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Voters could elect a clown to the Boston City Council, or a former mayoral candidate; same diff

Pat Payaso for City Council At-Large - Boston 2017 Elections

A clown calling himself or herself Pat Payaso managed to get certified for the November ballot for the four open at-large city councilor seats.

"Payaso" is Spanish for "clown." Too good to be true? Well, of course.

BNN's Seth McCoy reports Payaso is, depending on the day, either former mayoral candidate Kevin McCrea or his wife.

McCrea ran for mayor in 2009, losing to Tom Menino and Floon.

UPDATE: David Bernstein reports McCrea has legally changed his name to Pat Payaso, which is how he could file formal campaign reports with the state without worrying about being charged with, being deceptive or something.

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Comments

Is that our Payaso?

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Why not a clown in city council? Honestly though, does city council ever act independently of the mayor? If not, why are they doing? Is there no check on the mayor?

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If I were an honest Boston Politician:

I would always advocate for UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE. I would ask each elected official from Boston on the City, State, and Federal level where they stand on this issue and publish the Yes/No answers online so the citizens know where their officials stand on the most important issue in America today.

I would visit all the Public Schools in an 18 month period. I’d meet with parents, teachers, students, stakeholders and present a plan to eliminate busing, insure equity and present a comprehensive plan to the City on July 1, 2019. This would save nearly 100 million dollars a year that we can invest in the schools including a new State of the art STEM school to be built in conjunction with and as a pipeline to MIT and other great local science Universities. I would not vote for any pay raise for any public official until this school is built.

I would professionally audit the Boston Public Schools.

I would professionally audit the BPDA. I would initiate the process of eliminating the BPDA and creating separate Planning and Development agencies controlled by the citizens of Boston.

I would take any and all agreements that the City of Boston, the BPDA and any other agency has made with any public space, private property, private, public or business entity in regards to taxes, uses or benefits and put it PERMANENTLY on the City of Boston website for all the citizens to monitor. I would also put all public documents online. Both would have a searchable data base. I would invite Don Sakland to consult to make sure stenographic records are properly available to all citizens.

I would ban the spending of public funds on putting politicians names on signs, clothing,buildings and other non-temporal items.

I would move the election cycle so that the election of the Mayor coincides with Presidential elections. This would expand turnout and decrease the power of the incumbents employee base.

I would eliminate the waste of taxpayer funds on the Greenway Conservancy and roll the Greenway into the State or city park system.

I would not allow any buildings to violate State Law and cast shadows on the Boston Common, no matter how much I received in campaign contributions or alleged promises of money to be paid to the City. I would not give any tax breaks or exemptions to the developer of this building.

I would not give any public lands or tax breaks to rich corporations and developers. This only increases the inequality in the City of Boston and America.

I would investigate and enforce and make all public projects report their City of Boston jobs policy results on a searchable database on the City of Boston website.

I would ensure that we work to eliminate ‘no show’ jobs, redundant jobs, political hires, etc. We should not tolerate full time pay for less than full time work.

I would make sure that public properties go to the highest bidder in open, honest bidding processes so that citizens get proper value for their assets.

I would engage the local business schools at Northeastern, Boston University, Harvard, MIT and Babson to use their brainpower to examine each of the different departments in the City of Boston. We will ask them to do case studies on each department so that we can eliminate inefficiencies and redundant jobs. We would plan and model for the future and truly have a government that reflects the cutting edge private sector we have in Boston.

I would take the T at least once a week to work (and bicycle in the good weather) and advocate working with the State for a truly modern public transit system equivalent to the excellent systems in Asia and Europe.

I would personally pay a long weekend for Howie Carr and his wife to visit Mexico City and compare the subway there and the subway in Boston. All I ask is that he write an objective article comparing the two and that he hopefully takes in some of the great history and culture of our hermanos to the south.

I will work to create a new class of zoning for inexpensive micro units that we can build to provide less expensive housing for our poor and middle class workers and to house our homeless, which is the shame of our city and country.
I wouldn't have the answers to the opiod crisis, but I do know we need housing, mental health facilities, and that Long Island bridge and shelter should be fixed to help the problem not sold off to developers or used for Olympic events.
I would not support any use of taxpayer money on events like the Olympics, Grand Prix’s, tax breaks or giveaways of public roads to private sports teams.

I would be open to receiving tips and ideas on waste, fraud, abuse and corruption in the City and would not be afraid to investigate, no matter the political connectedness or ramifications. I would advocate for the budget of the Financial Commission to be at least doubled. I would also be open to Citizens Ideas on how to save money. For example: having the Big Belly trash compactors have LED’s on the street side of the Big Belly’s so workers don’t need to stop, idle, get out of their trucks and walk around to see if the LEDS are red or green. This would save time, money and reduce Greenhouse gases.

I would advocate for instant run off voting and term limits for Mayor and City Council.

I would love, adore, respect and protect all the citizens of the city no matter race, gender, orientation, and would not be afraid to call out injustice, corruption and intolerance even if it challenges the status quo.

Finally, I would take $10,000 of my salary each year and award it as scholarship split between two graduates of the Boston Public Schools who write the best essay on the topic of ‘The value to democracy of open and honest government, public schools, public parks, public transportation and the public welfare.’ We would ask Noam Chomsky to be our final judge. All worthy entries would be published online.

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...are you saying that you're not? If so, I've gotta admit that's honest of you.

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:)

gracias !!!

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Loving and adoring half a million strangers seems like a lot to ask of anyone, even yourself. Respect and protect, yes.

But I'm going to call you on the one of these that doesn't start with you having already been elected to an office you're not even running for:

How would you eliminate busing, insure equity, and save $100 million a year? If your answer is "I don't know, I'd start thinking about it after I was elected," you're admitting that you have no idea of where to start, no evidence that it's even possible to do all three of those things at the same time.

If you do know how to do this, please, be a decent person and publish the plan so the city can ensure equity and save money no matter who gets elected. Don't be a penny-ante supervillain, insisting you know how to save the world but won't do it unless you're paid.

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Even if every abled kid in BPS walked to school, you'd still have significant busing costs because of special needs kids and kid in charter schools, which are open citywide and for which BPS has to provide busing.

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You are correct Adam, there would still and always be a need for 'buses' (for example the buses that take Boston Latin kids to other schools for swim practice) but not necessarily for 'busing'.

I see the main problem being equity. How can we insure that the schools in East Boston are as good as the schools in Brighton as Mattapan, etc. We need to institute a plan so that every kid in the city can go to a neighborhood school that their parent(s) can be assured will be good. I don't have all the answers, but I have ideas along the lines of sliding scales of funding and class size, combined with degrees of choice for parents. But the reason I want to
visit all the schools and talk to all the stakeholders is to get ideas and input to come up with a plan. Once that plan is presented I'm sure there will be lots of discussion after that.

I don't believe in the attitude of "well we just have to live with it". I was speaking to a BLS parent this week who is extremely involved in his community, very progressive. He was telling me about how he felt bad about the obvious inequities when he goes to the football games between Latin and English. Why does a parent feel that way? These are questions I'd like to ask and address.

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What a malarkey non-answer.

"I don't know... I'll check out the schools if elected..."

Same as everybody else. Tell people the problems. Bring no solutions.

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Per Adam's point - you can't completely eliminate busing - but I've heard that if we went back to neighborhood schools you'd save about half the busing budget - approximately $50 million. With 11 schools on the state deficiency list and another 25 or so at risk per the city's own analysis - all we're doing is rearranging the deck students on the Titanic anyway as we ship them around town.

From there you simply close schools. We could easily shutter 15-25 schools and probably save $1-2 million per year per school.

Then level fund the school budget for a year - boom - there's $100 million and more.

And quite honestly - if you just took that $100 million and put it back into really reforming the schools rather than just hiring non-teaching staff (which is where almost 100% of the additional budget has gone for the past 15 years) - perfectly fine with me and I'm guessing most Boston residents.

Hell of a lot better than what we've currently got.

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Not so simple as going back to neighborhood schools, as not all neighborhoods have all types of schools (elementary, middle, high). Take mattapan for example. a neighborhood with a relatively high number of school aged children, but no high school. And compare it to the back bay, a neighborhood with a relatively low number of school aged children but has a high school (Snowden).

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"I would invite Don Sakland to consult to make sure stenographic records are properly available to all citizens."

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we've also got a clown in the White House, as well.

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He's a Bozo!

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He sucks as a clown, too. Not funny at all.

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Vote! Tuesday 26 September 2017 http://boston.gov/departments/election

District One 1 Boston City Council Candidates https://twitter.com/sunshineboston/status/909109539865350144 East Boston, Charlestown, North End/Waterfront, Harbor Islands are a part of District 3, except Deer Island, which is part of District 1.

District Two 2 Boston City Council Candidates https://twitter.com/sunshineboston/status/909199407924568065 City Hall/Beacon Hill/Islands, Chinatown, South Boston, South End, Harbor Islands are a part of District 3 except Deer Island which is part of District 1

District Seven 7 Boston City Council Candidates https://twitter.com/sunshineboston/status/909110881027596289 and https://twitter.com/sunshineboston/status/909634700221861889 Blue Hill Avenue, Columbia Road, Dorchester, Dudley, Fenway, Roxbury, South End.

District Nine 9 Boston City Council Candidates https://twitter.com/sunshineboston/status/909112083618263040 Allston, Brighton, Brighton Center, Faneuil, Lower Allston, Oak Square, Union Square.
__________ ____________________
Cambridge
City Council Candidates, School Committee Candidates
http://vote.cambridgecivic.com/

It would be good having a similar compilation of Boston Candidates' information as is compiled for Cambridge Candidates at http://rwinters.com/elections

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If a family of clowns moved in next door, I would do my best to show them kindness and understanding, the same as any other neighbors.

But— I just don't want their lifestyle shoved in my face. I'm willing to tolerate their presence, up to a point. But it's impossible to ignore that fear in the back of your mind that one of them is going to pull a bottle of seltzer out of their pants and start shooting up the place.

If that makes me a coulrophobe, so be it.

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If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.

Vote Payaso!!!!

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They're wicked good at carpooling. They'd only use up one parking space for their one small car containing their entire family of eighteen.

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Sure there are plenty of good ideas here, but given the limited reach of the city council, saying "I'm gonna do this and that and the other" is not realistic.

And with regard to the schools, anyone who thinks they can come up with a plan that fixes them, eliminates busing and saves $100 million is a clown!

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And with regard to the schools, anyone who thinks they can come up with a plan that fixes them, eliminates busing and saves $100 million is a clown!

Replace BPS with YouTube University, Google Groups, and Google Talk. Every child is virtual homeschooled.

Hey the kids are already glued to their devices anyway. Might as well make them go to school on them.

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Parents are taken out of the workforce!

Double poverty and "family values or else" win for the DeVostards!

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Of course it will take a long time to get Massachusetts government from its D or F rating from transparency organizations but you have to start by electing people with those principles. I didnt say I would get it done I am saying that I would introduce those bills, lobby for them, let the citizens know who is for them and against them.

City councilor has virtually no influence on Universal health care but if a citizen thinks universal health care is important to them they will have a source to know where all their elected officials stand. I don't know if you've tried to get a straight answer out of a politician lately but it often isn't easy. I care deeply about Universall Health Care

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/09/18/upshot/best-health-care-s...

and if elected would use some time and the access the office provides to get those answers.

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IMAGE(https://www.horrornewsnetwork.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/PW-1.jpg)

Running as a clown may be penny wise but pound foolish.

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For a second there I thought Mike Ross decided to jump back in.

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He's right about Mexico having a better subway system then the MBTA. In fact most third world nations have safer and more reliable systems than the MBTA.

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Please, come to Mexico City and try to live daily with the insufficient, unpredictable, sometimes dangerous public transit we have here. Boston is much, much better. I don't know where this ridiculous idea that Mexico City transit is better comes from.

You all whine a lot about the MBTA, and I get it, I also lived in Boston, it's all relative, but you have no idea how good you have it in comparison.

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All over the world commuters complain about their commute. The buses are horrible. The trains are always broken down. The reality is that most commutes are bearable within reason. I had a tough commute this morning, but that of course is in comparison to most mornings. Of course, I remember last Tuesday's commute also being bad, so there might be a trend.

As for the T versus the Mexico City Metro, when line 4 (of 12) of the system in Mexico City opened, the train I took in today was being used on the Orange Line. When line 1 opened, some of the Red Line trains in service now were being put into operation. Still, most days they work, and some day they will be gone. Some day.

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Unregulated buses (the peseros and combis, to say nothing of the taxis)...
Licensed buses where the fare is whatever the driver determines it to be based on his calculation of the distance of your destination...
A patchwork system where free or reduced price intermodal transfers do not exist, even though a significant portion of users make them...
Said patchwork system of routes that has no officiam map or way to know exactly where one route meets another..
Transfer from one subway line to another - within the same station! - that requires walking equivalents of city blocks...
Stations that flood, regularly, even though the rainy season is predictable and has been for centuries.

I could go on.

The grass really is greener. Also because here there is very little grass.

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Seems Payaso just loaned his campaign committee a million bucks last week...

Source: http://www.ocpf.us/Reports/DisplayReport?menuHidden=true&id=625317#repor...

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has run multiple times and has spare plywood (if needed) and Murph of course.

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I support Pat's candidacy, for the most part. And "their" campaign.

My only concern is that those people who don't like it won't take it seriously and will attempt to discredit their points of view.

It takes 1,000 valid voter signatures to get on the ballot in Boston for City Councilor-at-Large. My fear is that someone (maybe a sitting city councilor-at-large?) would think it should be higher, to exclude people like Pat.

I think it should be lower - like, 500 signatures at most. Yes, 1,000 signatures shouldn't be that hard for someone who wants to represent the city but it makes it very difficult for a few, really good candidates to qualify. (And a lot of days standing outside Roche Bros in the April rain!)

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Write-in Campaign Candidates https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Write-in_candidate

2 Term Limit Boston City Council. 2 Term Limit Cambridge City Council https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Term_limit

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