As we prepare for the various public meetings (including the community meetings on September 19 and 23) on the subject of the Newton Center for Active Living (NewCAL), it will instructive to look at the materials presented on the project’s website. Since the Administration decided that the working meetings at which the deliberations took place were not to be public meetings, these summaries are all we have to go on at this point. (There don’t seem to be minutes available for the key decision-making sessions.)
Today, let’s look at the answer to one of the frequently asked questions, “How will we pay for the NewCAL project?”
Let’s parse this answer:
The NewCAL project will be paid for within the City budget and will not require an increase in taxes to fund it.
Every year, the City produces a balanced budget. Indeed, it is required to. So, if we take as a promise that the capital and operating costs associated with the project will be handled from within the annual budget, that implies that other things will not be funded. What are they?
Like a mortgage, it will be bonded over a 30-year period, and annual debt payments will come from the City’s operating budget.
Part of maintaining a AAA debt rating is to be prudent in the amount of bonds issued by the City. As above, is the Mayor proposing that some other capital project will not be funded to compensate for this project? If so, which one?
Should the pool facility be included with this project, the funding source would be determined at that time.
Huh?
So, in the search for “transparency,” we receive an answer to this FAQ that is a nullity.
Stay tuned. More to come.
While the Mayor has stated that Albemarle Park is not yet confirmed as a ‘NewCAL’ site, she has advised nevertheless in her August 13th Notice that she currently is having the City “develop the [Albemarle] site plan with the help of the architectural team.” It would seem that her proceeding to develop the site plan with the help of the “architectural team” at a pre-site, pre-scope stage is a gross mismanagement of City funds, especially considering other city financial obligations and unmet needs.
It should now be apparent, by virtue of the massive uniformly hostile reaction to the Albemarle siting of a ‘NewCAL’ athletic complex (pretending to be a ‘senior center’ as a few rooms are priority reserved for senior activity), including the anti NewCAL in the Park petition with approaching 7,000 signatures to date, that NewCAL in ANY Newton park is soundly rejected — particularly Albemarle Park with its additional locational drawbacks.
The prudent course would be for the Mayor to scale down the athletic complex ‘NewCAL’ to an actual senior center and consider only non-park sites, be they in city ownership or not, including in possible combination with the existing Walnut Street Senior Center, and only then proceed with any outside contracted “architectural team”.
I think the residents and taxpayers are now entitled to know the total city expenditures connected to NewCAL previously and projected to be paid to the NewCAL contracted “team” firms already identified in the project website, NV5, Steffian Bradley Architects, and Bargmann Hendrie + Archetype, Inc.
I left Riverside at Land Use/ZAP to go to this portion of Finance. Live tweeted from @NewtonVillages.
Thanks to @NewtonVillages for the play-by-play of the Finance Committee meeting!
I keep hearing that they will use 2 acres of “hardspace”, and not use greenspace.
An acre is 43560 sq ft. Where do they find even 1 acre of hardspace there, not to mention 2. Why do people just take these things for granted? And not question them? There’s hardly 1 acre of hardspace there!
Hello?
Build on stilts? With “green space” under the overhang? Solve the flooding concern, too. (I’m kidding!)
I would like to see that resignation letter of Marian Knapp’s, that Brenda Noel referred to last night.
If NewCal on Albemarle wins approval — and that’s a very big huge IF — the only appropriate way to pay for it is through a debt exclusion approved by the voters. The siting of cannabis stores was approved by the voters. There’s talk that the Riverside development approval may end up going before the voters. Asking the voters to fund NewCal through a debt exclusion would be just another example where the voters are given the final say on an important decision facing the city. If our elected officials were acting in our best interests they wouldn’t already be spending taxpayer dollars on architectural fees for this questionable project. So at the earliest possible opportunity, let’s take this to the voters for a final decision.
Right, Gerry. I don’t know why people have chosen not to be forthright about that debt exclusion point.
OK to clarify, by rough measurements with Google Earth Pro, they have approximately 60000 sq feet of “hardspace” so if they stick to their proposals of slightly less than 40000 sq feet they can fit it without taking green space.
There’s about 1.4 acres at the pool and courts surrounding it.