Brookline City Hall

Re: Maybe!

jass said:
I think bigger is better. You reduce redundant positions and beaurocracy.
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You have got to be kidding me...

Just take a look at the whole Department of Public Works investigation where they found that every single person did not leave and show up on time - most of them came in an hour late and left hours early - and most of them spent their time just "driving around and parking for a while".

The bigger the city is, the easier it is for little things to get overlooked and lost in the bureaucracy. The bigger a city is, the easier it is for big unions to gain clout and control of the city employees, leaving budget crises unchecked and employees undisciplined.

I used to see it from the other perspective, but living in a small town has showed me just how effective and efficient a small town is in comparison to a big city. At a given time, the superintendent of schools knows what's going on in every school. The town board of selectmen can give a reasonable amount of time to all the issues of import in the town. There is no dictator-like mayor who everyone must bow down to if they want to get something done in a town - towns are not controlled by a single ego and personality, but by a reasonable, accountable, elected board of local citizens who can thoughtfully consider the issues. If the entire DPW is doing nothing, the selectmen will find out and it will be fixed. But it probably won't happen in the first place, because the people who decide to hire or fire town employees are intelligent citizens, not bureaucrats, and they would directly hire or lay off when it became necessary for the town.

Boston should be split up into Allston/Brighton, West Roxbury, Dorchester, Mattapan/Roslindale, and Jamaica Plain (you could attach jamaica plain to another newly detached town/city if you wanted to.)

I'd keep Southie, Charlestown, Eastie, and the inner city neighborhoods as a part of Boston.
 
Boston's neighborhoods are Boston and Boston is its neighborhoods. To suggest splitting them up shows a lack of understanding of the city.
 
No, it doesn't mean a lack of understanding ...

I don't agree that feeling that breaking the city up shows a "lack of understanding." Where do you get this idea from? It's simply a difference of opinion, my friend.

I think breaking the city up into pieces would benefit each of the neighborhoods, by allowing them to focus on the needs and desires of its residents. Right now, different neighborhoods must compete with each other for attention & money.
 
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^So basically let's make it so only the exclusive neighborhoods are left in Boston. What's with the elitist attitude on this board lately?
 
Not necessarily ....

No, I'd keep Roxbury, because it's the oldest part of Boston (if they want us).

And, I'd keep Charlestown, for the same reason.

Neither of those are what I'd consider "elitist".

Plus, much of the South End is not "elitist" by any means. I believe we have a larger number of either low-income housing developments than any other neighborhood (or something similar).

The rest of the neighborhoods only came aboard over the past hundred and thirty years.

It's not that the Back Bay, South End, and Beacon Hill, etc., are "exclusive", per se, just that they are more central to the business district, more dense, and more involved with the same needs and wants.

Dorchester has sixty thousand residents - do any of them care if there are new parking meters and trash barrels on Newbury Street?

Back Bay has a very low number of children enrolled in the Boston Public School system. Do residents there care at all what happens with the search for a new schools' superintendent? (Don't respond that "some do!", or "they should!", because they don't.)
 
I realize no one really cares about this ...

My "Secede to Succeed" plan is probably of little interest to people, mostly because it's not even a remote probability. I just find it fun to think about / argue about.

One other point - it's unfortunate that our city is broken up in such a way that we in the South End are stuck together with South Boston when choosing a city councilor.

We ended up with Jimmy Kelly for thirty years (?), now we'll get stuck with another person from "over the bridge". At our disadvantage.
 
Getting back on topic, I culled this picture from the Brookline edition of the "Images of America" book series, showing how the new city hall (all the book says on it is that it was built in 1963) ate up some half-dozen properties surrounding it. And as for "why?", my only guess is that they felt the need to do what their Neighbor to the east was doing.

img1956hx4.jpg
 
"East Boston should be pushed off since it's on the other side of the harbor, and South Boston should be pushed off because the people there are mostly illiterate racist freak jobs."

What are you so angry about? Where would downtown boston/financial district be without the airport? You know.. the one in East Boston.

And who are you to say that "we" should keep Charlestown for historical reasons. I bet the townies in Charlestown want to be a part of "your" Boston as much as the people in Southie do. Your lifestyle preferences aside, I would say that both Charlestown and most of Southie are more desireable that your Southend.
 
I dunno

I don't even remember what I was arguing about.

You're probably right.

Thanks.
 
IMAngry said:
South Boston should be pushed off because the people there are mostly illiterate racist freak jobs.
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I'm surprised it took so long for this tremendously ignorant, stupid statement to be challenged.
 
If anything the metro area should be consolidating as much as possible. Brookline's independence is a means for its tax revenues to contribute as little as possible to the betterment of Boston's services and infrastructure, even though improved schools and roads in Boston ultimately benefit Brookliners. This is the reason Canadian cities have been slowly consolidating their suburbs into metropolitan governments. At least Brookline and Cambridge should be integrated into Boston; there's reason to argue that many other cities and towns that benefit more from Boston services than Bostonians benefit from their own should be made to at least pay tribute.
 
I'd say the exact opposite. Boston has one of the least efficient and most expensive municipal governments in the world. There are many reasons for this, but one solution is to split everything but the core of Boston up into individual towns with individual governments. Individual towns are much more responsive to residents and costs and bureaucracy are much more evident and easily solved. Individual line budget items are reviewed not by idiots in a huge bureaucracy, but by town selectmen who can easily be contacted and can easily resolve inefficiencies and problems.

The number one problem, bar none, with the Boston school system is that it takes the smart kids out and puts them in exam schools instead of allowing them to exert a good influence on their peers. You separate the towns, and you get more local, heterogeneous schools that provide a much more balanced education.

And furthermore, when you separate these towns you split up the way-too-powerful unions that have a stranglehold over the city, and in their place comes more local, responsive, reasonable unions which can be reasoned with.
 
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