Lee Memorial Pool, located on the Esplanade near the Museum of Science, is among the old swimming pools that the state is taking a new look at.

Last week Department of Conservation and Recreation Commissioner Steven Burrington announced plans for major renovations to nine of the department’s 38 swimming pools across the state. Besides Lee Memorial, they include ones in Allston-Brighton, Attleboro, Brockton, Ludlow, Southbridge, South Hadley, Waltham and Worcester.

Most of DCR’s pools were constructed between 1950 and the early 1970s and reflect the science, standards and preferences of community aquatics of their day. But after many years of summer operations, the pools became increasingly inefficient, inadequate and in some cases unsafe.

The Lee Pool has been closed for several years except for its associated wading pool. A central element of any future plans will be extensive repairs to the 1950s-vintage bathhouse there, Burrington said.

DCR spokesman Vanessa Gulati said the project is at the very beginning stages, and no timetable has been set. Funding is available for design work only, and it comes from a $1.75 million appropriation in the recently passed fiscal year 2006 supplemental budget.

“Some of the old designs don’t meet the needs of the communities now,” said Gulati. “Instead of continuing to repair outdated and aging infrastructure, DCR is working to develop a new generation of aquatic facilities that reflect the needs of the communities they serve and modern day aquatic safety standards.”

The state has allocated $250,000 to conduct a feasibility study of the future use and redevelopment options of the Lee Pool, said Patrice Todisco, executive director of the Esplanade Association. “The DCR looks to the private sector to see what should be on the site and most likely will establish an advisory group as it has done with other similar projects like the granite landings.”

Construction costs will be funded through DCR’s capital budget and through public/private partnerships.

Bowdoin Street station, which currently operates on a shortened schedule, will close once the MBTA completes a renovation of its Government Center station. The station sees only a light passenger volume and will not be able to accommodate the MBTA’s new trains, according to Joe Pesaturo, MBTA spokesperson.

The MBTA plans to build a new headhouse for the Blue Line at Government Center as part of the MBTA’s modernization and accessibility project. The entrance will be handicapped accessible and include an elevator, escalator and stairs leading directly to the new fare collection line and onto the blue line platform. The headhouse is expected to open 17 months after the MBTA’s contractor is issued a note to proceed, according to Pesaturo.

“[The headhouse] is an early milestone in the construction of Government Center station,” Pesaturo said.

Advertising for the bidding process is underway, with a bid opening expected to take place in mid-November. The total construction period is estimated at 32 months, Pesaturo said.

He did not say whether the MBTA would use Bowdoin station’s space for any other projects.

The blue line will replace its current trains with 94 new cars. Bowdoin station’s platform is not long enough to accommodate the new six-car trains, Pesaturo said. The last two cars would remain in the tunnel, which is not safe because all the doors are controlled by one switch, he said.

Bowdoin’s platform cannot be extended because it would interfere with Government Center’s new platform. “If the platforms at Bowdoin were extended the same time the platforms at Government Center are extended, they'd almost be touching. In other words, it makes no sense to have trains making two stops just feet apart,” Pesaturo said.

Bowdoin station is currently 980 feet away from the entrance at Government Center. After Government Center’s new headhouse is constructed, Bowdoin station would be 575 feet away from the entrance.

The trip between Bowdoin and Government Center stations currently takes three minutes and 58 seconds, compared to two minutes and 20 seconds after Government Center receives a new blue line entrance.

CAPTION : Volunteers from St. Joseph’s Church in the West End served a dinner of “Poor Man’s Lasagna” to supporters and patrons of Neighborhood Action last week. The meal was typical of those served to the homeless every Monday and Thursday evening.
CREDIT: Suzanne Besser




When Neighborhood Action, Inc., served its final lunch last Thursday, it was perhaps part of the natural evolution of an organization searching for the best way to help those less fortunate. Nonetheless, it wasn’t easy for The Rev. Ron Tibbetts, who as executive director of the soup kitchen on Bowdoin Street has fed many in need for almost five years.

He worried when he closed the door. Would those he had cared for find sustenance elsewhere? Ironically, the very people he was turning away comforted him. “Don’t worry about it, Ron,” they said. “We have places to go.”

His guests are the homeless, the women and men who live in the margins of our society. Yes, Tibbetts knows they have other places to go for lunch. But he also knows that what they will miss is not the food but the sense of community and connection a small soup kitchen like Neighborhood Action can give them.

To be able to focus more on building such relationships is one reason Tibbetts and his board of directors decided it was time to get out of the food business at lunchtime. Other considerations certainly hastened the decision: The non-profit must struggle constantly to make ends meet and rarely does. The numbers of guests keep increasing until most recently they have served about 600 lunches a week. Such large numbers took their toll on both the physical plant at the Church of St. John the Evangelist, in which the soup kitchen is housed, and its two full-time staff members.

“Plus we began to experience a more transient population at noon time,” said Tibbetts. “The first three years we saw the same faces over and over again. But suddenly new people would come, faces would change, and we realized some of our guests were not allowed at other soup kitchens. They became adversarial and potential problems.”

The time came when Tibbetts and the board knew they had outgrown their facilities and outgrown their own abilities. “What I have come to understand,” said Tibbetts, “is that providing emergency food is a task better left to larger agencies with more space.”

“The board has some very difficult decisions to make,” said member Joe Nies of Charlestown. “We’re trying to figure out where we can do the most good. The tough thing is that now we have the trust in the homeless community. How do we serve them best and how do we fund what we do?”

“If your whole day is driven by serving lunch, it throws other things off the table,” said a supporter, David Fisher of Pinckney Street. “Removing the food element will enable Neighborhood Action to minister to people in other ways.”

And that is the path they are cautiously following.

The nonprofit will continue to serve dinners on Mondays and Thursday evenings to the guests, which range in number from 135 at the first of the month to 210 at the end. They rarely have problems with those individuals, most of whom have been coming for years. “It’s all how you set the stage. The guests walk in, are greeted with a smile and understand we are all here to have a meal together,” said Nies, who jokingly added, “Plus we serve the best rolls here and have been voted the top food kitchen in Boston.”

Some alternative outreach programs have already been put in place.

Monday mornings are now a casual “drop in day.” Coffee and a variety of snacks are served and cribbage tournaments held, but the real purpose is to allow people to sit down, get to know each other and learn that the distance between people isn’t that great, said Tibbetts.

On Wednesday morning there is a substance abuse program for people who are in recovery or thinking about it.

Thursday morning is a day for women to drop by, talk, watch a movie, do crafts, connect and have fun. “Anyone who drops by and hears the women dancing and clapping to a Lionel Ritchie song will discover that life for these people is not all sorrowful,” said Tibbetts.

Plans are to start a class which would teach the homeless how to do an interview, a skill that would be helpful participants get a job and secure housing. Tibbett is also thinking about giving them an opportunity to learn to use computers.

Neighborhood Action is now convinced that it is no longer a good use of their stewardship to simply feed people. “It’s better for us to reach out, help them to connect, build their self esteem and help them prepare for the future,” he said.

credit: Suzanne Besser

Mount Vernon Street resident Janet Terlizzi took a break from sweeping leaves and debris on Chestnut Street during Saturday's annual Fall Clean-Up Day sponosred by the Beacon Hill Civic Association and the Beacon Hill Business Association. Terlizzi, a member of the Clean Beacon Hill Committee, manned one of four volunteer stations at The Park Street School, which had tools and trash bags loaned by the Department of Public Works to help residents spruce up the Hill.

A memo to Mr. Dennis Royer
From: The Beacon Hill Times, on behalf of Beacon Hill residents
Re: Welcome to Boston

You’ve moved here from Denver to Boston and have been in your new job for over a month. As the city’s first Chief of Public Works and Transportation, you will oversee two large departments that affect our daily lives probably more than other city entities. It makes us hopeful that you’re from someplace other than Boston. Perhaps you’ll have new ideas, and we could certainly use some. We’d like to describe to you two constant frustrations that characterize our city. Then we respectfully offer recommendations gleaned from listening to residents and business owners at countless meetings on these topics about how you might address these frustrations.

You will have noticed that Boston is a filthy city. We acknowledge that we’re slobs. We litter. We don’t properly dispose of our dog’s doo. We leave our trash bags out at all times of the day. We don’t sweep our sidewalks or, as you will notice this winter, neither do most of us shovel the snow off them, as we are supposed to do.

But there are reasons for our behavior that go beyond poor citizenship, and you can do something about this.

We litter because we find so few trash receptacles on our sidewalks. Those that do exist overflow and create more trash because they are not emptied often enough. You’ll litter too when you get tired of carrying your styrofoam cup, lottery ticket or dog doo for blocks and blocks.

Compounding the problem is that city officials have in the past removed receptacles that have been “abused,” a quaint concept that means someone has filled them with household trash. But they are “abused” because the city installs the wrong barrels — those with open tops — which provide a convenient spot for negligent householders to dispose of their trash.

We’re hopeful that the new covered barrels slated for Cambridge Street will be the first step in changing that practice, but Charles Street also needs them.

We can’t leave the topic of filth without talking about street cleaning. Just after you arrived, the city began towing on street cleaning days. Those who are towed will complain, but make no mistake, those of us who have a stake in this city want this practice to continue regularly and frequently. Two years ago we followed the street cleaners’ efforts on Beacon Hill in two locations for an entire season. We discovered that in both locations, the street cleaner was blocked half the time, so that half the money the city spends in this effort is wasted. So often in Boston a good practice like this is started with much fanfare, but withers. Keep it up.

Another frustration peculiar to this city is its unfriendliness to pedestrians. This may surprise you since the downtown is small and dense, making it easy to get from place to place by foot. The tourist bureau even bills Boston as “The Walking City.’

City officials, however, have long favored moving automobile traffic at the expense of pedestrian traffic. Here’s an example. At intersections, city officials seem surprised that pedestrians will appear and want to cross the street. So they have denied pedestrians a walk light unless they push a button.

Naturally, because Boston is famous for its poor maintenance, pedestrians don’t believe the walk light will work. Or they notice that at a time when traffic is going in the same direction, and in any other American city it would be perfectly fine to cross the street, a big red hand says they can’t walk. Moreover, the walk lights are shorter here than in other cities. Since the whole situation makes no sense to them, and they predict they’ll never get a chance to cross legally, real Bostonians jaywalk.

You can help. Get rid of those buttons.

Next, make pedestrian crossing concurrent with the traffic traveling in the same direction. Boston’s traffic officials have said this puts pedestrians in jeopardy from turning cars. It may, except for the fact that pedestrians elsewhere seem to do just fine with such a system, and automobile drivers seem to be used to waiting for pedestrians to cross.

Finally, put out the word, hike the fines and enforce the rules about cars illegally occupying an intersection after the light has turned red. The lack of enforcement is a chief reason Boston’s traffic backs up. There are no consequences for surging into the intersection as the light turns red so that you’ll be ahead of the pack — which, of course, intends to do the same to you.

You’ll probably find many more problems to tackle than these two. But solving them would reduce great frustrations for Boston residents.