This has more to do with inflation, an increase in student enrollment, and the $7 million the Worcester Cultural Academy will be siphoning away in order to keep Old Sturbridge Village afloat. The truly wild thing is that that charter school was already in the budget before it was approved.

We need lots of mixed zoning and small shops / things to do downtown (besides bars), rather than large office buildings for insurance company headquarters or whatever. People like being able to walk to things and with the amount of housing units being built right now, we're not going to be able to have every person have a car and still have a downtown that's pleasant to be in. We should dedicate the bottom floors of a couple of the new buildings to supermarkets and then spend a bunch of money on incentives for local people to start the small, unique businesses that make people want to actually live in a city. Having a lot of telecommuters is great for the city (and much easier on our infrastructure) - we just need things that will compel people to leave their houses and spend money when they're done working.

Heartland Barber for sure.

In this case it's less about the fact that it's a prayer and more about what the prayer is concerning (and about Toomey's behavior given her position as the chair of the public safety committee).

This was wild to watch live. And then to learn that she held all of the items related to the police...just great stuff. Toomey is the worst person to have in charge of the public safety committee and Petty deserves a lot of blame for continuing to allow her to chair it.

The city doesn't own any of its own plows now so it hires blue-line-y guys with big trucks to do the plowing and it's very hit-or-miss on side streets but is usually fine on main roads.

Bagel Time is the best, and if you go on a Saturday morning the line will be like forty people long so that could be a good opportunity for meeting other bagel enthusiasts. For nerdy things, That's Entertainment is wonderful and Free Play's worth a try. If you're into beer, Redemption Rock always has a crowd of people worth meeting and Greater Good is an excellent brewery too. Also, welcome!

I used Smart Green Solar and while everyone I worked with was kind (they didn't have a high-pressure sales pitch at all), it was clear that they prioritize sales of new systems over actually fulfilling and completing existing orders (it's been kind of a nightmare getting everything up and running - everything seemed very disorganized and everyone in the call centers is clearly overworked). Beacon Solar did the actual installation on Smart Green's behalf and they were great, though. It might be worth contacting Beacon directly.

That's Entertainment sometimes has days where you can play through a single session campaign at the store.

if anyone wants to help them but isn't able to make it to the fridges to donate food you can also give them money here: woofridges open collective page.

Just not Cipro, please.

The Telegram had a story about the lack of concerts: here's the story.

The center field door is only 12' high, which is a foot shorter than what's needed to fit a truck through, so any touring group is going to have to unload all of their stuff outside of the wall and carry it through or lift it over with a crane like they do at Fenway (which is obviously not going to make sense cost- or effort-wise for any artist that would be considering playing in the stadium).

It's also completely insane that the park doesn't have a door capable of allowing in the equipment necessary for concerts (making the stadium look more like Fenway was prioritized over this functionality). Concerts were supposed to be another source of revenue.

Green Street was actually one of the few areas in the city that was already doing well before the ballpark was built - it was happening organically without the need for intervention from the city. This is one of the things that makes the choice of location for the stadium so heartbreaking and puzzling.

If the $5/month or whatever it ends up being for most landlords significantly impacts rents then I think it'll be pretty clear who is to blame.

Hell yeah we did! This is really great news for anyone who cares at all about making Worcester a good place to live.

Gary Rosen kept steering the conversation back to cable TV at the last one as though 80% of the calls weren't concerning municipal broadband. It was wildly frustrating and I'd imagine this'll go the same way.

The people making decisions regarding internet providers in the city are more concerned with making sure that cable tv is affordable, so I'm not getting my hopes up, but any sort of competition would be a really good thing. I believe the city is currently in the process of negotiating a new 10-year contract with Charter, though.

I would have never guessed that Grover Norquist would be active in this subreddit.

Too simply put, it is. Not all tax increases are bad. This one is good (and extremely modest).

Then you don't have to worry about the increase in property tax at all and should definitely vote for this because it'll be great for the city.

It's actually a better deal than that: the statewide Community Preservation Trust Fund that was created when the bill was signed into law in 2000 is funded both by property taxes from participating communities and a surcharge on every real estate transaction in the state. The real estate surcharges add up to about $60 million a year, and if there's a state budget surplus (like the one we have now), that money can also be added to the fund. We've essentially been leaving free money on the table for over twenty years because we would have gotten the money we raised via taxes plus a share of the money raised by the state. Here's a map of the towns/cities that have already adopted it: map

You're talking about question 2. Question 5 is concerning the CPA.