city council

City Councilor Matt O'Malley (Jamaica Plain/West Roxbury) ran the Marathon today - and turned on the video on his phone for the last 200 yards.

Compare to then Mayor Ray Flynn in the 1984 Marathon.

The City Council voted today to consider measures that would regulate so-called sober homes for recovering drug addicts and require pawn shops and other businesses that sell second-hand goods to tie into a Boston Police database of stolen property.

The City Council today adopted new rules that will limit new City Clerk Maureen Feeney's ability to pick up some side cash by performing weddings.

City Councilor Matt O'Malley (West Roxbury) said the new rules will bring transparency to a government function and some extra money to city government. At the State House, state Rep. Marty Walz (D-Back Bay) is pushing similar legislation to limit the ability of city and town clerks to make money through weddings during business hours.

Under the new regulation, proposed by City Councilor Mike Ross (Mission Hill), any fees for weddings performed during business hours at City Hall will go into city coffers, rather than Feeney's pocket. Previously, Feeney and her predecessor, Rosaria Salerno, could keep the $15 fee for "solemnizing" a wedding.

In addition, the new regulation limits City Hall Weddings to the hours of 10 to 11:30 a.m. and 2 to 3 p.m. on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays - although Ross said an "emergency provision" would let would-be spouses apply for a wedding at other times in unspecified emergency situations. But weddings performed by city officials outside City Hall during any business hours are now prohibited, although Ross added that that just means people will now get married "in this beautiful building."

The City Council tomorrow considers a request from Councilors Tito Jackson (Roxbury) and John Connolly (at large) for a hearing on making black history a mandatory part of education for students in Boston public high schools.

In their request to hold a hearing, the two say that with so many black students in local public schools, "it is critically important for young people to know where and whence they have come and the full story of the accomplishments of their ancestors."

The weekly city-council meeting begins at noon in the council's fifth-floor chambers at City Hall. They're also aired live on Comcast channel 12, RCN channel 82 and on the Web.

As Universal Hub regulars and Boston-area Internet denizens know only too well, the omnipresent Saklad has been on a seemingly quixotic quest for years now to gain access to the records kept by the stenographer the Boston City Council for some reason continues to employ to record all of its meetings in this era of cheap audio and video recordings.

Brace yourself: This morning Saklad got one of those records! He opened his inbox to:

Per your request, attached please find the electronic file from this
week's council meeting.

Ann H. Braga, Esq. MPA
Staff Director
Boston City Council

But having cornered the whale, there's a new problem: How to open the file. It's in something labeled sgstn format. What the what the? Anybody have a clue how he can make the file usable? A copy is attached here if you want to take a look.

The Herald reports the Together music festival will take place in Central Square this year, but City Councilor Tito Jackson vows to get it back across the river. Until then, the festival might want to change its URL and official name.

Boston Daily talks to Pressley, an at-large councilor, on her home turf of Dorchester:

But there is one trait that all residents share: pride. And it isn't limited to the borders on a city map. Just as every animal is part of a kingdom, phylum, class, and order, every Dorchester resident has a parish, school, park, and neighborhood that they identify with. If I meet someone who is OFD, I expect them to ask me which parish and neighborhood I live in. They're not trying to expose me as an outsider. It's just a local's way of breaking the ice, the answer an opportunity for newcomers and longtime residents to find common ground.

City Councilor Sal LaMattina wants to slap some sense into Dish Network: Either they voluntarily clean up the eyesore East Boston has become with their goddamned satellite dishes haphazardly hanging everywhere or he'll introduce an ordinance to make them try to install the dishes somewhere other than the front of buildings across the city, the East Boston Times-Free Press reports. Apparently, the company was on the verge of joining a pilot program to de-uglify the neighborhood when Philadelphia moved to ban dishes from the fronts of residences and now the company is refusing to do anything at all until the FCC rules on the matter.

The Supreme Judicial Court next week hears arguments from the lawyer for convicted felon Chuck Turner and the city of Boston on the way the city council ousted Turner after he was convicted in 2010 but before he was sentenced.

The Dorchester Reporter breaks the news on City Councilor Sal LaMattina's ruminations. Like the city clerk's job, the register job has traditionally been a haven for city councilors who want to move on - if he runs and wins, LaMattina, who now represents East Boston, Charlestown and the North End, would replace Richard Ianella, who retired last year.

City Councilor Matt O'Malley thinks so. O'Malley, who reps JP, West Roxbury and a bit of Roslindale, is calling for a hearing to consider ways to force Boston drivers to stop being such Massholes, including speed humps, speed slots (which are like speed humps, but with grooves that let emergency vehicles avoid jostling when driving somewhere at ramming speed), new medians and signs warning motorists speeds are monitored by radar, like the ones New Yorkers learned decades ago to ignore. A little more enforcement by BPD wouldn't hurt, either, O'Malley says.

"I want the term 'Boston Driver' to become synonymous with safety and civility," O'Malley says in a statement. O'Malley's predecessor, John Tobin, waged a similar campaign - complete with lawn signs - to little effect.

O'Malley said the techniques have worked in other cities to "calm" traffic in residential areas. Bostonians who want to see for themselves need only take a quick jaunt across the Charles into Dedham at Spring Street, then turn right at Needham Street to drive over a "speed table" (like a speed hump, only longer) and through a "roundabout" (like a rotary, only smaller).

City Councilor Rob Consalvo (Hyde Park, Roslindale, Mattapan), today proposed slapping advertising on city Web sites, including library and school sites - and even the site run by the city's public-housing authority.

Consalvo says cityofboston.gov got 6.8 million visits last year, the BPS site some 4.7 million.

With this kind of traffic, the city and the BPS could potentially raise hundreds of thousands of dollars in recurring revenue from advertising on these Web sites as well as advertising on associated city Web sites such as the Boston Public Library, the Boston Public Health Commission, the Boston Water and Sewer Commission, the Boston Redevelopment Authority and the Boston Housing Authority.

Consalvo said he would want to see "strong content review" to ensure inappropriate ads are not run (Ed. note: Darn, there go the plans to capture some of the MBTA's liquor-ad sales by putting beer ads on school-lunch menus).

However, the city might have to leave its flagship site out of any ad solicitations. The US General Services Administration, which handles registration of .gov sites, such as cityofboston.gov, bars advertising:

A Gov Internet domain may not be used to advertise for private individuals, firms, or corporations, or imply in any manner that the government endorses or favors any specific commercial product, commodity, or service.

The prohibition does not apply to sites that are run with other domains, such as bpl.org, bostonpublicschools.org and fatsmack.org.

H/t Kate Hutchinson for digging up the ad ban.

West Roxbury Patch reports:

Connolly to Lead Council's Review of Student Assignment Process

City Councilor John Connolly will lead the Council's review of the Boston Public Schools student assignment plan. His announcement comes days after Boston Mayor Thomas Menino's State of the City Address in which the Mayor called for "a radically different student assignment plan."

Connolly's order will be introduced during tomorrow's City Council meeting. No dates have been set yet for the City Council hearings, but Connolly wants to give parents an opportunity to weigh in on what makes a quality school, the challenges parents face with the current assignment process, and changes parents would like to see.

Read More...

The Boston city councilor today announced he won't be moving to Newton to run for the congressional seat being given up by Barney Frank.

In a statement, Ross explained why he felt he would make a good representative, but doesn't really say why he decided not to run, except that "the difficult decision that a run for this congressional seat is not the best decision for me at this time."

His complete statement:

The Dorchester Reporter reports several voting-rights groups have drawn up a proposed redistricting plan that would see Mike Ross having to run against Tito Jackson - if he doesn't move to Newton to run for Congress - and create an incumbent-less district covering the Chinatown, the South End, and the Fenway:

This reconfigured District 8 would become an incumbent-free, racially-mixed district with common interests and anchored by a growing Asian-American population, creating significant opportunities for historically under-represented communities.

(This post originally appeared at www.BostonBastard.com)

Just in time for Martin Luther King Jr. Day, the Boston City Council readily presented their version of Boston race relations by making an example out of Charles Yancey, a black City Councilor who committed the egregious offense of actually trying to do his job and look out for his constituents.

The annual release of City Council Committee chairs is always a good way to get a sense of where the councilors stand in the eyes of the City Council power structure and this year was no different.

When Council President Stephen Murphy released his assignments last week, we learned that Matt O’Malley has proven himself as a willing stooge of the status quo, so of course he was handed the chair of the Government Operations Committee, which had been left available when Maureen Feeney finally decided to drop any pretense of giving a shit about her Dorchester constituents and went after a major pay raise.

Another major change was that Charles Yancey was removed from his chairmanship of the Post Audit and Oversight Committee.

Among councilors, Yancey is often criticized for not doing anything, but only because trying to improve the community in Mattapan doesn’t count among City Hall’s paler politicians.

The Herald reports the City Council has formed a special committee on gambling. Part of its role will be to figure out if everybody in Boston should vote on allowing a casino at Suffolk Downs, but it may also attempt to leverage Vornado Realty Trust's 20% ownership of Suffolk Downs into getting it to do something about the Hole, of which it is the majority owner.

Mike Ball discovered this cache of signs for Will Dorcena's at-large council bid yesterday - on the porch of Dorcena's Hyde Park home. Destined for the recycling truck or re-use?

Posted under this Creative Commons license and tagged as universalhub on Flickr.

Murphy on live TV.The City Council today appointed former Councilor Maureen Feeney as city clerk in a process that would have taken about 30 seconds if council President Steve Murphy had not taken the opportunity to rail against "the broadsheets" and a former mayoral candidate.

For 15 minutes, Murphy excoriated the Globe and Kevin McCrea, accusing them of creating a circus with moving goalposts that bordered on harassment and only showed they want to chose the next city clerk, but they don't have the right because who elected them?

The Dorchester Reporter posts a copy of Council President Steve Murphy's recommendation that the full council hire former Councilor Feeney for the post of city clerk - which includes a bonus denunciation of a Globe story daring to question the timing of her interview for the post. The council is scheduled to vote tomorrow to appoint Feeney.

UPDATE: The city has a fulltime legal department, yet apparently nobody thought to check whether interviewing a former city councilor less than 30 days after she quit might violate state ethics laws, the Globe reports (Globe account required).

A roving UHub reporter files this report from this afternoon's interviews of the two candidates for the job of city clerk:

The Committee on Rules chaired by Steve Murphy interviewed the two candidates for the job. The first was Maureen Feeney, who fielded mostly softball questions from the councilors present for about half an hour.

However, Counselor Yancey asked her about the removal of councilor Turner - specifically the hearing at which the council voted 11-1 to remove him (one guess who that one vote was). Yancey asked if it was true that the rules don't allow for an item to be brought up and voted on in the same day unless voted on by a majority. Feeney agreed that is what the rules say. Yancey brought up the fact that he objected and so it was not unanimous and so Turner should not have been removed. Feeney agreed that rules should be followed. Yancey did not press the point.

The second candidate, Natalie Carithers, then also answered about the same questions from the councilors and also spoke for about half an hour. Yancey also asked her about Turner, but it was a brief discussion: She said she didn't know much about the hearing at which he was removed (even though she ran for his seat).

It appeared that the committee was going to have a discussion about the candidates but Murphy said something about the fact that there were cameras present and so that changed the complexion of the situation and so gavelled the meeting to a close.

Steve Murphy's Committee on Rules and Administration will pose tough questions to Natalie Carithers of Dorchester on her bid to become the next city clerk at an interview on Monday. The committee is also scheduled to formally interview recently retired Councilor Maureen Feeney before members vote on a recommendation to the full council.

The interviews begin at 3:30 p.m. in the Atkins Room on the fifth floor of City Hall.

The Globe reports a recount showed Bill Linehan really did beat Suzanne Lee - and that a council redistricting plan he authored would shift two precincts where he did really poorly out of his district.

South End Patch reports Suzanne Lee will formally ask the city elections department to recount votes in District 2, where officials said she lost to incumbent Councilor Bill Linehan by just 87 votes.

The Globe reports the longtime Dorchester city councilor quietly submitted her resignation last week rather than just waiting to be replaced on Jan. 1. Did she convince Rosaria Salerno to retire as city clerk?