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#MartyLostMeWhen, "A Rough Hashtag For The Mayor"

By Anonymous on Wed, 01/18/2017 - 3:34am

Tuesday evening, the same as Mayor Walsh's third State of the City address, a twitter hashtag was launched by Bostonians who described an event or events in Boston governance that caused them to lose faith in Mayor Walsh as their champion to run city government.

#MartyLostMeWhen started at about 5 in the afternoon and went until about 1 in the morning.

Events people identified, in no particular order, include Mayor Walsh's;

  1. handling of the L.I. bridge, homeless shelter and recovery bed shutdown
  2. refusal to meet with Boston Schools students who walked-out of school after lunch to protest budget cuts and charter school expansion
  3. advocacy for the Olympics while simultaneously making deep cuts to Boston School budgets
  4. putting homeowners on the hook for Boston 2024 cost overruns, a multi-billion dollar construction project
  5. crime reports that include statistics that make the record on shootings look good but ignore statistics that show it isn't
  6. minimize ans misrepresent Boston 2024 opposition as "10 people on twitter" when polls showed a majority
  7. budget gave GE the farm and a helipad but was a Boston Schools budget no show
  8. failure to follow through with promise to reform the BRA and just claimed victory with an empty BPDA rebranding exercise
  9. failure to take action to address Boston's highest in the nation income inequality, which is most profound in communities of color
  10. on-going policy to green light luxury building permits after luxury building debacles in New York City and San Fransisco
  11. deep cuts to special education funding in Boston Schools
  12. willingness to line GE's pockets while doing nothing about the MBTA
  13. prioritizing profit over homelessness -- gave L.I. farm to fast food entrepreneurs
  14. prioritizing the Olympics as his first and last priority but never read the contracts he was signing,
  15. run for Mayor as a progressive, pro-public education candidate but oversaw cuts to schools that hurt the neediest students the most
  16. attempt to impose an unconstitutional gag order on City of Boston employees
  17. neglect of a resident who got roughed-up by an off-duty police officer who seemed to be in a fit of rage
  18. plowed city streets for a Patriots parade while Dorchester residents streets were unpassable
  19. serenaded Charter Expander-in-Chief Charlie Baker dressed as Adele
  20. on again off again opposition to support for police body cams
  21. campaigned as a Boston Schools champion and called education his 'top priority' in his 2016 SOTC address but never offered to increase his BPS budget above his original 1.4% increase
  22. kids schools don't have money for pencils
  23. sale of Winthrop Square property wherein all parties-- city hall, BRA, buyer-- pretend they're ignorant of the shadow law

There are many more to see over at Twitter.com on #MartyLostMeWhen hashtag or you can peruse select tweet posted here:

Neighborhoods: 
Boston
Topics: 
Politics
Free tagging: 
Marty Walsh
2017 elections
mayor


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Comments

By Anonymous on Wed, 01/18/2017 - 3:46am.
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By Sock_Puppet on Wed, 01/18/2017 - 9:15am.

He never had me; I didn't vote for him in the first place, and I haven't been particularly impressed since.

That said, if he can put his recently released plans into place- or of his only opponent is Tit O'Jackson- he will get my vote next time.

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By ChrisInEastie on Wed, 01/18/2017 - 3:13pm.

if he can put his recently released plans into place

Short-term memory is a major problem around elections.

The guy spent the first 3 years of his term dishing out sweetheart deals, flip-flopping on various issues, and trying to build some superficial "legacy" through the Olympics, at the expense of our city's best interests. Now that election season is quickly approaching, he's going to do a few of the things he should have been doing all along, and banking on people with the "what have you done for me lately" mentality to buy into it and carry him to another term.

Pardon me for borrowing one of the greatest film quotes of all-time, but:

It's a trap!

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By Sal on Wed, 01/18/2017 - 10:45am.

Anyone know where I can find that soundbyte from that old person on WAAF who kept shouting 'One Term Mayor!" after they were not shoveled out during the epic snow falls of 2015?

It makes me laugh every time.

Also, it is all well and good that they want to touch on the positives, but the MBTA seems to be getting worse - why in 2017 are stations dripping? If they are going to be putting up luxury housing, why not tax the developers more and funnel it to the T? I know the project near Hynes is going to rebuild the stop...which probably means they will close it for a year and add 10 minutes to your commute, but the rebuild will just be a paint job and it will look the same in about 18 months.

I will miss the old subway map signs there that have the disabled symbol with a note like 'ADA compliant by 1992' and the temporary suspension of the Arborway line.

Maybe I am shallow, but I think timely clean up of graffiti, T stops that don't look super run down and smell like human waste really go a long way to improving quality of life.

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By Waquiot on Wed, 01/18/2017 - 11:41am.

You do realize that the T is a state agency, right?

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By anon on Wed, 01/18/2017 - 12:17pm.

True - but he could actually harp on the State about it. And not just once in a while...

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By Waquiot on Wed, 01/18/2017 - 2:09pm.

But at the end of the day, funding is decided at the state level and the ultimate responsibility is with the T, not with the Mayor's Office.

I suppose Sal could say that he is upset with the state of the T and wants Walsh to run so that we will have someone in power that cares about the T, but again, Mayor Whoever can't make the T do anything.

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By Anonymous on Wed, 01/18/2017 - 3:38am.
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By John Costello on Wed, 01/18/2017 - 9:11am.

You want perfection, become the human embodiment of Michael Jackson's Off The Wall album.

If you think you can do a better job that what is being done now, run for Mayor.

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By BostonDog on Wed, 01/18/2017 - 9:45am.

Expressing disappointment in one's elected officials isn't the same as saying you can run day-to-day operations any better. He bring up valid points regarding promises broken by Walsh and preventable failures that occurred during his time in office.

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By Anonymous on Wed, 01/18/2017 - 10:51am.

No doubt the mayor has delivered on many successes for the people of Boston. Do you want to take some time and compile them here?

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By John Costello on Wed, 01/18/2017 - 1:06pm.

I am not going to indulge your fantasy about listing accomplishments. I will say that for the most part Boston is well run, is financially stable but could always use some upgrades, especially when it comes to the schools and I am not happy how the Latin situation was handled.

I will say this. A few years back there was a contest to be Mayor of Dorchester, a joke of course, but it was done on a lark to raise some money for charity. The person who won started getting complaints about city services from people.

It just goes to show the immense stupidity of a great number of people out there about what city government can do and cannot do.

Good luck Tito, Good luck tweeters. The guy from St. William's isn't going anywhere soon.

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By Anonymous on Wed, 01/18/2017 - 1:26pm.

no.

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By John-W on Wed, 01/18/2017 - 1:35pm.

...is Mahty lost?

While there are some specific policy issues that some folks may have with Mayor Walsh, it seems to me that he is suffering more from some pretty bad decisions -- completely tone-deaf on how things appear to the world outside of his cabal of Dot-Rats. Which is curious given that his policy-maven is a p.r. kinda person. Olympics, dissing Olympics-nay-sayers, closing Long Island without anything in place, the Indy car thing, cherry-picking crime stats, the union-pressuring on Boston rising, dissing the students who walked out, and now this ethics committee thing.

None of these issues in itself is like pistol whipping nuns and orphans in Government Center plaza, but taken together you start thinking "I hope they have protective plastic covers on the electrical outlets in his office." His judgement seems to be for shit. I might chalk that up to him having been a legislator and not an administrator. Tellingly, the pieces of legislation he's putting out there this month are looking pretty solid.

I want to like him. I want to vote for him again. I want him to succeed. But at this point I have no incentive for number 1 and 2, and I really don't think number 3 can happen if he keeps walking around town with his fly down.

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By anon on Wed, 01/18/2017 - 8:18am.

Are you going to be when he's reelected in a landslid?

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By APB on Wed, 01/18/2017 - 8:50am.

No one is ragging on him for supporting (to put it mildly) the Winthrop Square project (brought to you by the same delightful, clever people who built San Francisco's Famous Sinking Luxury Tower), which will require breaking the shadow laws that protect the Common and the Public Garden?

I guess that's because he'd already lost all of those people when Boston2024 proposed wrecking large portions of the Common and taking down numerous old trees to build temporary stadiums. Sheesh!

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By Anonymous on Thu, 01/19/2017 - 2:42am.

Boston 2024 planned to erect the volleyball stadium which required uprooting trees, branch and root.

I submit that Winthrop Sq is worse governance because his position is that he'll use the legislative process to grant the buyer an exemption because he and BRA either f*ked up the sale or knew exactly what they were doing. The former is incompetence, the latter is acting without the consent of the public. For what purpose? $

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By anon on Wed, 01/18/2017 - 8:50am.

So many of these are from the same accounts over and over again.

The Mayor may not be perfect but this was a plain out hack job obviously orchestrated by someone and not a grassroots thing.

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By MartyLostMeWhen on Wed, 01/18/2017 - 10:16am.

I'm the person on Twitter that started the hashtag.

Not sure what you mean by hack job or "grassroots" so let me explain how this works.

No one asked me to start the hash tag. How did I do it?
* About 4 pm I saw the SOTC coming up. Ugh. Martypalooza. Boo.
* About 4:15 I thought, hey! This would be a great hashtag.
* I have a big enough following on Twitter that I knew 3 types of people: NoBostonOlympics people, anti-charter activists, and bike infrastructure people. I sent a message saying: "fight Marty by using this hashtag tonight during the SOTC". They said sure, great idea.
* And here we are.

I'm not in the public sector, my livelihood doesn't depend on it either.
I volunteered to help get Marty elected, but as you can tell - he lost me.
Am I voting for Tito? Probably. But dunno.

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By Sal on Wed, 01/18/2017 - 11:28am.

I was with you until the 'bike infrastructure' bit - though I do not drive and commute by T or walking, I find that the biggest issue with bicycles are the cyclists themselves. Now, you can take the stance of 'you have to be aggressive as a cyclist because of how the drivers are, and lack of dedicated bike lanes etc etc' but I don't buy in. In the last 20 years, I've almost been hit by a car twice, but by a cyclist about 30 times (and actually hit twice) - the majority of the time when I was in a crosswalk and the cyclist went on the outside lane (even on Comm with a bike lane( and blew threw the crosswalk. On several of these instances, I had one of my young children with me, so it isn't like I was some wag dashing across the street.

Without exception, any of my shouts of admonishment have resulted in the cyclist yelling, cursing, and acting with general indignation. I have asked people on bikes, who are slow pedaling through a cross walk (with several other people) to walk it (with signs marked at such) and been cursed at by adults in their 30s.

I think the reason why many drivers have such a negative connotation of cyclists is because of the air they exude. I also think we are better off nixing bike lanes on large streets and replacing them with a dedicated bus lane and signal control system- doesn't it make more sense to say, allow 50 people per bus on Comm Ave that can get the green vs a smattering of cyclists, who will invariably blow through signals, face the danger of people swinging open car doors, and just generally be a nuisance? London has lots of skinny buses and dedicated bus lanes and the transit is pretty great there. If people are using bikes as an alternate way to commute, why not provide a better alternative? Also, keep your damn bikes off the T - oh wait, you can't ride it in rain or snow? Oh well, leave it at home/

If a cyclist wants to ride on the road, obey the rules as a car does. I personally think anyone riding a bike should be required to have a bike license and pass a safety course and have an ID tag.

I am sure people like SwirlyGerl will go on and on about how great bikes are, talk about Portland or Canada, etc. That is fine - but I think adding more bike lines are going to cause more issues, not less.

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By xie on Wed, 01/18/2017 - 4:07pm.

Every single time I get on the road people try to kill each other with their cars. This is not a cyclist issue. This is a drivers in Boston, lack of traffic enforcement, and too much traffic/bad infrastructure causing everyone to be angry problem.

Do you think there is something inherent about you that changes when you purchase a bike? Do you think that car drivers are any safer, any less dangerous (the pedestrian fatality rate has gone UP under Walsh) than bike riders? No. They're just flawed people using a different way to get around.

I'm sorry, this "I just HATE cyclists" screed gets posted in every single bike thread. It is not an original thought. It is not data. It is not something to base policy on. The roads and the people who use them will never be perfect.

By your criteria we should have NO roads because all drivers are dangerous a-holes. At least put the dangerous, careless a-holes on bikes where they're less likely to kill people.

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By anon on Thu, 01/19/2017 - 9:16am.

Just grow the fuck up. Drivers kill people, not cyclists. Get facts straight, learn to drive, deal with it, or get the hell off the road before your entitled incompetence behind the wheel KILLS SOMEBODY.

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By anon on Thu, 01/19/2017 - 9:18am.

I've almost been hit by a car twice, but by a cyclist about 30 times

... cyclists wouldn't be aiming for your swweet sweeet body?

Liar.

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By anon on Thu, 01/19/2017 - 9:19am.

What about all these European cities that are laid out like Boston?

Cars are not native to Boston. They need to be treated like other invasive species.

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By ElizaLeila on Thu, 01/19/2017 - 9:29am.

Cars are not native to Boston.

Neither are bikes.

But both are here to stay and we need to find a way to make everyone safe(r) on the streets.

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By anon on Wed, 01/18/2017 - 12:42pm.

Twitter has tends which you can review and analyze.

Original Tweets
Total
208

Ya its you and a SMALL handful of people twitting about this. Try it https://www.hashtracking.com/

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By anon on Wed, 01/18/2017 - 2:24pm.

I was a different anon but this one was able to make my point much better than I was. I had no clue such a Twitter tool existed... I'm going to have to try this out on Trump Tweets!

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By MartyLostMeWhen on Wed, 01/18/2017 - 3:45pm.

Interesting too. Only 37 original tweets about #SOTC2017. So that means #MartyWalshLostMe had 5 times reach. Regardless if you think this was grassroots or not.

Interesting that rather than recognizing concerns the tendency among backers is STILL to minimize the number of the people raising them. "But it's only 10 people on Twitter..."

"This is fine. I'm ok with the events unfolding currently."

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By anon on Thu, 01/19/2017 - 10:03am.

5 times the reach if you don't take into account that there was a big room full of people physically there and it was carried by the press.

Also let's face it #martylostmewhen is a lot more fun to type out than #sotc2017

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By Christine Langhoff on Wed, 01/18/2017 - 1:04pm.

One thing not to forget about the closing of the Long Island shelter and farm - it was Jack Connors who brought it to Walsh's attention, according to the Globe.

"The idea for b.good to take over the farm came from Connors, who has a close relationship with Walsh. Last December, Jon Olinto, one of the owners of b.good, dropped by Connors’s office with a gift: kale that the company had grown in a special container beneath Interstate 93.

Connors mentioned there was an abandoned farm on Long Island, and after a few months, Connors’s office worked with city officials to arrange for b.good to take over the farm."

https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2016/07/24/farm-that-once-benefited-ho...

If you don't think the development of this spot is on Jack Connors' mind, you might want to reconsider.

That's #WhenMartyLostMe

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By Anonyme on Wed, 01/18/2017 - 1:20pm.

I'm with Sal on this one. The less of this "infrastructure" the better. Bike lanes should be on secondary roads, and not along bus routes if at all possible. Buses need to get to the curb and stop, and and do have blind spots. I've never seen a bus driver behave recklessly or aggressively, or run a light. Cyclists, all the time. If any form of transit on our roadways should get special lanes and other types of priority, it is buses.

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By Ubermonkey on Thu, 01/19/2017 - 8:57am.

I've never seen a bus driver behave recklessly or aggressively, or run a light.

So you've never seen a bus driver, then?

They're some of the most aggressive drivers I've ever seen. I ride buses pretty often, and I need to physically brace myself for most of those rides, because the driver starts and stops so suddenly. Red light running is common too.

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By anon on Thu, 01/19/2017 - 10:10am.

See buses run lights and block the box constantly at rush hour.

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By anon on Thu, 01/19/2017 - 10:12am.

BLAHABHALBHAHAHAHAH

So there!

The reason bike lanes are being built and are favored by planners and cities is FACTS not blah blah.

Bring facts to the table and you might win. Except you don't have any.

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By JohnAKeith on Wed, 01/18/2017 - 8:55am.

"He ran for Mayor as a progressive, pro-public education candidate but oversaw cuts to schools that hurt the neediest students the most."

You only heard what you wanted to hear. He was as pro-charters as John Connolly. He didn't change his opinion on this one.

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By Anonymous on Wed, 01/18/2017 - 12:29pm.

Marty was no on question 2, which removed the cap on charters. And while he was for charter expansion when he ran for mayor, he was not as pro-charter as John Connolly who wanted to rapidly privatize Boston Schools. In addition, Marty campaigned on supporting Boston Schools in public and in private meetings in parents' homes.

Basically Marty wants to have it both ways on charters and so describes the problem as a rate of charter expansion, which is a fallacy.

He ran for Mayor as;

  1. a progressive, [CHECK]
  2. pro-public education candidate who oversaw cuts to schools that hurt the neediest students the most. [CHECK]
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By anon on Wed, 01/18/2017 - 2:15pm.

When did Connolly ever state he 'wanted to rapidly privatize BPS'? He didn't and to the best of my knowledge sends his kids to a turnaround school in Roxbury, unlike Marty who has no personal interest in the schools.

There is a difference between thinking all charters are the devil's work (funnily enough an opinion shared by your same 10 people on Twitter) and wanting to privatize BPS.

Twitter 'activism' is meaningless in Boston politics. Steve Murphy is the perfect example that ward politics is everything.

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By Anonymous on Thu, 01/19/2017 - 2:40am.

I think just about everyone who posted a #MartyLostMeWhen statement on Twitter saw one on their timeline and thought they had something to contribute.

I saw it and thought what would UniversalHub readers say about this? Those two things seems to have started a conversation about taking measure of Mayor Walsh three years in office. To me, that's a conversation worth having.

John was financially back by two ed reform groups Stand for Children and Democrats for Education Reform. He broke ties with Stand for Children. DFER spent about about one and a half million to get him elected.

DFER also spent heavily for Yes on Question 2, which would've removed the cap on charters statewide.

Stand for Children and Families for Excellent Schools, which contributed approximately $15 million to Yes on Question 2, are run by the same person.

John Connolly's (the education mayor) campaign money was coming from groups that equate privatization with ed reform.

I have no direct evidence that John Connolly intended to grow charters rapidly in Boston but you can see who funded his campaign and know rapid charter growth is their objective.

Question 2 was defeated 62-38 in a statewide election in a presidential year. What's more 95% of all Mass cities and towns opposed it, including 100% of Mass cities.

Boston opposed it. The parts of Boston that did not oppose it includes Beacon Hill and Back Bay, not Mattapan, Roxbury or Dorchester.

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By theszak on Wed, 01/18/2017 - 12:56pm.

Captions on Boston City TV could be on transparent background that doesn't obscure name plates at the bottom of the screen.

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By Felicity on Wed, 01/18/2017 - 8:10pm.

Does Boston City TV have captions? I was just asking about this today. Everytime ive seen BCTV at City Hall or online, there have not been captions.

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By theszak on Wed, 01/18/2017 - 10:02pm.

Boston City TV
https://www.youtube.com/user/BostonCable/videos

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By anon on Wed, 01/18/2017 - 5:22pm.

Where is Michele Wu, Ayanna Pressley, John Connolly, Ralph Martin and Mike Flaherty?

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By Anonymous on Wed, 01/18/2017 - 9:38pm.

When did Marty lose you?

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By curcuas on Wed, 01/18/2017 - 6:17pm.

about how Marty didn't give you the unicorn you think you deserved?

The ignorance of budgeting under limited resources and lack of ability to borrow is astounding here. A little research would show that the GE "tax breaks" are redirected monies towards projects in the seaport the city was planning on anyhow. But ensuring the city's economic and fiscal future for a slight sum is really too much to bear when every citizen lacks a cute puppy and a personal rainbow.

As for housing, I'm sure all the tweeters would prefer to live in cities that construct considerably less housing like SF and NYC and pay their astronomically higher rents rather than our flat (and soon to decline ones). For all his faults, Marty, like the hedgehog, got one big thing right. The key to economic success and affordability is building, building, building. 20 years of Menino vetoing every project that didn't include a statue to his beneficence got us into this mess, give Marty 4 more to help us out.

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By adamg on Wed, 01/18/2017 - 6:32pm.

The current building boom didn't start the moment Walsh took the oath of office, right? Menino had his faults, yes, but both the seaport and Boylston Street in the Fenway were well underway while Walsh was just a state rep little known outside Dorchester.

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By anon on Wed, 01/18/2017 - 8:27pm.

When he and his public facility staff go to the MSBA with architectual plans ,renderings etc to move the Quincy Upper School to Warren Ave, replacing the McKinley School w/o even a hint of where the McKinley special ed students are supposed to end up after their school is torn down. And this happened in June at the end of the school year leaving both schools clueless about the future...

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