Civic Association calls residents to action
by Suzanne Besser

CREDIT: Suzanne Besser
CAPTION: Civic Association board member Paula O’Keeffe stands to urge residents at Wednesday’s town meeting to call 911 to report loud parties and other acts of student behavior to the Boston Police.



The Beacon Hill Civic Association rallied the troops at a town meeting held Wednesday night at 74 Joy Street — urging them to get involved, write letters, sign petitions and enlist other neighbors in the fight against Suffolk’s plans to construct a new dorm at 20 Somerset Street.

About 125 people came to the meeting, which moderator Gael Mahoney said was for Beacon Hill and North End residents who would be most impacted by the proposed 22 story dormitory and student center. Suffolk University was not represented at the meeting because, according to Vice President John Nucci, while they were aware of it they did not think they were invited to attend.

Mahoney, a former civic association president and resident of Pinckney Street, opened the meeting by saying its purpose was to update residents on the status of Suffolk’s proposal, identify and recommend an alternative solution that would safeguard the neighborhood and ask residents to help defeat the proposal.

Suffolk is currently in the process of changing from a commuter school to a residential one and enlarging the undergraduate student body to 5,000 by 2009. The proposed dormitory would be their third residence to house students, in addition to ones at 10 Somerset Street and 150 Tremont Street.

During the meeting, civic association members and residents, who were allowed about a minute apiece to speak, reiterated the reasons they oppose the dormitory. They fear the 550-bed dormitory for underclassmen will attract even more students to Beacon Hill because upperclassman and friends of those in the dorm will choose to live in off-campus housing here. This, they said, will displace families currently living in the neighborhood and increase the amount of rowdy behavior, loud parties and vandalism.

Opponents also want Suffolk to work with residents and the Boston Redevelopment Authority on a new long-range plan for its future growth before any expansion takes place. “When an institution is going to make such an impact on a neighborhood, it needs to undergo a thoughtful process, said civic association President John Achatz.

In the audience were preservationists who want the former MDC building to be preserved as a historic building by the Boston Landmarks Commission. There were representatives from the adjacent Peace Garden who fear the dorm would cause shadows on and disrupt the solitude of the memorial for victims of homicide.

There were neighbors who objected to the noise made by students returning from bars late at night. “In the twelve years I have lived here, I have noticed a change,” said Eve Waterfall of West Cedar Street. “I don’t leave my windows open any more.”

There were even two Suffolk University students, residents of the Hill, who said they were surprised at the tone of the meeting and asked to be part of the dialogue. “I am sorry for everything but please know it is not all of us,” said Jillian Moohan of Cambridge Street. “We are your neighbors. We want to live here and we want to get to know you.”

State Representative Marty Walz said there is reason to be hopeful that, with a lot of hard work, residents could defeat the dorm. “I have fought this fight before, over and over again,” she said, “and been successful in defeating or reshaping development. Our goal is to make this a better community.”

“Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty,” said Pinckney Street resident Myles Striar. “It will be a long fight but we all better show up until Suffolk looks at us and says ‘you won.’”

Every Thursday morning, Barbara Wade unlocks a door — and opens a view to a new life of hope for local women. Wade is a part-time program administrator at Neighborhood Action, a nonprofit service for the homeless and needy at St. John the Evangelist Church on Bowdoin Street. On Thursdays, she hosts a drop-in center for women who are living primarily on the street, women who are facing or threatened with violence too often in their lives, women who have to spend the bulk of their days deciding where they will go next, when the coffee runs out or the weather is bad. When you don’t have a home of your own, you spend a lot of your life looking at things like weather, or who at the local coffee shop might be kind, or where you can put your bag down and take a deep breath. Things most of us take for granted.

Barbara Wade doesn’t take much of anything for granted. Soft-spoken and bespectacled, with a shock of blonde hair that gives her a slightly professorial air, Wade looks forward to every week she can spend with the women who seek her out. “I absolutely love my job; I love doing the recovery meeting on Wednesday, and the drop-in service on Monday. And the Thursday women’s group is so special. We have coffee, and pastries, and we even dance a little sometimes. It’s a chance for the women to feel safe, and have fun for a few hours. It’s been a really big success.”

Wade herself has been a big success, though she’d be unlikely to say it. Twelve years ago, after a brief sojourn of her own involving homelessness and alcoholism, she decided one Sunday to “change [her] life,” and after that, there was no looking back. She started work as an administrative assistant at a firm on Beacon Street, worked at Boston Healthcare for the Homeless and at the Pine Street Clinic and, after an illness that kept her sidelined from the workforce, began working at Neighborhood Action a little more than a year ago. Along the way, she found a place of her own that’s both physical and metaphysical: she rents an apartment here on the Hill, and she’s become a truth-teller and advice-giver among her guests at Neighborhood Action, and sometimes her own friends and family.

“She’s become a real gift to the program,” enthuses Rev. Ron Tibbetts, executive director at Neighborhood Action. “She has an integrity among the folks who come here that’s unmatched.”

That integrity is real, and hard-earned. “I understand, number one, what it’s like to be a woman alcoholic on the street: it’s lonely, and vulnerable, and dangerous. When I needed help, there were a lot of organizations that helped me get to where I am today — I did the footwork, but they were there to guide me. And I discovered that there are a lot of nice people out there.” She pauses. “There are,” she repeats, wonderingly. “And that’s a nice thing I’ve learned.”

What’s not as nice, she’s learned, is how close to the bone many organizations like hers are forced to operate. “Now that we don’t offer the lunch program here, we’re researching other ways of serving the community,” she says. “We’re not as big as a program as Pine Street, and we’re not as known, so we really could appreciate any additional support we can get.

“I sat down with a guest recently, and he said, ‘I don’t know what I’d do if this place weren’t here. It gives me everything I need.’ I’m not even making this up!” she laughs. “He really said it, and he must have felt it. That makes me feel good, as much as I wish we could do more.”

For now, Wade manages the programs she’s been hired to manage, and she dances a little sometimes with the women who come every Thursday to be part of the program, and part of her orbit. That’s enough for her — and for the people around her. “She’s just a gift,” Tibbetts says. “She’s really a gift.”

Fed up with the Legislature’s failure to act upon the health care amendment, Barbara Roop and other supporters last week filed suit against the Commonwealth to make sure it gets on the 2008 ballot.

In 2002, Mount Vernon Street resident Roop began work on the amendment which would make the Legislature and the Governor responsible for enacting the laws needed to guarantee every resident access to affordable, comprehensive health and mental health care coverage. It does not specify any particular approach to reform, but gives the tools to make sure it is done.

In July, 2004, the Constitutional Convention did not act but instead referred the amendment to the next convention.

In July, 2006, the Constitutional Convention ducked a vote by sending the amendment to a “special” study committee — which never met.

On November 9, the Constitutional Convention met for the sixth time this session and, for the sixth time, failed to vote on this amendment before it recessed — effectively preventing the amendment from appearing on the November 2008 ballot.

Roop, who co-chairs the Committee for Health Care for Massachusetts, led a citizen initiative that gathered more than 71,000 signatures and had the support of enough legislators to move the amendment to the voters. In July she said she was worried that political maneuvering and a general reluctance on the part of legislators to amend the constitution would prevent a vote at all.

When that did appear to be the case, Roop had had enough. On November 10, she and ten other Massachusetts voters, including Beacon Hillers John Sears and Myles Striar, joined the Committee for Health Care for Massachusetts in a lawsuit filed in Suffolk Superior court to force the Commonwealth to put the amendment on the 2008 ballot. “The paramount issue for all the plaintiffs is that the General Court fulfill its duty to vote yes or no on every amendment sent to them by the people,” said Roop.

The suit asks the Supreme Judicial Court to order Secretary of State William F. Galvin to put the amendment before the voters unless the Legislature gives it the second and final up or down vote required by Article 48 of the Massachusetts Constitution.

Donald K. Stern, partner at Bingham McCutchen LLP and former U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts, is handling the case. He said in a prepared release that those seeking to put the amendment on the ballot had followed the process set out in the Constitution but have been stymied by the General Court’s failure to vote again on the amendment.

“Neither the text nor the purpose of Article 48 permits or condones the use of non-constitutional means to thwart an otherwise qualified initiative amendment from being presented to the people at a statewide election,” Stern said.

Sears, a resident of Acorn Street, said he became a plaintiff not only because he wanted to make sure everyone received health care, but also because “I have become very concerned about the new tendency of the Legislature not to act on proposals and the fast shuffling of them into a committee for study. As we know,” he said, “five percent of study committees are for real and the others are for the dustbin.”

Striar, of Pinckney Street, is also concerned about this tendency. “Our nation prides itself above all things on being fair,” he said. “This suit addresses two core issues of fundamental fairness. Will we insist that our elected officials obey the constitution they are sworn to uphold and will we insist that they enact the laws needed to make sure every resident gets the health care they need?”

Roop said that since the suit was filed, there has been no response from Secretary Galvin.

Imaginative thinking

A group of urban thinkers has proposed an interesting idea for the Longfellow Bridge: Re-configure it. Give it one lane in each direction for motor vehicle traffic. Reserve the rest of the pavement for bicycles and pedestrians.

The Livable Streets Alliance, a non-profit advocacy group formed in July of 2005 by Cambridge and Boston residents with some expertise in transportation matters, has proposed this idea at this time because the Longfellow Bridge is slated for a long overdue rebuilding and restoration. The alliance gives Tony Pangaro of Charles Street the credit for the concept.

Some people will believe an idea like this has no chance of gaining ground in a car-obsessed society. It would be good, however, to make sure the plan has a fair hearing, since the configuration of the bridge right now has problems.

It is hard now for pedestrians to use the bridge. The sidewalks are narrow. It is hard to walk two abreast or to pass oncoming runners and walkers. In the winter, with ice and snow build-up, it is sometimes impossible to find enough space to walk.

The Longfellow Bridge is one of the most heavily traveled bicycle routes in the city — The Beacon Hill Times’s Flashlight Team counted the bicycles on several routes a few years ago, and found that more riders used the Longfellow Bridge to get into Boston than any other routes we studied. Yet there is only a sliver of space for bicycles, whose riders have to thread their way through two-ton motor vehicles.

It’s hard now for cars to use the bridge too. Vehicular traffic is already backed up during several hours of the day. There are few other options for crossing the river if they were forced into one lane in each direction.

Traffic in and around most of the world’s cities is frustrating. Studies have shown that the time people waste getting from point to point in all urban areas has increased. In a small, dense city like Boston, it can take longer to drive somewhere than to walk.
Boston has, however, some advantages. Its density and relative small size make walking a feasible means of getting around.

As maligned as the MBTA is, over the years it has served us well. We have public transportation that compared to other American cities would probably earn a B, if New York is an A. Beacon Hill, with each of its four corners served by a T stop within a five minute walk, is possibly Boston’s best-served neighborhood. But many neighborhoods — Charlestown comes first to mind, but there are many others — have too little rail rapid transit, and the buses that take their place only clog city streets more.

Interestingly, this bridge is one of the workhorses of Boston, not only carrying bikes, cars and people on its inadequate lanes, but also the Red Line. The transportation tensions on this bridge are so great, but it includes all our modes, and even crosses a relatively unused pathway, the Charles River..

The Longfellow’s reconstruction would be a good opportunity to ask some hard questions. Do we want to give pedestrians a good route across the river? How can we get more people to move about the city on foot? How many cars can enter Boston daily without the city coming to a halt? How can public transportation be made more convenient? These are only a few of the questions we should answer as a metropolitan area.

The Mayor has a new cabinet officer who is heading the transportation and public works departments, and may have some ideas about the Longfellow. A new governor will influence public transportation and roads, and this might be a good time to get him involved in a local project.

Until we get our own Scotty who can beam us up to the places we want to go, we’ll have to get there by land. Because of the Longfellow’s burden, it might serve as the place where Boston rethinks its entire transportation strategy.