Here’s the NewTV/Newton League of Women Voters debate between among incumbents Deb Crossley and Andreae Downs and challenger (and former Alderman) Paul Colletti, who are running for the two Ward 5 City Council at-large seats.
Decision 2019: Ward Five Councilor at Large from NewTV Government on Vimeo.
Wonderful to watch Paul Coletti slice through b.s. like a knife through butter. Refreshing!
I really enjoyed this debate. I’m glad Paul Colletti is seeking office again.
Yesterday I was discussing politics with a neighbor who has lived in the same house for 89 years. He was telling me how Newton lost is path years ago. He was recalling when he was surrounded with people who were Carpenters and Electricians, and now he is surrounded with people with PHDs, with no common sense!
I told him not to give up, and that several people were running against this group think. Having just watched this debate I believe Paul Colletti is just what we need.
Wrote the entire Council twice in 2 weeks regarding a matter of high importance to Ward 5 – the Needham Street (Northland) project.
While some Councilors replied, not our very own Ward 5 Councilors. Thanks for taking the time Deb and Andreae. Way to care about your constituents!
Paul Coletti’s closing remarks.
“There are a lot of people in Newton who see the writing on the wall….that their lives are being more controlled.”
“I really think this Council has stopped listening to average citizens, and dealing with their problem instead of telling them how to function.”
Gotta love the theme music!!
I would like to address some of the criticisms of Newton’s transportation policy raised by former Alderman Colletti.
“The new thought is that Washington Street will be two lanes. Bicycle paths and walking paths…”
As the other candidates pointed out, proposals exist for three lanes, not two lanes. These proposals date back to several traffic studies including one from Boston’s Metro Area Planning Council (MAPC) and conducted by MassDOT in 2014. This study wasn’t developer funded and wasn’t tied to a particular development.
MassDOT traffic counts in 2014 show that Washington Street traffic between West Newton and Crafts carries between 14,000 (West Newton Square) and 18,000 (west of Crafts) vehicles per day. These numbers are less than many two lane roads in Newton:
* Beacon St at Glen moves 23,000 vehicles per day.
* Comm Ave at Lowell is 16,000 per day.
* Centre St near Cabot is 18.7K vehicles per day.
* Needham Street at Tower Rd is 29,000 vehicles per day. (a three lane road, but with very different driveway pattern on both sides compared to Washington St.)
The MAPC study is here: https://www.ctps.org/data/html/studies/highway/2015_washington_subregional/washington_subregional_priority.html
Washington Street does have backups (as do the other streets above), but they happen almost always at intersections (with Needham St being the exception). Antiquated and unsynchronized traffic signals have something to do with it, and so does cross traffic volume. Maintaining more travel lanes doesn’t fix those problems. It just makes the street more dangerous for everyone (drivers, pedestrians, cyclists, people parking their cars, transit riders crossing the street).
Right now, kids biking and walking to Newton North High School along Washington Street from the west share a 7.5′ sidewalk. Bus riders going to Boston have no crosswalks, and no shelters. The sidewalk lighting is poor. Street trees can’t survive. We can do much better. In fact, we’d have to actively try to do worse.
It’s understandable that people may not believe that Washington Street can be narrowed. So the city plans trials. Let’s do them; plenty of evidence supports it.
” on a street that usually handles the overflow from the Mass Turnpike every day when there’s a problem.”
As Councilor Downs indicated, overdesigning Washington Street to handle Pike traffic gets you only one thing: Pike traffic. Waze will happily route Pike commuter cut-through traffic onto Washington Street if we provide the capacity; it does now. How does that help the average Newton resident? Washington Street is a public way and anyone can use it. But we can design it to support Newton’s best interests.
“Concord St in Newton Lower Falls see that some traffic planner decided to put three islands in the middle of the road that are actually bigger than the pathway for the drivers to drive down”.
The islands in the middle of Concord Street are traffic calming measures to improve compliance with speed limits, improve pedestrian safety at a marked crossing, and reduce vehicle crashes. I can’t see how those islands affect anyone’s legal driving. Concord Street is quite wide (26-32 feet across for a two lane road). The Newton Fire Department approves all such additions, so a fire truck can still get around them.
“[The city is] closing out their options by necking down their intersections, closing down their thoroughfares, and in other words, you’re being told how to live your life in Newton, not enjoying the lifestyle you’d been accustomed to.”
I’m not a politician, but I think there are a bunch of people in Newton who would like to live on safe neighborhood streets. They want a safer life than they are accustomed to. When you get into neighborhoods and ask people what they want, you’ll invariably hear, “cars drive too fast/my kids can’t play in the yard safely/I can’t cross the street/my kid wants to bike to school, but it’s not safe enough, so we drive.” These are bread and butter constituent safety and quality of life issues.
Traffic calming makes streets safer, and in general it is extremely popular. The City currently has an overflowing list of traffic calming requests from every neighborhood in Newton, far outstripping available funding or staffing to address them.
Without the due attention and thoughtful action of the City Council, these longtime safety issues simply won’t get addressed.
Very happy to see Paul Colletti in this race. He’s down to earth, tells it like it is and cares deeply about Newton. He has my vote.
I support Andreae and Deb. Newton has been well-served by these competent ladies who care deeply about the future of our city. They are thoughtful and consider every issue before the council. Sadly, Paul is way past his expiration date–I’m disappointed he decided to hop in, given his initial support of councilor Crossley and the fact he’s been on the board for ages. He needs to realize this is a new era with new issues facing Newton, and his old fashioned ideas have no place in city government. He retired and vacated his seat. He needs to respect that and realize his time is done.
Rebecca – Without term limits, Paul has just as much right to run for office as any other citizen of Newton. People don’t have expiration dates. It’s up to the voters to decide whether he belongs in our city government.
@Rebecca
Surely this is classic Age Discrimination? At what age should somebody not be fit to be a councilor? Paul held his own that debate, and I would certainly vote for him.
Paul Coletti remembers a very different pre-Setti Warren Newton than I do. I remember a Newton Center Fire station that was out-dated and decrepit if not outright dangerous; Mason-Rice with snow coming in through the single pane windows; student bathrooms at Brown that were a horror show and every year a dramatic scene of tears and anger at the School Budget meetings. Yes, the roads could be much better and I’d love to see the poles gone, but overall Newton has improved greatly. Crystal Lake is cleaner too!
I mentioned this in the other thread too, but I was disturbed by Coletti’s admission (about the 30:00 mark) that the board used to serve as a place for the various members’ personal gain. That should never be the reason for someone to hold elected office.
Maybe not Newton’s biggest problem, but Coletti is absolutely right about those ugly poles. Why in the world aren’t we undergrounding the utilities whenever a sidewalk gets opened up?
Greg, I agree, that shocked me too.
Was that ever legal? Independent of that, shouldn’t it have been stopped a long time ago? Who would stand for such a blatant conflict of interest by their peers? Seems like it should have been stopped and not tolerated. I get that it is harder to confront the system you’re a part of than to make a point in a debate, but still. Perhaps the Alderman could provide some additional historical context.
Sounds like the textbook definition of “old boys club”.
Newtoner, undergrounding is way more complicated than that. There has to be space and access under the sidewalk. Plus you have to rewire all the connections down the street going to residents and businesses. Who pays for undergrounding the line into your house? And that’s just power. You’ve got to move the other utilities too.
It’s ultimately a good thing, but it’s a challenge to retrofit.
Any thought of voting for Coletti went away after his insinuation about that “secret meeting”.
Greg, to be fair to Paul, his discussion of the prior self-dealing of the board of aldermen decades ago was not in relation to himself doing it, and he combined it with a request for a higher ethical disclosure requirement.
With that said, I do think I’ll be voting for Deb Crossley and Andreae Downs.
The wonkiness prize goes to Deb Crossley, as she described in detail how her committee decided whether and how to get a gas line into a new house and then the full city council voted on it. No offense to Crossley’s diligence on this, but why on earth is the city council getting involved in things like this? Aren’t there staffers who can do this? Couldn’t we get away with fewer councilors who need less money if they weren’t getting into the weeds like this?