city council

According to incumbent Felix Arroyo, it's $100,000. Arroyo told supporters in e-mail he wants to raise that much to keep being one of four at-large councilors in this fall's election:

These funds will help us hire an organizer, open an office, pay for mailings and get our vote out.

The Dig interviews Michael Flaherty on his bid to get back on the City Council and asks him if he stays in touch with the latter half of Floon, now down in DC. He does:

[H]e definitely misses Boston, and quite frankly wishes that he never had to move, but after having run for mayor I think that there was a tremendous amount of pressure, and he was having difficulty finding a job because the administration seemed to be going out of their way to prevent that from happening.

Michael Flaherty announced today that, yes, he is running for an at-large seat on the City Council in the fall elections. He gave up his seat in 2009 to run for mayor.

At-large City Councilor Felix Arroyo also sent a letter to the Jamaica Plain Neighborhood Council last week about Whole Foods. He makes many of the same points as State Sen. Sonia Chang-Diaz about the need for local hiring and gentrification. Unlike Chang-Diaz, however, he doesn't tell Whole Foods to pay up or move out; his letter is instead full of "coulds."

Kenny Jervis, a leader of the successful fight earlier this year to keep the Clap School in Dorchester open, formally launched his bid for one of the four at-large City Council seats open this fall.

Although Jervis is making education the starting point of his platform - he wants to see more parents on the School Committee - he said he also wants to fight the bureaucracy that he said makes it too difficult for businesses to start up in or move to Boston.

City Councilors Bill Linehan and Felix Arroyo said tonight they may try to get an amendment to a current state law that keeps the city from taking over private South End alleyways because they're too narrow to comply with modern public road requirements.

On the one hand, we have the real Michael Flaherty coming out swinging on Twitter today, blasting Adrian Walker for suggesting he shouldn't run for City Council again because the council already has enough white guys.

On the other hand, we have Mayor Flaherty coming out swinging today, blasting pretty much everyone, from Adrian Walker to Hyde Park. But not KitchenAid. He loves KitchenAid.

NOTE: David Bernstein denies he's Mayor Flaherty.

The Dorchester Reporter reports that Maureen Feeney has decided against seeking re-election to her District 3 City Council seat (Dorchester), which she's held for 17 years.

Her decision comes just as the city releases nomination papers for this fall's city-council elections. The Reporter provides a handy list of possible candidates for her seat.

David Bernstein surveys the changes on the council over the past few years.

CONTACT: Future Boston Alliance - Lumina Gershfield / 617.388.4992 /
Greg Selkoe/Karmaloop -
Sarah Cirkiel / 212.475.4919 /

***URGENT***MEDIA ALERT***URGENT***

Future Boston Alliance Announces Creative Economy and Free Boston Panels at Together Festival
- Featuring City Councilor Tito Jackson, Local Entrepreneur Greg Selkoe, and Kofi Jones Executive Director for the Commonwealth Marketing Office

WHAT:Future Boston Alliance (FBA) is excited to announce a lively community discussion between citizens, entrepreneurs, media representatives, and our state and city government with two moderated discussion panels titled, “Creative Economy” and “Free Boston” to take place as part of the Together Festival.

UPDATE: The date has been changed to May 25.

A Suffolk Superior Court judge today set the hearing date for a lawsuit first filed in 2005 by three residents against the Boston City Council - on both their original complaint and new allegations that the City Council continues to evade the Open Meeting Law.

William Dorcena, whose sister is state Rep. Linda Dorcena Forry, has formed a campaign committee for a possible city-council run.

The Hyde Park resident is CEO of CenaMaven, a marketing firm. In 2004, he was an official at Boston 2004, which helped organize events around the Democratic National Convention. He was co-founder and publisher of the Boston Haitian Reporter.

Facebook page.

At-large Councilor Ayanna Pressley, who attended Boston University in the early 1990s, released a statement today, in advance of a hearing on sexual violence she is holding with follow first-term Councilor Felix Arroyo:

Chuck Turner leaves (his complete farewell address); Tito Jackson enters.

City Councilor John Connolly launched a scathing attack on Boston Public Schools this morning, charging the school system's cafeteria system is rife with waste, poor planning and a warehouse in Wilmington full of expired frozen food.

At a hearing this morning, Connolly charged students at 48 public schools were served frozen food past its expiration dates and that school food officials have so screwed up the food requisition process they were ordering frozen chicken patties even as the federal government was giving BPS chicken patties for free.

Using BPS requisition documents, he said on Jan. 14, students at South Boston and Madison Park high schools and the Higginson and Frederick schools were offered Cargill grilled egg patties that had been sitting in the warehouse since September, 2009.

The Phoenix reports City Council President Steve Murphy will back Ayanna Pressley for re-election to her at-large seat even if Michael Flaherty tries to get back on the council this fall.

At-large Councilor Felix Arroyo tells Bay Windows he deliberately scheduled an LGBT fundraiser on Sunday:

As an At-Large City Councilor, I represent all of Boston and all of Boston's residents. I take that responsibility very seriously. An entire community that I represent is excluded from marching in the parade. While the Supreme Court said it is legally permissible to exclude LGBT groups, I cannot in good conscience march in the St. Patrick's Day Parade until everyone else can.

Unofficial returns show Jackson with 67% and Mills with 9.4%. The two will face off in a special final election on March 15 to replace Chuck Turner.

Slightly under 7% of voters turned out today.

At-large City Councilor Ayanna Pressley today called for a comprehensive sex-education program and for easier availability of condoms in Boston schools.

"Not taking action, now that would be controversial. It would also be cowardly and counter to what I believe the role of government is - to solve problems and make people's lives better," she said at a hearing.

Pressley said she was not advocating teaching young people how to have sex. "Our young people already know how to have sex," she said. She said she would want any program to include discussions of abstinence. "I wish our young people would wait as long as possible to become sexually active, wait until they're older, more emotionally mature, better prepared to deal with the consequences and in a healthy, safe and exclusive relationship with a loving partner. But a solution based on wishing our young people would wait to have sex and doing nothing else is no solution at all." [Pressley's complete opening statement]

Gin Dumcius provides an overview of six of the seven candidates in Tuesday's preliminary election for the District 7 seat left vacant by Chuck Turner's conviction (perpetual candidate Althea Garrison has gone deep cover again).

Mike Ball surveys the crowd as well.

The top two finishers on Tuesday will compete March. 15 for the right to represent the district until the normal fall elections.

BNN (Channel 23 on Comcast) hosts a live debate among the candidates for Chuck Turner's old seat between 7 and 8 p.m.

Councilors Felix Arroyo (at large) and Sal LaMattina (East Boston, North End, Charlestown) say it's time to ban smoking at both city and state recreation sites in Boston.

The two say second-hand smoke poses too much of a health risk to other park goers and that "careless smokers who choose to litter their used cigarette butts threaten the environmental integrity and cleanliness of our cherished public spaces."

The city council considers their request for a hearing on the issue today.

Councilor Ayanna Pressley thinks the city should be getting creative with the vacant lots on which it now dumps tons of snow after each storm: Why not turn them into neighborhood sledding and play areas?

Pressley's real intent is to identify additional locations onto which the DPW can dump even more snow than it is now - all the piles residents have had to build in recent weeks. But she will ask fellow councilors today to schedule a hearing on both better ways to clear city streets and put the snow to good use:

There are a number of open spaces in each of our neighborhoods that should be considered for snow dumping; and such sites could also be potentially used by children and families as 'snow playgrounds' for sledding and other snow activities.

With Marty Hogan's formal entry into the race against incumbent Councilor Maureen Feeney, District 3 voters will have a choice of candidates who, if not outright Tea Party members, are strongly sympathetic to it.

Hogan, a Democrat, last year spent time at a candidate-training session organized by Michael Graham in Braintree. Bennett was the first speaker at a Tea Party rally in Christopher Columbus Park a couple years back.

HoganMarty Hogan, who once ran for an at-large city-council seat, says he is running this year for the District 3 seat now held by Maureen Feeney.

Hogan, who ran citywide in 2007, joins Feeney and 2009 at-large candidate Doug Bennett, also making a run for a district seat this time.

Hogan says his campaign will focus on city budget reform, because the city is spending "lavishly." One area where Hogan would not cut, however, is in crime fighting - he says crime is "spiraling out of control." He adds he would oppose cuts in school and fire funding.

Hogan is a South Boston native who now lives in Ashmont. An IT consultant, Hogan is also president of the Dorchester Day Parade and sits on the board of the Dorchester Symphony Orchestra.

Feeney, who was first elected in 1993, has said that this next run will most likely be her last.

The City Council today considers a proposal by Council President Steve Murphy to set up a special committee on asthma, "which shall concern itself with the causes, treatments and rates of asthma in the city, particularly environmental issues exacerbating asthma symptoms, methods of treating asthma, and work being done to reduce asthma rates."