Dori Zaleznik, Chief Administrative Officer for the mayor sent this to aldermen this week.
I am writing to let you know that Rob Garrity has resigned from his job as Director of Sustainability to pursue another position. If there are sustainability issues you wish to address prior to the hiring of a new director, please send them to Bill Ferguson in the Building Department who is very knowledgeable. Thank you.
In 2013, Former Newton COO Bob Rooney said if the $92K/year Sustainability Director Rob Garrity did not save Newton $1 Million annually, we could have his salary.
http://blogs.wickedlocal.com/newton/2013/05/21/does-newton-need-a-sustainability-director/#axzz3R0i9a0NB
In 2014, Bob Rooney resigned as COO of Newton.
In 2015, the $92K/year Sustainability Director Rob Garrity resigned.
Newton taxpayers are committed to excellence in environmental stewardship, but lets keep in mind we live in a city, not a petri dish for Agenda 21 social engineering schemes in the name of “sustainability”.
Hi,
Are they hiring for this position? I would actually love to apply. Please forward any info you may by leaving a comment here. Thanks
It’s been a revolving door at city hall. Joshua, do you have data on just how much the sustainability director did or did not save and why, or are you just slinging mud? You keep repeating the figure $92K. Does that strike you as an excessive salary for someone with an advanced degree in environmental science or engineering? Or perhaps it was not enough?
May not be a million, but it’s twice the annual salary in savings.
http://newton.wickedlocal.com/article/20140718/News/140716658
I’m just waiting for the greatest management team in the history of municipal management teams as the Mayor promised to occur lol. He can’t keep people for a year and he’s going to hire the greatest municipal team of all municipal management teams.. I wonder how that makes the current management team feel, knowing he doesn’t believe they are the best.
Even before the Mayor asked the leadership of Newton’s Village organizations, including the Area Councils, Waban leaders have been working on enunciating a “planning framework vision” to shape Waban for the next couple of decades. Under the leadership of Councilor Chris Pitts and with the expertise of EDC Chairman Chris Steele, the Waban Area Council has already sponsored the first 2 community meetings to produce a working document revealing the community’s preferences and values in a working blueprint for its future portrait. The first session, widely advertised, drew roughly 40 people to the Waban Library Center in November and the brainstorming that ensued that night showed that there were some topics of great importance to the participants. Among them, sustainability. So, with the notion that participants would want to dig deeper into the possibilities of each area of interest, Chris P. and Chris S. invited Rob Garrity to join us for discussion of that topic at our Second Visioning Session about three weeks ago. It appears that the “Chris Duo” has a working crystal ball, since the participants of the second session were able to absorb a trove of sustainability information from Rob before this sad announcement of his departure for more sustainable pastures! BTW, if you live in Waban, please join us for Session Three on Monday February 23 at 7:30PM at the WLC to ponder possible solutions to today’s dilemmas and to balance the changes we need and seek with the quest for resources to meet those needs.
A loss for the City. Rob was doing a great job. I think a City the size of Newton and with our commitment to all things green, should have someone focused like a laser on sustainability in all operations.
Sustainability ? ? !!!
What are we intent on sustaining?
Our existing housing stock? Our landscape? Our mobility ? Our fresh air ?
Let’s get our environmental priorities in order !
We can keep our trash separated from our recyclables, compost biodegradable waste, legislate the use of plastic bags but are we willing to take on really large and meaningful problems ?
This seems to border on the hypocritical !
Learning about the possibilities of using solar or geothermal power on our City’s public buildings and our residences to supplement or remove us from dependence on fossil-based energy is not hypocritical. Thinking about encouraging road and sidewalk design to enable safe walking and cycling is not hypocritical. Determining which tree species to plant to replace our shrinking canopy is not hypocritical. Changing out the light bulbs on Newton’s streets to save energy costs is not hypocritical. All of these are among the steps that a City with a functioning Sustainability Director can identify and promote! Sorry, Blueprintbill, thinking about how we choose to move into the future has value, is good economics, and definitely is not tilting at windmills!
Sally,
With all due respect ;
Learning about possibilities ,.. ? Hire an engineer.
Thinking about roadway design ,.. .? The roads have pretty much been designed. Further design isn’t going to alleviate our traffic problem. Reducing the number of cars might.
Determining tree species,.. ? How long and how many dollars will that take ? How about planting them at a substantially greater rate than we are losing them ?! How about putting a restraints on a developers “right” to clear cut demo properties ?
Changing light bulbs ? OK got me there .
Thinking about what has gotten us here in the first place is what is not ” tilting at windmills”, idle talk with no action is !
Environmental rectitude could well start with ‘sustaining’ what we already have. ” Sustainability ” ?
Adam, Garrity was hired in 2013 and Newton spent $313 Million that year
He left in Newton when Newton projected it would spend $345 Million.
It doesn’t appear that he really did anything substantial to save money.
All, there is no such thing as “global warming”, or “man-made climate change” or anything like that. At a news conference last week in Brussels, Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of U.N.’s Framework Convention on Climate Change, admitted that the goal of environmental activists is not to save the world from ecological calamity but to destroy capitalism.
“This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time, to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the Industrial Revolution,” she said.
Read More At Investor’s Business Daily: http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/021015-738779-climate-change-scare-tool-to-destroy-capitalism.htm#ixzz3RsQTDrdB
Follow us: @IBDinvestors on Twitter | InvestorsBusinessDaily on Facebook
All, I think it’s very clear that there is no reason to respond to Josh Norman
I can see why Red Greg Reibman dismissed my post out of hand. After all, it conflicts with his left-wing litmus tests. Then again, Red Greg Reibman has a record of doing so going back to his days with the Newton TAB.
I would have responded earlier but I was busy shoveling off all the global warming and climate change that fell on my sidewalks in order to avoid getting fined by Vicki Danberg and the other snow-clearing fascists.
http://thefederalistpapers.integratedmarket.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/205_156257.jpg
Greg, I have nothing to say to Josh on this topic. However I am disappointed in your recommendation to all. I thought the purpose of this blog, that you established, was for people to offer comments and for others to respond in the positive or the negative with a valid rebuttal. JMO, I do not consider your reply a valid rebuttal.
It now appears that there are stricter guidelines as to how we are to participate on this public website. That is unfortunate.
@Patrick: I wasn’t ordering anyone not to respond, I was only suggesting it was not worth the calories one would burn tying a response to such an ignorant statement.
Greg, as the acknowledged lead person on this website, you need to be more careful with your “suggestions”. Some may consider your reply to Josh’s comment as being an ignorant statement.
Josh does not do himself any favors by escalating the ill tenor of the conversation. The two of you are becoming the local equivalent of MSNBC and Fox News. I’ll let the two of you decide who is who.
I think I will go out and help a neighbor shovel. That is now a more productive activity than this blog.