiple people – including DCE employees – are saying the same thing, backed up by a video clip and a detailed explanation from the DSO dean himself defending the new policies, I am strongly inclined to believe the evidence in front of me, rather than the spin from the Harvard Extension School.

Very disappointed in the Extension School and its officers.

Newton City Council candidate Bryan Barash pledges to reject developer and lobbyist donations, takes it anyway (Updated)

December 13, 2020May 25, 2022 Boston development, Legal, Newton

Updated: Two donations were returned weeks ago. He indicated he won’t return the rest. Details below.

“Follow the money.” It’s practically a cliche in legal, government, and journalism circles, but it truly is a powerful technique for exploring relationships and motivations at all levels of society. Earlier this year in Newton, we saw how developer money was used to make a referendum turn in its favor through a massive cash injection to a supposedly grassroots community group (see As sole donor of the “Yes” campaign, Northland’s deep pockets try to steamroll Newton’s democracy). That developer subsequently got the green light to build more than 600 units of luxury housing in Newton Upper Falls, off Needham Street.

Now with two city council seats up for grabs in a special election (following the election of Ward 2 Councillor Jake Auchincloss to Congress and the tragic death of Ward 1 Councillor Jay Ciccone), we see candidates stressing their integrity and dedication to serve the residents of Newton. One candidate, Bryan Barash, even pledged to refuse money from developers and lobbyists on the transparency page of his campaign website, stating:

When I first heard about this, I thought, good for him. I honestly hope every other candidate for Newton City Councilor now and in the future can make a similar pledge and keep corporate cash out of our elections and local democracy. I love my hometown, and am tired of seeing so many of our elected officials bending over backwards to accommodate developers and other corporate interests.

A recent history of developer influence in Newton

It’s one thing to say you are going to follow high-minded ideals and listen to the citizens of Newton. But when the rubber hits the road, I have learned that in Newton local politicians often disguise their true intentions.

In particular, there is a lot of doublespeak and false promises when it comes to real estate development. For many Newton councilors and candidates declaring “we support affordable housing,” they actually mean “we’ll support a sliver of affordable only if there are thousands of luxury condos and boutique apartments.” They’ll use phrases like “housing with a range of price points,” or “abundant housing,” not letting on that the range skews heavily toward the most expensive units, and the primary beneficiaries of this abundance are rich developers as opposed to the ordinary citizens of Newton. Almost all of these councilors live in Newton’s tony southern and eastern wards bordering Brookline, far away from Needham Street and the northern villages where the developments are planned.

The result of this ongoing deception: gigantic luxury developments Riverside in Auburndale, Trio in Newtonville, and Northland in Newton Upper Falls. In these developments, there is next to nothing for the following groups of people:

Seniors and disabled people living on fixed incomes
Teachers, firefighters and other public workers
Recent immigrants
Young people who grew up in Newton trying to move back to their hometown
Anyone earning the Massachusetts median income of ~$77,000 per year or less

The numbers show what’s happening. Here’s the breakdown for Riverside:

582 units total
102 affordable (18%)
480 luxury (82%)

Here’s the breakdown for Northland:

800 units total
123 affordable (15%)
677 luxury (85%)

Successive Newton mayors have also made false promises, making a big show of listening to residents but prioritizing the profit-focused needs of developers. Over the protests of many Newtonville residents, former Mayor Setti Warren and many city councilors (especially on the south side, miles away from the projects) gave the green light to develop 28 Austin Street in Newtonville, where the developer paid a mere $1,050,000 for a 99-year lease. It now offers “luxury boutique living” where a two-bedroom apartment requires an annual income of nearly $150,000.

It happened again across the Pike in the Orr Block. Warren and allies on the Newton City Council, with assistance from the Newton-Needham Chamber of Commerce, went to bat for developer Mark Development to force through a mostly luxury development on the corner of Washington and Walnut Street. Renters and small businesses that had been in Newtonville for decades were sent packing. The new complex, Trio Newton, now promotes “luxury apartments in Newton” with prices starting at $2,600 per month to rent a 600 square foot studio (I did the math; your income needs to be at least $104,000 per year to rent an apartment at Trio). 75% of the 140-unit complex are similarly priced. The remaining 35 units (25%) are affordable via lottery.

More recently, a similar farce took place with “Hello Washington Street,” Mayor Fuller’s exercise in building community buy-in for high-density, market-rate housing from West Newton to the Lake. The plans put forth by Mayor Fuller, her planning department, and their consultants ignored the wishes of residents, as demonstrated by the thousands of comments from residents and the survey conducted by the Newtonville Area Council. Not surprisingly, one influential and experienced stakeholder — the powerful real estate developer behind Trio and Riverside — stands to benefit even more from the proposed zoning changes on Washington Street.

Now we are seeing a “debate” about rezoning Newton. I put “debate” in quotes because it appears the Newton City Planning Department has already decided in favor of high-density housing activists, developers, and their proxies in the Newton City Council.

Not coincidentally, the beneficiaries of this high-density housing strategy will be developers – any house that can be torn down, chopped up, and divided into overpriced multifamily units will be. The result: thousands of more “market rate” apartments, condos, and townhouses that are out of reach to any household making less than $100,000 per year. In the midst of the pandemic, most residents have no idea of what’s being forced through by activist southside councilors and the Planning Department.

Are there any projects which favor the needs of ordinary residents over luxury housing? Yes: The conversion of the West Newton Armory into housing. I support this project, which will turn an unused National Guard facility into 100% affordable housing. This type of project is the exception, unfortunately.

Following the money to Ward 2

There is a database of campaign donors for local races in Newton and other cities in towns in Massachusetts. I decided to check it out, not only to see who is donating money to the candidates running for the Ward 1 and Ward 2 seats, but also to determine how my own recent donation shows up in public records.

This useful state-run resource is operated by The Office of Campaign and Political Finance, and as I will shortly demonstrate, helps improve transparency in our democracy. It’s a searchable database that shows donations from different corporate and individual campaign contributors, from local council races to mayoral contests to campaigns for state positions.

Here’s how to display all of the donors for a particular Newton City Council candidate:

Go to https://www.ocpf.us/Reports/SearchItems
In the field that says “Provide part of the filer’s name,” enter the first or last name of the candidate.
For the next field, “then select a filer,” chose the correct candidate (sometimes there is more than one with a certain first or last name)

You can also search for specific campaign donors using the “Contributor” field.

The resource is not perfect. Donors self-identify their occupation and other details, which can be left blank or fudged, or data transfer problem may arise when the campaigns attempt to upload information to the state database. I discovered for my own small donation of $50 to Barash’s competitor, the occupation and employer information I submitted via an online form (“small business owner” and the name of my company) did not show up in the OCPF database. The date was also wrong, showing a date in early November when the donation was actually one month later.

But other people donating to Newton political candidates do have more complete information attached to their records. The database shows that the Ward 2 candidate who made a pledge to refuse money from developers and lobbyists has in fact received donations from property developers, lobbyists, and others attached to luxury housing initiatives, high-density zoning reform, and businesses that are regulated at the municipal or state level.

I’m leaving donors’ names out of this post. But I will share some other details about their backgrounds and relationships.

The self-identified real estate developer has made regular donations over the years to candidates for state representative, mayor and city council in midsized cities, and the mayor of Boston.

One lobbyist’s website lists a realty and development corporation as a client. There are other businesses and organizations both big and small on his client list and the state lobbyist database.

There are registered lobbyists for retail marijuana and transportation.

There is a person who is listed as a “consultant” and puts his employer as “self employed” on the OCPF database, but his name matches the name of a registered lobbyist in the Commonwealth’s lobbyist database. Update: this donation was returned weeks ago, per Barash’s “No Fossil Fuels” pledge. This was not reflected in the state campaign finance database when I looked at it in mid-December.

Several attorneys donated to the campaign. One of the attorney’s firm’s website lists government relations and lobbying at the top of its list of specialties. The second firm specializes in real estate development law, including zoning, permitting and “neighborhood grassroots outreach.” Its website lists specific projects in Newton, including dozens of townhouse condos and tens of millions of dollars worth of commercial property.

Another donor works for a nonprofit group seeking to reform planning, zoning, and permitting laws.

And so on.

This candidate is not a bad person, and has a right to ask for donations from followers. Those donors also have the right to donate money to their preferred candidates for Newton City Council, just as I and many other residents are doing. But it’s a red flag when those donors may conceivably have business in front of city officials or councillors, including high-profit housing projects and commercial initiatives worth millions.

It should be noted that lobbyists aren’t bad people either, and in some cases promote important work or advance good and worthy causes. Quoting a 2014 OECD report titled Lobbyists, Governments, and Public Trust:

[Lobbying] can provide decision-makers with valuable insight and data and facilitate stakeholders’ access to the development and implementation of public policies.

But lobbying also grants power to the entities paying for it, and in some cases that power can be abused. The same OECD report states:

However, it can also lead to undue influence, unfair competition, and regulatory capture to the detriment of the public interest and effective public policies.

In my view, Newton residents should indeed be worried about the pernicious influence of money in our local democracy.

Feel free to leave comments below.

Update 12/14/20: Someone has accused me of posting misinformation and says I should “not be allowed” to write about a public candidate for Newton City Council taking money lobbyists and developers. A reminder to readers that this is a blog, hosted but not controlled by Harvard University (through my affiliation as an alumnus of the Harvard Extension School), and everyone has a right to disagree and express their opinions (I invite anyone to do so in the comments below). It is not illegal or wrong for me or others to post facts obtained from a public database, no matter how inconvenient or uncomfortable they may be. If there is something factually incorrect about those donations, please let me know and I will update the blog post accordingly.

Update 12/15/20: In a closed Facebook group, Bryan Barash criticized negative campaigning but explained that his pledge only applies to donors “who [are] paid to lobby at the city level in Newton or [have] a special permit for a development in Newton” and called on other candidates to do the same. Barash said he did return donations from two people who violate his No Fossil Fuel pledge – these lobbyists were apparently connected with the Weymouth gas compressor station that was the subject of a front-page Boston Globe article this month (“In Weymouth, a brute lesson in power politics“). As for his call for other candidates to not accept certain contributions, I would call on Tarik Lucas in Ward 2 as well as Ward 1 candidates Madeline Ranalli and John Oliver to go even further, and unequivocally reject ALL campaign contributions from for-profit developers and registered lobbyists. The Northland Investment Corporation’s approach to the March 2020 referendum set a terrible precedent for elections in Newton, in which winners can be decided by which side (or which candidate) has the biggest for-profit sponsors. These three candidates can do the right thing and set a new precedent that keeps special interest cash out of our local democracy.

Update 12/17: Removed the graphic referencing a donor who no longer works for the listed real estate firm. The donor also said the firm only operated in Cambridge, not Newton. I apologize for the error.

Architects: Newton rezoning is “driven by ideology” and an attempt to “unzone” the city (updated)

October 14, 2020May 25, 2022 Boston development, Newton

Updated. Lots of people have reached out after my post last week, “Upzoning” in Newton: A tool to turn over the city from one class of people to another? In addition to reading comments by various city councilors on the Newton rezoning process, someone also shared with me a letter to the Newton City Council Planning and Zoning Committee. The letter was written by a group of architects who were originally recruited by the mayor, the city’s planning department, and some city councilors to help review the rezoning proposals and add their professional opinions and recommendations.

It appears rezoning in Newton has been severely undermined. I am going to post the public document in its entirety, as the committee chair has yet to post the PDF on the official city website (even if it were available, it would be hard to read, especially on mobile devices – a chronic problem for most official city documentation, incidentally). The letter is long, but I have bolded some parts which I believe are particularly important, and encourage people to leave comments at the bottom of this page:

September 30 2020

Members of the Newton City Council Planning and Zoning Committee:

Over the past several months, many of us have been providing assistance to the Planning Department with analysis of the impact of its proposed rezoning plan. We have been encouraged to provide this assistance by planning department staff, many city councilors and the Mayor in recognition of the detailed knowledge and expertise we bring to evaluating the effects of zoning on housing development from design, construction cost and home owner perspectives. As architects, builders and residents of Newton, we are committed to help maintain the quality of life in our city as zoning is being reconsidered. Despite challenges to our businesses and personal lives caused by the pandemic, we have provided significant time and effort to analyze both the macro effects of the rezoning plan as well as its impact on homeowners by applying the proposed rezoning to numerous renovation and new construction projects which we have worked on for Newton residents over the past several years.

During numerous online meetings, we have presented detailed analysis of built projects to planning staff and we have shown that the vast majority of these projects would not be permissible under the current rezoning proposal. The projects we analyzed reflect a diverse range of improvements and building programs which are typical across the City. Specifically, we have presented projects that reflect renovation and additions undertaken by homeowners as well as projects that involve restoration of historic properties. In addition to the analysis of specific projects, we have also provided many examples where the proposed zoning would on a broad scale increase the number of homes that would not conform to the new dimensional requirements. Despite our efforts to help inform decisions regarding the impact of the proposed zoning, we have seen no evidence that our work is being considered. In fact, changes to the proposal that have been made over the past few months have ignored issues demonstrated by our project analysis and have instead made some elements of the plan more prescriptive and restrictive. In view of the Planning Department’s failure over several months to meaningfully answer questions and concerns, respond to evidence provided by numerous building professionals or provide its own probative analysis, we reluctantly have concluded that the proponents of rezoning have no intention of considering facts and evidence of the potentially broad, negative impact that this plan could have on homeowners, the aesthetic character of the city and potentially on property values. In short we feel our time and expertise is being wasted.

Many of us have been concerned about this process from the outset given that no detailed analysis was undertaken to identify specific issues with current zoning so that the new “form based“ approach could be properly evaluated. Form-based zoning imposes a highly prescriptive approach to housing design and has been adopted predominantly in dense urban communities like Somerville. It is clearly ill suited to communities like Newton with a very diverse housing stock and varied lot sizes. Given the drive to force fit form-based zoning to the actual built environment, the Planning Department is now calling it a “hybrid” of form based zoning. Nonetheless, we made a genuine effort to improve on the original proposal rather than reject it summarily given the many problems that were obvious from its inception. The problems with the metrics of the rezoning proposal are only exacerbated by the most recent change that would allow multi family development by right across the city. Combined with the elimination of minimum lot sizes and allowing some additions in setbacks by right, the lack of restrictions on multi-family seems to effectively “unzone” the city, rather than reduce non conformity, make development more predictable, or retain the character of neighborhoods. The Zoning and Planning Committee’s “3rd straw vote goal” approved at its April 27, 2020 meeting was as follows: “Context: Preserve and protect what we like in our neighborhoods. Encourage new development to fit in the context of our neighborhoods and villages.” The current plan clearly conflicts in many important ways with the objectives the Committee adopted just a few months ago.

With this background in mind, these are our primary concerns with the current proposal:

We have examined numerous built and proposed projects and find these new proposed controls are significantly more restrictive and more complex than current controls. New side and rear yard setbacks will create more non-conformity in existing structures. For example, the side yard requirements imposed by the new R1 zone for much of Waban results in most homes being non-conforming. The new lot coverage definition that now includes driveways compounds the problems. The resulting non conformity will severely restrict and discourage homeowners across the city from improving their homes with additions that reflect contemporary living requirements and market expectations to retain property value. Such projects also facilitate improved energy conservation as well.

The proposal to remedy increased non-conforming conditions by allowing certain additions by right in the new more restrictive setbacks would likely be struck down in the courts and defies the most basic purpose of zoning in the first place. Shouldn’t property owners at least be able to expect that there will be no construction allowed in setbacks, at least not without a variance?

The elimination of FAR in favor of foot print restrictions is another significant issue. The footprint restrictions are based on the median of what currently exists in contrived neighborhood zones based on the pattern book prepared by Sasaki. The problem with this methodology is that over 90% of homes in Newton were built before 1960 which means that this most critical standard of footprint limits is based on characteristics of housing built over the last hundred years, not current and future housing requirements. In many the data used reflects homes [text missing]

The removal of minimum lot size is an enormous and unnecessary paradigm shift that promotes more vertical than horizontal homes. As is the case with all the dramatic changes in this plan, no study has been presented which evaluates the impact of such a significant change to land use in the city. If we want a mechanism to allow existing non conforming lots to be buildable, we can simply add a provision to our existing code with whatever stipulations we find appropriate and subject the approval to issuance of a special permit.

Minimum lot frontage has also been significantly reduced. Combined with the removal of minimum lot size, this one change could allow certain neighborhoods in our city to be significantly transformed. If this is adopted, developers as of right could more easily take down a house on a larger property, subdivide that land, and put up two houses on lots that do not meet current requirements. In fact, subdivision of existing lots should not be the primary concern. The incentives under lower frontage requirements without lot size minimums to assemble adjacent conforming and non-conforming lots to create two legal lots will certainly spur property speculation and encourage more demolition of homes, a central problem that rezoning was supposed to address.

One of the late additions to this proposal was the global change to eliminate single family zones. As proposed, existing homes could be subdivided into up to six units by right. This would certainly affect density, green space, and parking issues. It could also create new infrastructure demands on schools, streets and sanitation. If there is a desire to increase housing options through such a change, its adoption should require extensive community discussion, and an independent review of legal issues and its and economic impact. We also believe that abutters should be able to weigh in on multi family conversions by requiring a special permit when such conversions are proposed .

We believe that based on the evidence we and others have presented, the proposed zoning plan disregards many of the original goals of the City Council for updating the city’s zoning code. As the proposal has evolved, it has become increasingly clear that it is being driven by ideology and not an evidence-based approach to updating and improving the city’s land use policies. The lack of objective quantitative analysis of issues with current zoning by the Planning Department is unacceptable in a city which touts its high standards for transparency and professionalism.

Moreover, to advance such dramatic changes to our neighborhoods at a time when the public cannot effectively participate because of the pandemic is divisive, cynical and unnecessary. Is this what we envisioned for a process toward improved zoning? There are simply too many changes in this proposal that are so diametrically opposed to the controls currently in place. Does such unstudied dramatic change to land use make sense now?

We believe that strategically-targeted incremental modifications to the Zoning Code would be a much more effective way to improve and rectify problems on the ground. Changing all the controls will create chaos, driven by conflicting policy objectives and too many unforeseen consequences. Conversely, if we improve the current code based on clear objectives and analysis, the results are likely to be far better. We can modify the Code to strategically improve what is on the ground with modest modifications that help preserve neighborhoods and can allow for reasonable and controlled growth.

We hereby request an opportunity to present our analysis and conclusions at a ZAP meeting as soon as it can be scheduled. Such a presentation will allow a more detailed and dynamic discussion of the many substantive concerns that have been raised by us and many other residents with the proposed rezoning. We encourage other professionals who may be working privately with members of the Committee to make their views public and participate.

Thank you for your consideration.

Respectfully,

Steven Garfinkle

Peter Sachs, Architect

Marc Hershman, Architect

Robert Fizek, Architect

Stephan Hamilton, Architect

Schuyler Larrabee, Architect

William Roesner, Architect

About one week after this group sent the letter, three city councilors (Marc Laredo, Lisle Baker and Pamela Wright) sent a memo to Deborah Crossley (the committee chair) and cc’ing the mayor, senior city planners, and the city solicitor. It requests the following:

The Zoning and Planning Committee should hear dissenting views directly from a group of local architects who recently wrote that they have been excluded from the group advising the Planning Department about its zoning proposals;
The Zoning and Planning Committee should be advised by the Law Department how homes which might become nonconforming under the proposed new zoning can be protected or find relief if changes need to be made;
The Zoning and Planning Committee should have an opportunity to discuss the current Planning Department proposals, including whether alternatives involving our current zoning code should be considered.

More details are in the memo, which is available on the city website (in PDF form). But one section of the memo from the three councilors stood out (emphasis mine):

As an institutional matter, we remain troubled by the manner in which this entire process is proceeding. While we appreciate the expertise that the Planning Department brings to this effort, it is the City Council, and not the Planning Department, that needs to debate the merits of any proposal and decide how to proceed. Instead, we have had repeated presentations by staff with questions that they want answered in order for them to work on their proposals.

The decision whether to continue to use Floor Area Ratio (FAR) as a check on oversized residential construction is a good example. While the Department offered a brief written response about FAR in the attachment A to its last memorandum dated September 25, the Committee itself has not had a chance to discuss whether to discard this tool that originated from a prior Planning Department’s advice. If FAR it does not work well presently, are there ways to modify it so it can be improved? What are the experiences of other communities that use FAR? Have any other communities adopted FAR and then abandoned it? If so, why?

The same types of questions need to be asked of other elements discussed in the September 30 architects’ memorandum. These are key policy decisions that need to be made by the Council initially through the Committee, not by staff, with thoughtful deliberation after considering all points of view. Instead, what we appear to be doing is assuming the new framework is sound, and responding to questions about the details. This strikes us as backwards, especially since the original idea of fixing some specific issues such as oversized construction and front-facing garages has been superseded by this grand redesign for Newton zoning that the Department, but not yet the Council itself, has endorsed.

In summary, policy about zoning ends and means should be explicitly decided by the Council, not implicitly by the Planning Department. A way to begin frame that decision is to provide the members of the Zoning and Planning Committee, on behalf of the Council, some time to discuss the current Planning Department proposals, including whether alternatives involving our current zoning code should be considered.

I alluded in my last post to some of the tactics used by developers to undermine local democracy in Newton, such as providing huge cash injections to “grassroots” groups that support high-density housing. The developers (Northland) won the vote as a result.

Another side of this trend is the tactics used by some of our own elected officials and the city planning department to steamroll opposition and discussion. A few years back, it was holding neighborhood feedback sessions (“Hello Washington Street“) in which the mayor, planning department officials, and highly paid consultants made a big show of listening to local residents in West Newton and Newtonville about the plans. After the sessions were over, they promptly turned around proceeded to ram through the high-density plan that they and big developers wanted all along.

Now we’re seeing a situation in which architects have been invited to participate in the discussion. Guess what: their well-articulated concerns have also been ignored. Does anyone see the pattern here?

What’s going on now should be setting off alarm bells across the city, in every neighborhood. “Upzoning” or “unzoning” (or whatever you want to call it) will primarily benefit developers, not residents. Any house that can be torn down, chopped up, and divided into overpriced multifamily units will be. The result: more luxury apartments, condos, and townhouses that are out of reach to all kinds of ordinary people, including:

Seniors and disabled people living on fixed incomes
Teachers, firefighters and other public workers
Recent immigrants
Young people who grew up in Newton trying to move back to their hometown
Anyone earning the Massachusetts median income of ~$77,000 per year or less

Just as we’ve seen at Trio Newton (studio rentals starting at $2,600 per month) and 28 Austin Street (rents starting at $3,700/month for a 2-bedroom apartment), a sheen of affordable housing will be tacked on to these projects to give the appearance that officials are, as Councilor Jake Auchincloss once claimed in an election flyer, “holding developers’ feet to the fire.”

I’ll close with the same excerpt from The Newton Villages Alliance newsletter that I quoted last week:

The proposed overhaul of Newton’s zoning code for higher density will lead to a transformation of Newton to a much more expensive, congested, urban environment. In the process, well-financed property speculators will be the winners and existing residents the losers as investment capital pours into our community for the sole purpose of extracting as much profit as possible.

Comments are welcome below.

“Upzoning” in Newton: A tool to turn over the city from one class of people to another? (Updated)

October 4, 2020May 25, 2022 Boston development, Newton

Rezoning is in the news again in Newton. I have deliberately avoided most of the coverage. Developer kingpins aided by pliant politicians and high-density CODS housing activists and their southside allies on the City Council always seem to get what they want around here. Local elections are undermined by millions in developer-funded PR campaigns and outright cash injections to pro-development activist groups, while local residents protesting the luxury developments are ignored, demonized, and even publicly bullied by a southside city councilor, Brenda Noel (Ward 6).

After the dust settles, we’re inevitably left with thousands of units of luxury housing that do nothing to bring down housing costs in the city of Newton.

Hundreds of luxury apartments have already been thrown up in Newtonville. They include 28 Austin Street, the parcel across from the Newtonville Star Market which the former mayor and city councilors agreed to lease to the developer for just $1,050,000 for 99 years, over the protests of Newtonville residents. The 28 Austin Street website now boasts “luxury boutique living,” starting at $3,700 to rent a 1,050 square feet apartment:

28 Austin Street Newtonville apartment price

(2021 Update: Meryl Kessler, the spouse of the developer behind 28 Austin Street, is running for Newton’s Ward 3 councilor-at-large seat, currently occupied by Andrea Kelley and Pam Wright. Kessler’s platform includes “revitalizing Newton’s village centers”)

Across the Pike, developer Mark Development didn’t have to rip up a signed agreement with neighbors and local councillors like it did for Riverside. Instead, the former mayor and the Newton-Needham Chamber of Commerce helped get him what it demanded, again over the objections of neighbors:

“This is terrible news for Newton and Newtonville. Robert Korff had proposed a thoughtful project that would have addressed a desperate need for workforce housing, generated foot traffic for our village businesses and provided wonderful community give backs,” said President of the Newton-Needham Regional Chamber Greg Reibman in a statement to the TAB. “But no thanks to an obstructionist political group and a few city councilors, Newtonville might end up with a building that is even taller than the proposed five stories and without a public art space, shops, bike and sidewalk improvements, or any of the other amenities Robert had offered.”

“Workforce housing?” What a joke. Mark Development of course ended getting what it wanted, which was 3/4 luxury rentals that no ordinary workers or middle class people can afford.

This piece of commentary in the local newspaper summed up what everyone now knows: Dumping thousands of units of luxury housing is a tool of wealth creation for developers. It does nothing to reduce housing costs in Newton:

The belief that more housing will add affordability for Newton is a false premise as well. A look at Boston, Cambridge, Somerville, South Boston, East Boston, Charlestown, Waltham, Watertown tells us all we need to know: large developments drive up land prices, drive up rents and make naturally affordable housing less available and less affordable. It creates a tiered class with subsidized housing for those who qualify, and expensive housing for everyone else. These are the facts and wishful thinking doesn’t change this reality.

Here are the facts concerning the former Orr block. The low-cost apartments and small businesses on Washington Street in Newtonville were quickly demolished to make way for Mark’s new replacement for the Orr block, Trio Newton. The work is wrapping up now. Have housing prices dropped as high-density housing activists have promised, because hundreds of new units are now being added to the supply?

No! If anything, it’s gotten more expensive to live in Newtonville. The facts are in the numbers. On Google, Trio promotes “luxury apartments in Newton.” Click through to the Trio website, where the least expensive option is apparently $2,600 per month to rent a 600 square foot studio!

Good luck if you’re a senior on a fixed income, a new immigrant, disabled, or a young person who grew up in Newton and wants to move back to your home town. Using the 30% rule of thumb for housing costs, excluding utility costs, and generously assuming Mark Development isn’t stacking additional fees on top of the listed rental prices at Trio Newton, you would need an annual income of $104,000 to afford the least expensive studio apartment.

At nearby 28 Austin Street, a young family would need an income of at least $144,000 to rent the cheapest 2-bedroom apartment (1,050 square feet). The most expensive (1,365 square feet) 2 bedroom unit, at $7,500 per month, would require an annual income of $300,000.

Note that the median household income in Massachusetts is $77,378, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

The development battle has now turned to single-family housing. The mayor, city planners, developers, and some city councilors want to abolish single-family housing, by “upzoning” wide swathes of neighborhoods currently filled with existing single-family homes and convert them to luxury condos and townhouses by right.

It will happen in Newton Corner. The Lake. Newtonville. West Newton. Auburndale. Newton Lower Falls. Newton Upper Falls. And so on.

If you thought the first wave of Newton tear-downs that eviscerated the stock of older, small single-family homes in the city was bad, wait until the new plan gets underway. Don’t think for a second that the vast majority of multifamily units under such a scheme would be built for anyone other than those who can afford, as 28 Austin puts it, “luxury boutique living.” The remaining working class and middle class households in the city of Newton will be pushed out, while the developer class will be left laughing all the way to the bank.

The Newton Villages Alliance got things right in its latest newsletter, noting: