It took decades for workers doing this dangerous job to get a living wage. But are their problems finally sorted out? For the first time ever, Boston, Cambridge, and Somerville are boosting the pay for the workers who sort their recyclables after resolving a decades-long stalemate with a regional company. Each city requires that workers […]
SOMERVILLE WIRE: November 9, 2021 WEEKLY ROUNDUP
A Highland Avenue redesign meeting, a Gilman Square street design meeting, and a concert at the Center for Arts at the Armory Survey SOMERVILLE LOCAL NEWS SURVEY The Somerville Wire is part of the Somerville News Garden project of the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism. News garden volunteers and BINJ staffers are trying to figure […]
OPINION: GIVE US 100 DAYS TO PLAN FOR 100 YEARS
“Last month, the Planning Division released a 138-page plan, nominally produced by consultants, but heavily influenced by planning staff, that was somehow worse than the draft they had been entrusted with eleven months earlier.” By Mystic View Task Force, Somerville Transportation Equity Partnership, Green and Open Somerville, and Union Square Neighborhood Council Twenty-three years ago, […]
OPINION: SOMERVILLE’S TIME-BOMB ISSUE
Part 2: What do we do? The City of Somerville’s buildings, roads, sidewalks, water distribution, and sewer systems are all at or near the end of their lifespans. A cogent memo to the City Council last spring detailed our infrastructure needs and estimated their costs. Its implications obligate reconsideration of basic assumptions guiding land-use policy […]
KATJANA BALLANTYNE TO BRING CULTURE OF INCLUSION AS MAYOR
The newly elected leader on a historic turning point in Somerville’s government (Somerville Wire) – Mayor-elect and City Councilor Katjana Ballantyne knows what it means to see things from the other side of the fence. As an orphan born in Greece, she was adopted by a Scottish man and a Czech and German woman, and […]