Many thanks to Gibran Rivera, who sent me thorough and thoughtful responses to a survey I sent all city council candidates two weeks ago. So far, he’s the only one to fill it out; I hope others follow. I will compile the responses - certainly before the final election in November, though I may not have much to compare before the preliminary elections tomorrow. In any case, Rivera’s answers are below the fold.
Gibran Rivera (website | blog)
Candidate, District 6 (challenger to councilor John Tobin) (Districts)
2005 Council Issues Survey
Education
1. Do you support the move back to neighborhood schools?
Yes, but not at this time. My priority is to improve the quality of schools in every neighborhood so that walking to a good school is a legitimate choice for every family. Schools function better when parents are more involved in their children’s education. To reach this goal I want to create more parent outreach coordinator positions.
2. Should Boston increase its use of alternatives to and experiments with the traditional public school model: Yes
charter schools? No
magnet schools? Yes
vouchers? No
3. Should the city devote more resources (staff or money) to education of those whose primary language is not English? Yes
Crime
4. Do we need significantly more police officers on the force?
We do need more police, but we also need more job opportunities, housing opportunities, health care opportunities and child-care opportunities. Just increasing the police force without offering people options is not a solution to the problem of crime, it is just the incarceration of criminals.
5. Do we need more city programs targeting youth violence?
Yes. Youth organizing has proven to be a powerful model in decreasing crime and developing the power and skill of our youth. Through youth organizing in Jamaica Plain, our young people have lowered the voting age for the Jamaica Plain Neighborhood Council and have played an integral role in the planning process around the Jackson Square development. There are other examples around the City of youth organizing and empowerment, such as at Project Hip-Hop, the City School, Teen Empowerment, the Food Project and the REEP program out of ACE. We wholeheartedly support these efforts as ways of decreasing youth violence. Youth are very good at dealing with youth issues and helping to solve them. City Management (trash collection, road repair, snow plowing, etc.)
6. How would you rate the city’s trash collection and recycling efforts?
Recycling needs to be improved, especially for residential and commercial tenants. Trash collection is good, although some neighborhoods have multiple collections per week, while other have only one.
7. Do we need more emphasize on civil engineering to improve our roads and to ease traffic?
Easing of traffic and transportation planning are both very necessary.
Taxation and Fiscal Matters
8. Should the City reduce the property tax levels any time soon?
No. Clearly property tax levels are an issue for some. We need to look at ways of alleviating the tax burden on the elderly and low-income home owners. It is a major problem that institutions in Boston such as the hospitals and universities are able to determine what their Payment in Lieu of Taxes (PILOT) will be. There are a number of these institutions that have private entities on their properties, such as fast food courts and retail shops. While these institutions are key players in our City, many of them are also making a lot of money and in some cases, such as in the Fenway, Mission Hill, Roxbury and parts of Jamaica Plain, these institutions are having serious negative consequences on surrounding communities through their expansion. We believe that the tool used for assessing what these institutions should pay in taxes should be run through equity criteria. How much money are these institutions making and what are the effects of their presence on surrounding communities? We cannot look at reducing property taxes given the current state of our Public Schools. We should look at the possibility of school funding not being tied directly to local property taxes in order to reach more equitable educational opportunities statewide.
Housing and Urban Planning
9. Do you support any form of rent control or stabilization measure?
Yes. I would definitely have voted for the Rent Stabilization Act/Community Stabilization Act. Every day Boston residents are displaced from their homes due to high rent increases and unjust evictions and this is not okay. We need to help foster the creation of new affordable housing in order to increase supply, especially in a transit oriented way, but we also need to focus on keeping people from being displaced from their homes. It is the residents of our communities, tenants and small home-owners, that make our neighborhoods vibrant places to live. It is the work of community members that increases property values, which in turn leads to displacement. This is not a just dynamic. When people work to improve their neighborhoods, they should be allowed to continue living there.
10. Should the Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA) be eliminated or drastically weakened?
The BRA is only a semi-public agency, which leads to many issues of accountability to both the government and the people of Boston. It is also involved in both development and planning as the question states. These two tasks of a single agency are a primary contradiction. No agency should be doing both planning and development. The City needs a planning department that is publicly accountable, as well as a development arm, that is also publicly accountable. Councilor Arroyo has been a leader in pointing to some of these major concerns around the BRA, along with the Chinese Progressive Association and the Whose Boston? Coalition.
11. Should Boston ease its restrictions on liquor licensing for bars and restaurants?
Yes, if the local community has approved it through a democratic and open process.
City Employees
12. Should the city residency requirement for City of Boston employees be relaxed or abolished?
I do support the residency requirement for city employees, though I recognize that lower paid City employees have great difficulty with this requirement. When people live in the community in which they work, there is often a higher level of accountability to the community and one’s neighbors. Yet one of the key pieces of the residency requirement is ensuring that city employees can afford to live in the city. This is an example of why we need the Community Stabilization Act and the production of new affordable housing. We also need to ensure good wages for public employees. The government has a lot of oversight over city employees and can make sure that wages, benefits, work environments, and hiring practices are just. Government jobs can be good jobs, they should be good jobs. We need to make sure that Boston is a livable city for city employees as well as all workers.
Economic Development
13. Do you support the proposed Boston University Biohazard research lab on the edge of the South End?
No. One of the fundamental pieces of our campaign is the promotion of community involvement. We believe that the people who are affected by a specific issue should be allowed to participate in the decisions that affect their lives. Whether it be in terms of housing issues, employment, health care or the BioLab, those most affected by the issue should be at the center of the decision making process. In the development of the proposal for the BU BioLab we have not observed this principle of meaningful community involvement. We feel that the process around the construction of the BioLab has not involved the community as much as it should have, and we also have concerns about the public health and safety issues that surround the BSL Level 4 laboratory. The proposed location for the laboratory is a dense urban area where the health risks for residents in all surrounding areas is of concern to the community as well as to us. The proposed neighborhood for the lab, the South End/Roxbury, is a community that already bears the burden of negative environmental factors that have affected the health of the community there. We also have questions about the jobs that will be created through this project. The community has voiced concerns about whether there will be lasting, good paying employment created for residents of the community and we echo those concerns.
14. Should the council offer incentives for business — large or small — to do work in Boston?
Attracting businesses and building locally owned businesses are key factors in economic development for disinvested and disadvantaged communities. I support community led processes to determine the types of businesses and services that are needed to help in the revitalization of specific areas. Merchants Associations and Main Streets programs have been fundamental in helping to determine the investment needs in certain neighborhoods by doing research and needs assessments. I would work with these organizations and other community groups to help attract investment. When appropriate I would approach businesses directly, with the directive of the community, to discuss bringing them to an area. Another key factor in business development is micro-financing. This model has been used around the world to help small business get off the ground with low interest loans. From Bangladesh to Nicaragua to Egleston Sq., this model has functioned and should be supported.
City Government
15. A couple of years ago, the council president enforced "Rule 19," which gave discretion to the council president to foreclose discussion that veered away from city business. Do you support this type of measure and its enforcement?
I do not support “Rule 19″, which now goes by a different name. Our government is set up in a way that local, state and federal issues are all interrelated. When issues at the state or federal level, which clearly affect the local government, are not able to be debated and discussed, there is a breakdown in our governments ability to function. At the very least the Council should be able to vote on whether the Council President has made the right decision regarding “Rule 19″.
Priorities
Please rank the top three priorities you would bring to the city council (Affordable Housing, Crime Prevention, Economic Development, Education, Efficacy of city management, Improving Race Relations, Keeping taxes in check, University-City Relations, Urban Planning, Other [specify])
1. Affordable Housing
2. Education
3. Other: Community involvement in decision making
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