credit: D. Harney



The moon paid no heed to the clock tower at the Park Street Church, which read 3:30 p.m., last week.

CAPTION: Esplanade Association Executive Director Patrice Todisco was elected chair of the landscaping advisory committee of the Storrow Drive Tunnel Project.
Credit: Jackie Yessian




The proposed replacement or renovation of the Storrow Drive Tunnel will have a significant impact on the historic three-mile parkland along the Boston shore of the Charles River, so it was only fitting that Patrice Todisco, executive director of The Esplanade Association, which watches over that land, be given a key role in the planning process.

At a meeting last week, she was elected chairman of the Storrow Drive Tunnel Project’s landscape advisory committee, a group of citizens and landscape architects that will work hand-in-hand with the project’s Transportation Committee to determine the best way to redo the tunneled eastbound portion of the road that is said to be in poor condition and in need of repairs.

It is a mission she cares deeply about. “The project’s design, construction and eventual completion will profoundly impact the lives of the many individuals who use the park daily,” she said, “making it imperative to proceed with great care and a deep understanding of the park’s history as well as its current and future use.”

She said she was pleased to have committee members who have landscape experience to help make the decisions, and looks forward to moderating the committee’s meetings, which will focus on construction, timing, traffic, traffic volumes — and how all this will impact the Esplanade. “We will have to find solutions that are palatable to the [Beacon Hill and Back Bay] neighborhoods,” she said. “I suspect in the end it will be a series of compromises. The road has had an impact on the parkway for a long time. Whatever happens, it could be a better impact.”

Todisco is well-suited for the job, having previously served as executive director of the Boston Greenspace Alliance, a private, nonprofit open-space advocacy, founded in 1984, that is dedicated to the protection, creation, care and use of Boston's parks and open spaces. In that role, she worked with the public on the landscape design of the parcels created in the downtown corridor as a result of the Central Artery project.

The committee includes thirteen individuals, including Beacon Hill’s representatives Linda Cox, a founder of The Esplanade Association who was appointed by the Beacon Hill Civic Association, and Sharon Malt of the Beacon Hill Garden Club. Also serving on that committee are Philip Houck and Catherine Bordon of the Neighborhood Association of the Back Bay, Susan Barrow-Williams of Community Boating, Inc., Bob Corning of the Boston Society of Landscape Architects and Bob Sloane of Walk Boston.

Consultant to the Storrow Drive Tunnel Project is Nancy Farrell of Regina Villa Associates, a public relations firm on Franklin Street that specializes in managing and resolving complex public policy issues. She said a joint meeting of the landscape and transportation advisory committees would be held on February 28 to hear a presentation on construction phasing for each of the four options being considered for the tunnel renovation.

State Representative Marty Walz is pleased with the three committee assignments she received last week. “They were the three committees that I asked for,” she said.

Walz will stay on the Joint Committee for Education which covers any bill relating to pre-k through grade 12. “It is an enormous portfolio,” said Walz. Bills could be about extending the school day, curriculum or the MCAS, for example.

Walz has been moved to cover the Joint Committee on the Judiciary and the Joint Committee on Labor and Workforce Development, both at her request.

Walz, who is Of Counsel at Littler Mendelson, has been a labor and employment lawyer for 20 years. She is the only legislator with experience in that field. “I wanted to bring my experience and expertise as a labor and employment lawyer to the legislature,” she said. “Many of us bring our professional expertise to the legislature and we are much more effective.”

The judiciary committee covers bills on the criminal and civil side of the judiciary, said Walz, including sentencing penalties, parole and salaries of judges. “We work on things related to one’s constitutional rights.”

“It is a broad set of issues that I will be working on in the next two years,” said Walz. “It gives me an opportunity to focus on issues I care deeply about.”

Because bills have not yet been assigned to committees, Walz is not sure if one committee will take more time than another. “It may be that my time is equally split between the three,” she said. “I expect all three committees will be very active.”

City Council President Maureen Feeney has assigned Councilor Michael Ross, who represents Beacon Hill, to chair the Committee on Youth Violent Crime Prevention and the Committee on Institutional Relations. Ross will also vice chair the Committee on Government Operations.

Ross will chair Youth Violent Crime, which was a special committee last year but will become a standing committee this year.

Ross started the committee in 2006 to address the growing number of fatal and non-fatal shootings of and by teens on Boston’s streets. The committee issued several public reports advocating for more public resources to go to improving things like community centers and summer job programs that help at-risk teens stay off the streets and participate in more constructive activities.

“The committee was developed in response to the alarming number of shootings of young people in Boston,” said Ross. “The fact that so many teens are shooting one another is disturbing. Boston’s youth no longer feel safe in their neighborhoods, at school or in community centers and that is something that needs to be addressed and solved.”

Ross said the committee is not about entertaining “pie in the sky” ideas that call for developing unrealistic new programs but is simply a committee committed to strengthening existing programs in Boston.

“We have so many programs,” said Ross, who is a board member of the Mission Hill Community Center. “We don’t need more programs. What we need is more participation in the good programs the city already offers. And to develop better ways to market these programs to more of the population.”

Getting more youth to attend current youth programs is something that will be first on Ross’s agenda in 2007.

“The violence among youth in Boston is a crisis,” said Ross. “I’m glad to be able to again chair this committee because youth violence is one of the major issues that needs to be addressed in the city today.”

For the Committee on Institutional Relations, Ross’s duties will be to strengthen the city’s relationships with the universities, colleges and medical institutions throughout Boston.

“What I bring to this committee is a fair but firm relationship with many of these institutions,” said Ross, who has several colleges, including Suffolk University, and hospitals in his district. “I think I’ll be able to work closely with them but at the same time won’t be afraid to push back on important issues that may negatively impact Boston residents or city government.”

As chair, Ross will be able to call a hearing about matters with universities at any time, said Jerome Smith, his chief of staff.

Last year the committee passed an ordinance requiring all colleges and universities to submit zip codes of off campus students. This helped the city begin to compile information on each college and university. The information was then used to gauge each institution’s expansion possibilities and needs within the city.

credit: Courtesy photo




The Honorable Margaret H. Marshall, chief justice of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts and U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg addressed Suffolk University Law School’s conference on Globalization and the US Law School: Comparative and Cultural Perspectives, 1906-2006, at the end of January.

Justice Ginsburg discussed women in the law and Justice Marshall talk was titled “Common Ground, Constitutional Ground: Legal Education of the Future.”

CAMBRIDGE STREET MONITOR




CAPTION: Best Electric’s employees worked on traffic lights at Grove Street last week.
CREDIT: Karen Cord Taylor

Best Electric was on Cambridge Street for three days last week at the Grove Street intersection, but the new traffic signals still aren’t working. On Friday Best Electric was testing the equipment, said John Lepore, who runs the Cambridge Street reconstruction project for Mass. Highway. It’s possible that within a week or two the new signals will be operating.

Once testing is finished, Lepore will call in NStar, which has to make a splice in the manhole. The intersection will have to be shut down during this phase so the work will probably be done on a weekend, according to Lepore.

NStar spokeswoman Caroline Allen said that the work was not yet scheduled, but that NStar does work on weekends.

The traffic signals have taken longer than expected for several reasons, including the fact that Mass. Highway and the Boston Transportation Department changed manufacturers of some of the equipment at that intersection.

So the signals might be up by this coming weekend or next, said Lepore.

One aspect of the signal work is adjusting the timing. Residents were told 15 years ago when plans for Cambridge Street were finalized that they would have to walk across the street in two stages, stopping on the median. But now, according to Lepore, the timing is being adjusted so that pedestrians can cross the entire street without having to stop.

The control cabinet that was damaged has been repaired. Lepore said the raw steel poles will be painted after they are installed.

The street lights, which are still not working on the median or the north side of the street, remain a mystery.

Lepore maintains that the City of Boston’s street lighting division is in charge of those lights, even though Jennifer Mehigan, the mayor’s deputy press secretary, said once again that the city’s street lighting department doesn’t take over until the city “accepts” the completed job, which it has not done yet.

Lepore said that wasn’t the way it worked. “Boston street lighting prefers to put in their own work orders,” he said, and that they typically do a good job with it. Mass. Highway then pays the bill.

He said that in talking with his contact at NStar he learned that NStar has received one work order for the cabinet in front of Charles River Plaza, but none for the other lights.

Michael Ross


We’re sorry about Michael Ross, our city councilor. Earlier this week he was fined by the state Ethics Commission for getting 35 parking tickets dismissed. The commission determined that those tickets were issued while Ross was on personal business, not city business, for which he would have been entitled to dismissal under a city council program.

Ross did not have a Beacon Hill resident sticker on his car even though he was a resident and, he said, his car was registered at his Beacon Hill address. We’re sorry he was careless and didn’t investigate how the residential parking program applied to him. He should know the rules since, except for the West End, his district has residential parking on almost every street. If he had paid attention to those rules and secured a residential sticker for the period of time he lived on Beacon Hill, he would have had fewer tickets.

He also had tickets for overtime parking at meters. Anyone in downtown Boston can understand that problem. You drive around fruitlessly for 45 minutes late at night trying to find a space on the residential streets. Having given up, you park at a meter along one of the commercial streets. You have to make sure you get up early enough to move your car before the meters are in effect. That takes discipline and maturity.

Ross is 35 years old, but in his carelessness he behaved like the cliché of the 20-something male who skirts neighborhood rules because of immaturity. As a kid like that grows older, gets married and has children, everyone has confidence he will eventually become a responsible member of the community.

We’re also sorry because in this matter Ross, who works hard, attends or has his staff attend every community meeting and is extremely responsible about his constituents, looks as if he is just another corrupt politician, fixing a ticket because he can.

Other councilors, and most Bostonians, will not be sympathetic to Ross. After all, they, unlike him at the time, have their own driveways and won’t understand the problem.

State Representative Marty Walz, whose district boundaries are similar to Ross’s, will not sympathize. Like half the people in Ross’s district, she doesn’t even have a car, and she is certainly not pleased with a story about a politician behaving as people expect politicians to behave.

Is this matter fatal for Ross’s political career? Probably not. It will be harder for a few months, at least, for him to credibly urge the city to collect fines for trash or news box scofflaws, since he tried to get his own fines dismissed. That’s too bad for him and for us.

Is this city council program that dismisses tickets a good one? If city councilors decide they should be exempt from certain parking restrictions, then they should do so with a program that doesn’t require “fixing” a ticket, which smacks of 1920s politics.

Ross has declared he will not take advantage of the city council’s sanctioned ticket-fix at all from now on. He paid the fines and a penalty. He apologized. Moreover, several months ago he moved to Mission Hill, where he has a parking space under his house, so many of his parking problems will be over.

In all the time this newspaper has known Ross and consistently endorsed him, we’ve never known him to be a skimmer or a cheater in any way. So he could learn from this. He could be more careful. He could park his car at City Hall and walk or take taxis to many meetings in his nearby district.

He could still get in trouble, however. He is a guy who seems to have it all — looks, intelligence, enviable experience and training, and power. He is a target for all those out there who are envious of what he has achieved, and some of them have power of their own.

Perhaps there is an easy fix for this. Maybe he should get married — and we’re only half joking. This will make him seem more mature and make him less vulnerable to criticism. Furthermore, he’ll have a partner who can help him manage details like parking tickets and remind him to get up and move the car, like many spouses do. He’s got a job, a house and will soon have a law degree. He has learned from this lesson. It’s time for the rest of his life to begin.

Look in the Back Bay Sun for the last line. I think I changed it. Karen