In the last week of the campaign, Councilor Greg Schwartz received $3,000 from three members of the Kopelman family in Chestnut Hill and loaned his campaign $9,000. That’s just over half the money he raised in the entire campaign ($23,725).
Maybe the late fliers (discussed on the previous thread) weren’t due to bad luck or the challenges of coordinating a big mailing. Maybe the fliers were late because Councilor Schwartz made a last-ditch effort to save his campaign that came a couple of beats too late.
JUST STOP! A single poster offers an opinion/observation about a late mailer and the new ward 5 councilor reports a hear say conversation in response and Sean spins off a whole new thread. What the hell. Of course I expect nothing more from Sean.
Could someone please remove this post?
It’s not going to happen, but I’d favor removing this post.
I’ll repeat my mantra: move on.
The same people that elbowed Charlie Shapiro out in 2011 decided to do the same to Greg in 2019. Independent thinkers are apparently not wanted. I agree move on!
And now we have Alicia Bowman.
Our councilor who says she will promote the elimination of single family zoning,.. city wide !
@blueprintbill – I do not think Alicia said that. Kind of like the 10 story building fear mongering. Just stop.
Wow. Tough crowd. I’m having a hard time understanding what the problem with this thread is. Post election analysis is a part of every election, everywhere. Noting that the reason Councilor Schwartz may not have prevailed because of late fundraising and mailing, is just a fact; not a reflection on the individual.
@Greg – We already have a thread for the W6 at-large results, a separate thread around Greg S not conceding and a general “what’s next” thread. I feel this would have been better suited as a post to one of the existing discussions or under a generic post-mortem analysis thread. Given how close this one was and the differences in approach between Schwartz and Bowman there’s some potential post-mortem discussion to be had but that’s not what this post is, too specific a point to have a whole thread dedicated to.
What Patrick said. But this is Sean’s MO. Rather than comment on an existing post, he almost always creates his own…because he can
Lots to talk about with any election. When a mailer arrived and who paid for it? Unless this was one boring election, this issue doesn’t make the top 25 list of concerns.
How about a more general post on other late money received, from individuals and PACS, for all the candidates (including overlaps between individuals and PACS)? That would give a sense of a more even-handed view of things from this person or other observers.
@Andrea…this is what Alicia has said about single family zoning on Nov 4…@blueprintbill is totally right…
https://patch.com/massachusetts/newton/newton-council-candidate-bowman-calls-end-single-family
@Jennifer – “willing to look at” is not promoting.
For those who didn’t look at the article. Willing, Promoting, call it what you will!!
Alicia Bowman, candidate for the Ward 6 at-large seat on the Newton City Council, stated that she supported eliminating single-family zoning in Newton citywide. At the Newton Area Council debate on October 27, Bowman was asked by opponent, current Councilor Vicki Danberg, if she favored eliminating single family zoning because of its history of being associated with racism. Bowman replied, “I’d be willing to set single family zoning aside.” When asked by her other opponent, Councilor Greg Schwartz, if she meant in certain areas or city-wide, she replied, “We could look at it citywide.”
Bowman went on to state that eliminating single-family zoning would add diversity and more housing to Newton. In particular, she envisioned current owners of single-family homes should be able to divide them into two-family homes across the city.
Thank you Jennifer and Simon.
andrea,.. “Just stop “.
The piece in the Patch is not an article. It’s a post in the Neighbor News section (the place for promoting community events and other local PR), self-submitted by a “community member” named Jessica Miller. No journalist would write an article about a quote without interviewing the speaker or giving him or her an opportunity to respond in writing. Instead, Jessica extrapolated a qualified, unfinished thought into an inaccurate headline and an “article” devoid of any substance (no interview with the speaker, no background on the subject of the quote). And then leaders from two political groups who opposed the quoted candidate amplify the phony “article” online.
This exact disinformation tactic has wreaked havoc in our national politics. I’m sorry to see it happening in Newton.
What Rhanna said.
The debate was recorded. Below is a link to relevant part of the debate (just over 2 mins)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_jPKoHJ4zU&feature=youtu.be
Whether it fits here or in the other post, I’ll put it here because this is a shorter thread at this point. Do we know if absentee ballots and early voting was already counted in the initial ballot count or do this wait for a recount? When do we expect recounts back?
@Blueprint and @Jennifer no reason to “just stop”. In my experience, when someone tells you to “Just stop” without offering any sort of proof, they’re simply bullying. It’s like I told my children when they were preschoolers: They feel bad on the inside and they’re trying to make you feel bad on the inside too.
@Casey – there was no early voting (for city elections) and the absentee ballots were counted (by submitting the ballots during the day). As Poll Workers, we also count the write ins before leaving the polls. That said, those are long days and it is possible a few mistakes were made along the way.
Rhanna, since Alicia is on V14 quite a bit, perhaps you, as her friend, could encourage her to clarify the confusion – if in fact there really is any.
My priorities are climate, housing crisis, traffic, green space.
Zoning is a key component of any plan to address climate, housing, and traffic. Cities all over the country are looking closely at zoning and how it can be a part of the climate solution. And the housing crisis is having a big impact on our city. As I knocked doors I heard from hundreds of residents who are ready to downsize and are concerned about the lack of housing options to stay in Newton. Local businesses struggle to keep employees who have to commute an hour to get here. Lack of affordable options keeps more and more people from being able to settle in Newton. A major component of climate change is people who work in Boston and are forced to commute an hour each way due to the lack of affordable alternatives closer to their work.
What I tried to communicate in the debate is that we need to be willing to look at all alternatives, and we need to start that process now. A process for looking at single-family zoning would need to include study and analysis, education, public feedback. We should not declare that SFZ is sacrosanct before looking at it closely.
Well said, Alicia. Canvassers talked to me about what you said as if you were suggesting we sacrifice every first born in the city.
So Alicia, it appears that you *prefer* to eliminate single family housing (hence increase traffic with denser projects as you can’t have it both ways).
Regardless, IF there were a vote tomorrow…
Would YOU vote to eliminate single family zoning (yes or no)?
Please take a stance. We don’t want ambiguity from our elected officials. We don’t want to hear “we’ll see” or “we’ll take look at it” or “we’ll consult others” or “we’ll ask for opinions” etc….
Just a simple YES or NO please. Would you vote to eliminate single family housing?
@Newtoner, We will sacrifice that and more if we don’t get a handle on climate change.
@Simon, The link is helpful (for anyone who wants to listen for themselves to what the debaters actually said, it begins around 43:45, it’s interesting and thought-provoking).
I’m assuming you’ve now watched the video and can see for yourself the misrepresentations in the literal fake news article that you and Jennifer amplified here (a post on a community interest message board that was disguised to look like a news article). I guess I was expecting a mea culpa.
Specifically at 44:39 where Alicia responds to Vicki Danberg’s direct question on would you do away with or keep single family zoning.
@MrOffice2011, I think the excerpt below from Alicia’s post makes the answer clear…unless we could complete study, analysis, education and public feedback in the next 24 hours, then tomorrow she would vote NO.
“…we need to be willing to look at all alternatives, and we need to start that process now. A process for looking at single-family zoning would need to include study and analysis, education, public feedback.”
Be wary of the candidates / officials who want to give you a definitive answer to their stance on anything before engaging in a thorough process to evaluate the issue.
@Groot, thank you so much for the information. With no absentee ballots and early votes already incorporated, it sounds like we have a pretty accurate count.
Thank you also for those very long days and for the public service you provide our town and our democracy.
@Rhanna
Vicki asks Alicia “So would you do away with, or keep single family zoning?”
and Alicia responds “Willing to set Single Family Zoning aside”
Its hardly fake news, but I must admit its thought-provoking!
Why are people so offended by the suggestion that single-family zoning is not the best thing for Newton? I’d rather have a small apartment complex next to my house than the monster McMansion being built right now.
@Newtoner
Perhaps you should transmute your alias from Newtoner to either JPer, or maybe Brookliner
Zoning is intended to give people predictability. I am very thankful our council is made up of 24 members at times!
@Simon French: I do appreciate your sense of humor.
Newtoner – single family zoning encourages tear downs and building McMansion. Builders in Newton often spend over a million for the land alone (speaking from personal experience trying to find a build able lot because our housing needs changed). If they can only build a single detached house, they’ll build a McMansion to make the biggest profit. Profit they could make building a more affordable duplex if it wasn’t banned.
Yet, many of the teardowns we see in the MR zones currently are tearing down either singles or two-families and building two-families by-right or attached dwelling units by special permit – and none of them are affordable.
Agree with Amy. The new multi-families in my area are all massive in size and sell for well north of $1 M. These multi-families not exactly improving access or affordability. Developers are going to maximize size and profit, be it single or multi-family.
It’s a shame that the big developments currently being built and those coming through the special permit process only seem to offer rental opportunities and not ownership opportunities. Given their scale and volume, these apartment-style buildings could actually be the setting for affordable home ownership…with the associated benefits of longterm equity building and longterm community building – a win-win.
How do the pro-development folks feel about only rental units being offered at Riverside, Austin St, and Northland? Did I miss these folks pushing developers to allot a decent portion of the units as condos?
I prefer affordable rental to affordable condo, unless affordable condo has permanent affordability restrictions to limit sale price. Otherwise that affordability burns off almost immediately.
Fignewtonville – $2,600 for the least expensive 1 bedroom apartment at Austin Street. Plus other expenses. More than $31,000 per year for that?
$3400/mo. for other 1 BRs there.
$6,000 for some of the 2 BRs.
Is this really what we want? More expensive housing; more cars; more congestion; more pollution; less open space; more self-entitled rich people?
@Rhanna: “Be wary of the candidates / officials who want to give you a definitive answer to their stance on anything before engaging in a thorough process to evaluate the issue.
Isn’t that what Alicia did in her response to Vicki’s question?
Peter, for the affordable units? You sure about that?
You might want to check your math. Those are the market rate rents I believe.
Peter, the actual real affordable numbers:
Approximately 1,600 a month for one bedrooms, 1750 for two bedrooms. 11 one bedrooms and 4 2 beds I believe.
Similar rent numbers I’m guessing in Washington place if not lower.
And yes there are market rate units as well at the more expensive rents. That is what pays for the locked in affordable units for the 99 year life of the building.
Don’t take my word for it. Use the google.
Fig – my last paragraph wasn’t rhetorical; it is a sincere question.
The 45 exorbitantly priced units and the 100 vehicles at 28 Austin Street as well as the other factors I mentioned. Is that what we think is best for our planet, our town and society?
It’s fair to say that it is good for Dinosaur Capital & friends.
@Amy, No. And furthermore, did you read what she posted here? Alicia laid out a thorough, thoughtful explanation of her ideas on the very complicated topic of single family zoning. She didn’t walk back anything she said but laid out more context and offered some great background info. So why are you trying to amplify a 10-second sound bite instead of responding to her post? Is this a game of “gotcha” or an actual dialogue about an issue that is crucial to the future of our planet?
Speaking of which, what is your position on single-family zoning? It’s a topic that’s being studied and tested by municipalities all over the country. In recent months of volunteering for candidates, I’ve learned that Newton residents cover the whole spectrum from anti to uninformed/open-minded to wanting to seriously examine it (to Sean Roche who wants to adopt it citywide starting on Tuesday). How do you plan to use your leadership on this issue?
Peter:
Life is about trade offs. Those units got us 23 affordable units, 11 one bedrooms, 12 two bedrooms. It got us first floor retails and another “wing” of our downtown village. And we kept the parking lot. And we got a million or so to redo Newtonville which will be moving forward in 2020. And we have a nice public patio that is shaping up nicely (albeit slowly)
Perfect? No. Could we have done an 100% affordable project? Yep. We’d still be waiting for tax credits. But yes.
Would I have preferred a park? Or NewCal? Or a gigantic statue to Jerry riding a bike that played music when you spun the wheel? Hell to the yes.
Could we have waited for the senior center to be cited on the lot? Yep. That’s another 10 years with a half empty parking lot.
So in my view we didn’t make the perfect the enemy of the good. You can certainly disagree just use the correct rents when you do, ok?
The Jerry on a bike think is still an option you know. That would be…fine…art.
As for what is best, I don’t know. The parking lot was fugly. Ask me again next year when all the amenities and the Walnut redo is done. That’s when I can honestly answer if it was worth it. Fair enough?
@Fignewtonville –
I’m game
A large segment of the population of this city own single family homes. The expectation concomitant with their investment thereof is that the neighborhood in which their home stands is stable and insured from any radical change by the zone in which it stands. A politician voted into office after stating that he/ she would be “ willing to set single family zoning aside”, should not be trusted to act favorably on behalf of the city’s homeowners.
The support by so called “progressive “ political forces, for the radical changes being proposed to our zoning regulations, ( and allowing the massive development and changes we face ), is threatening to the very foundation of life in what is / was supposed to be, a garden city and all of its amenities.
Developers are being used to promote agendas taken up in city hall.
And the developers themselves take up these agendas, not to advance social justice objectives, environmental traffic or climate change challenges we are facing. They do this to turn a profit. Their sole MOTIVE is to make money, pure and simple, and our leaders are using them to advance their own political ambitions and agendas ( noble as they sometimes might be ).
The bottom line if these big changes come to fruition, is a negative one for the citizens of Newton.
Of the 24 newly elected city councilors, how many lean towards abolishing SFZ?
And how “locked in” was the version of the draft zoning presented, village-by-village, in winter 2018/spring2019?
Obviously the new city council will need to complete this work, but do the longtime observers here think we’re in for tweaks or seismic shifts?
@NewtonResident – I would say the zoning draft is in a tuning phase, not locked in. Ward 4 was at the tail end of the presentations and by then they already had a number of changes to preview like removing the “small apartment building” type from R3 and a completely new R4 that would allow for three units by right and 4-8 by special permit. In general the changes were around making the lot requirements larger, housing footprints smaller along with splitting off the higher density buildings from R3 into a new R4 district.
The second draft with these changes was originally estimated for May of this year but I haven’t heard or seen anything announced on the zoning redesign mailing list or website… I’m guessing that the recent departures from the planning dept are impacting it along with the Mayor’s request to delay the final draft to 2020, although I was hoping there would still be something put out this year to start going through.
Yes, “the recent departures from the planning dept”are reportedly making a big difference, as we lost our most knowledgeable person in that department.
@ Patrick Butera, this is very useful information. I am currently in an MR1 which was proposed to be R3 and I have been concerned about the “small apartment building” proposal. Do you have any insight as to what criteria might be used to reassign a proposed R3 to an R4?
@Claire – My guess for R4 would be streets that already have multiple three unit buildings on them and small lots. Slide 50 on the deck below has what they shared at the ward 4 meeting and a few slides up shows the original R3 housing types. They didn’t have anything to present in terms of specific areas they had in mind for R4 but the slide does mention “mapped to locations where there is a pattern of 3 to 8 unit buildings”. Missing from the slide deck were also changes like bumping the frontage minimum from 40 to 50ft in R3, so I would also guess that R4 focuses on small lots that are sized out of R3.
http://www.newtonma.gov/civicax/filebank/documents/95744
Re Teardowns and replacement Mc Mansions.
This is an issue that I have faced in the extreme! I recently moved from a neighborhood in Waban where the house I lived has now seen 7 teardowns, with the Mc Mansionized replacement with 12 new single family and condominium units. These are all within 200 feet of my corner lot property lines !!!
Just to be clear here, one of those units is an addition to my own house, done to keep it from being torn down upon my sale of it.
ALL of this development activity is primarily the result of two MAJOR FLAWS in our current zoning regulation ! I have railed against these causal regulations for the past decade, and finally, not to be personally penalized financially , took advantage of them myself before bailing out from this neighborhood. ( I designed and built an attached 2 unit to my beloved historic house which stood for over a century on land zoned 2 family). Had I sold it outright I fear it would have suffered the same fate as my then neighbors.
The two major faults in zoning currently are:
1. A much to generous FAR ! ( floor area ratio ), which allows a huge replacement construction volume ! This encourages if not almost mandates the replacement structure to become outsized !
2. Much too generous set back dimensions , allowing in my neighborhood ( as in most of Newton ), construction within 7-1/5 feet of side yard property lines and 20feet from backyard property lines.
These numbers are a boon for the development community and the real incentive they ( we ) have to build Mc Mansions! These are the primary reasons we have Mc Mansions and as such must be modified!
FOLLOW THE MONEY! There is a willing and able market ($$$), and a construction / development industry eager to exploit it !
For a real graphic recording of the above, go drive by Fuller Street/ Coyne Road.
It is time to fix what we currently have in place, preserving what ever diversity we have left before we go off half cocked / willy- nilly approving thousands of apartment units trying to find affordable living in Newton.
$6,000 a month for a two bedroom apartment is not a great example to follow. New construction is not inexpensive.
Correction: make that 13 units of new construction at Fuller and Coyne Rd.
What BPB said.
Um, what’s up with this election??? Been a week since the vote. Is this still unresolved?