Can you find the wolves in this picture?
Can you find the wolves in this picture?
Palestine demonstration at the DCU, police budget vs schools budget, Mill Street
How things are generally going around here...
On the docket today: Protest outside the Mass Dems Convention, a note on a major Worcester Sucks milestone, Mill Street recap, police budget review upcoming, odds and ends.
Please subscribe!
And help spread the word!
“BLOOD ON DEMOCRAT HANDS”
About 40-50 demonstrators protested the Democratic Party’s complicity in a genocide outside the DCU Center Saturday morning.
“Generally we're showing up in opposition to liberal zionism. All forms of zionism,” said Jake Scarponi of Worcester DSA, the organization behind the demonstration.
“And presenting an anti-zionist program, and saying look, these elements of the ruling class that are represented by politicians—even the liberals, even the ones you want to say are best on the issue—their positions are pretty broken on this issue and they have no interest in saving Palestinian lives and ending Israeli occupation.”
Inside the DCU Center, state party delegates palled around, goofed, spoofed, wore silly hats and laughed about Orange Main Jail. Per the Telegram reporter on scene, “A chorus of ‘Lock Him Up, Lock Him Up’ rolled through the DCU Center.”
During her speech, Senator Elizabeth Warren made one tepid call for a ceasefire, as is tradition, to a crowd of people who definitely all want that.
Outside: “Warren, Warren you can’t hide,” they chanted, “we charge you with genocide.”
Scarponi elaborated. High profile Democrats from Massachusetts like Warren, Ed Markey, and Jim McGovern will take symbolic stances on Israeli violence and weapons shipments and the need for aid into Gaza, he said.
“Sometimes there's a little controlled opposition to military spending,” said Scarponi. “But they have these things they’re holding out for and once they get those things you know a lot of times someone like McGovern will say 'OK, you can send money to Israel now.'”
This same Democratic Party is in control of the White House, let’s not forget, and recently their president can’t even get the facts of the matter straight. It was another embarrassing weekend for Joe Biden.
Here’s the timeline on that whole mess.
Friday: President Joe Biden announced “Israel has agreed to a proposal that would lead to a ‘lasting’ ceasefire in the Gaza Strip,” per Al Jazeera. He called on Hamas to accept the proposal.
Later on Friday: Hamas says it welcomes the proposal, per the same story.
Saturday morning: Netanyahu rejects the proposal, per the New York Times.
Saturday afternoon: “[T]wo of Mr. Netanyahu’s far-right coalition partners — Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir — threatened to quit his government should he move forward with the proposal.”
Also Saturday afternoon: UNRWA announces all 36 shelters in Rafah are empty as 1 million Palestinians flee, some of which to the previously destroyed Jabalia Refugee camp, to live among the rubble.
Saturday night: Israeli forces raid a West Bank neighborhood. Israeli protestors demanding Netanyahu accept the ceasefire deal are trampled by Israeli police on horseback. Israel bombs Lebanon. The World Health Organization announces that the last hospital in Rafah has ceased functioning.
Sunday morning: 50 bodies recovered from the aforementioned Jabalia refugee camp. “Nonstop Israeli attacks on Gaza continue, killing at least 60 people in the last 24 hours,” reports Al Jazeera.
I liked the way Joshua P. Hill put it here in a New Means post this morning…
Netanyahu is more alone than ever on the world stage, and is reportedly isolated even in his own government, stranded between the most extreme elements of his Cabinet, who want the total annihilation of Gaza, and those elements who realize that a ceasefire must be reached.
That same guy just accepted a bipartisan invitation to speak in front of the U.S. Congress. He was invited by Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer alongside Mike Johnson and Mitch McConnell. They wrote, jointly, “We join the State of Israel in your struggle against terror, especially as Hamas continues to hold American and Israeli citizens captive and its leaders jeopardize regional stability...”
It’s the “jeopardize regional stability” line for me. Very clear by now who is actually doing that, I think. And that’s the guy Dems in Congress are inviting into the halls of their power to give what will likely amount to a stump speech for Trump.
But anyway, back to the DCU Center. The small demonstration was ringed by a dozen police officers with several squad cars lurking further off. Hands on their hips they watched on making sure the demonstrators didn't cross some imaginary line.
Several people I talked to shared stories about delegates who were made by bag checkers to take off Palestinian keffiyeh or pins before entering the convention. As I walked past the arena to my car, I caught a voice on the loudspeaker from inside: “no signs or flags will be allowed in the convention.”
Nevertheless, this happened…
And you have to imagine that’s why they were taking such pains to police attire. They don’t want to be confronted with messages like that, but it doesn’t make them any less true.
Orange Man Jail though! Lock him up lock him up lock him up. And when he doesn’t get locked up because he won’t of course we’ll go oh well what can you do? And then when he wins in November because of not in spite of the nonstop news coverage of his porno trial we’ll say “nightmare country” like it isn’t already. It will be fascism again when the Orange Man Wins unlike right now or any other time since Orange Man Lost.
Worcester Sucks hit the 4,000 club!
This little newsletter that could hit a major milestone this past week! We got to 4,000 overall subscribers. That’s fantastic. I launched this thing on June 19, 2020, and four years later it just keeps growing and growing.
Of the now 4,001 subscribers, 718 are of the “paid” variety, sending either $5 monthly or $69 yearly. That’s a good free-to-paid ratio. I’m told anything above 10 percent paid is a success, and we’re closer to 20 percent without paywalling any of our work. It’s enough for me to make a full-time job of it and also pay Shaun and Aislinn and other contributors for their work.
A paid subscription is like an investment in the belief that Worcester should have a real scrappy, irreverent local outlet in the alt weekly tradition. Food for thought: If all 4,000 subscribers were paying $5 a month, we’d be looking at a ~$200,000 annual budget. That’s enough to support three positions at $60,000 each,a fair and attractive salary for experienced journalists. At a time when there are no local journalism jobs, let alone good ones, we could recruit real talent. A three-reporter newsroom with no mandate besides doing the best work they can—with no outside pressure to rewrite press releases or meet daily content quotas or cozy up to advertisers/power players—would outperform any local outlet in recent memory. It would be transformative at a time when local journalism needs to transform or else wither and die.
It would be durable, too. Not at all subject to the market forces currently destroying the industry—the whims of venture capital or the shrinking return of digital advertising or the need to demonstrate endless growth and quarterly profit.
Getting there is the hard part, of course. Just hitting 1,000 paid subscribers remains at best a long term goal. I probably couldn’t consider adding one more full timer until I’m at 1,500. That may never happen.
But, if it does, it’ll be because more and more readers believe in the institution enough to invest in it directly. That sort of growth is earned slowly and comes incrementally. Trust is the only metric that matters, and trust can’t be neatly quantified. The industry is collapsing under the weight of so many business decisions over so many years that don’t account for trust.
Luckily I’m in a position where that’s all I have to think about. And I’m going to keep that going as long as I can.
Come hang out on June 14 for the Worcester Sucks birthday party! And June 12 for the Rewind / Cordella’s ribbon cutting!
More info on those events here.
Balderdash of the highest order!
If there’s any sense left in this city, Tuesday night will mark the end of any crankery around the Mill Street redesign.
An order put on by Moe Bergman to relitigate the new design severely backfired on him.
Over hours of public comment, dozens of Mill Street supporters showed up and called in versus a small handful of detractors. By Colin Novick’s count, it was 35-6 in favor of the redesigned street.
Andrew Marsh had the best comment of the night, though there were many.
On the other side, the argument was not so strong. Wayne Griffin, who you’ll remember from the time he doxxed a teenager and falsely called her a “cop killer,” brought a smoking gun: the RMV manual showing you must park 12 inches from the curb.
My brother in Christ, when there’s a bike lane between parking spots and the curb, the line is the curb.
The cranks didn’t send their best.
Bergman’s order was held and will be taken up at the next meeting, a week from Tuesday. Looks like we’ll have to do it all over again then.
In the meantime this looks like a fun event.
Can you find the wolves in this picture?
There’s a stunning line from Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon. Leonardo DiCaprio’s character is reading from a children’s book that serves as exposition for the historical plight of the Osage people up until that moment. “Can you find the wolves in this picture?” the book asks, and thereby Scorsese asks the audience.
Let’s see if we can find the wolves in this one, huh?
After digging into the police budget for a few hours today, I found that the amount of money the city is spending on ShotSpotter and body cams is identical to the money it’s not spending on the schools.
There’s been a lot of talk, for good reason, about the School Department budget! As detailed in the latest WPS In Brief, we’re looking at more than 150 position cuts for teachers across the district. Much of that has to do with a state funding deficit of some $22 million because Maura Healey is evil. But that’s not the whole story.
On Tuesday, Education Association of Worcester President Melissa Verdier spoke at the city council, demanding the city manager make up for years of funding the WPS under the required amount.
In the past, Verdier said, she’s complained that the schools are receiving the bare minimum from city hall.
“And then I find out that’s not the case,” she said. “We’ve been underfunded for many years.”
Worcester is one of 14 districts in the state that doesn’t pay 100 percent of the “required local contribution” threshold for school funding out of the municipality’s budget.
“I want to make it clear there are over 24 who pay 200 percent, two of which pay over 300 percent,” said Verdier.
“I would rather strive to be one of those cities than a city which is underfunding.”
In her petition, she attached this here slide...
Overall, it’s about $6 million owed to the schools. In this year’s proposed budget, the city is underfunding by $1.14 million. Hold onto that number!
This Tuesday, the city council will review the cops’ budget proposal for FY2025—a reliably farcical event. The council never tries to touch the police budget. The last time I can remember was 2018 when then-councilor Konnie Lukes tried to cut $75,000 from the horse cop budget (RIP) and it failed 1-10. This time, we’ll hopefully see some pointed questions about ShotSpotter, given all the news about the service recently. As I’ll get to, it’s not clear at all how much we spend on that stuff. The budget document is vague. Pointedly so.
The meeting starts at 5 p.m. Tuesday and the cops are first up on the agenda. The police budget starts on page 48 of this PDF version of the budget.
Overall, the department’s budget is set to increase a clean $5 million, from $55.5 this year to $60.5 million next year. That’s a 9 percent increase. And if you look at the bottom line here...
...that’s a 9 percent increase for a smaller department. From 537 positions to 535.
Of the $60.5 million, $52.5 million of it is salaries.
Then there’s a lot of overtime spending too, as is tradition: $636,000 in “court attendance” overtime, $1.14 million in “investigative,” $1.32 million in “regular.”
Outside of salaries, there are a few extremely vague big ticket line items.
What is “public safety software,” exactly? It goes unexplained. What kind of “tech equipment leases” are we talking about here? Together, they add up to $1.18 million. Hold onto that number!
After some digging I can safely say “public safety software” is a euphemism for ShotSpotter. Going back to 2023, then-Chief Steve Sargent wrote in his budget proposal that the “Security Services” line was increasing due to “ShotSpotter Flex Expansion and the new Body Camera program.” Here’s the 2023 line item.
But, as we’ll get to, the body camera expenditures are likely filed elsewhere and that was a little white lie from Sargent. The “security services” line stays at the same rate in FY 2024. Then in FY 2025 a new line called “public safety software” appears at roughly the same $572,870 price.
The “tech equipment leases” line in FY 2025 likely means body cameras. Body cameras are leased from a company named Axon, and at an expense anticipated to be around $3.9 million over five years, back in 2022. In FY 2022, the city paid $1.5 million, saying the remaining balance would be paid over the next four years. That’s $618,000 a year. The “tech equipment” line item is $616,000.
And then in the “police - building” section we have this gem.
You’ll notice there’s no budget amount on the left there. That means this is $376,308 we didn’t spend last year. But no explanation besides “other.”
Between “public safety software,” “tech equipment leases,” and “other equipment leases,” we have a very shadowy pool of $1.5 million for which there was no budget appropriation last year and no clearly specified use this year other than some vague “tech.” One line we can say for certain means ShotSpotter and maybe a little bit of body camera software management money. The other line we can say is body cameras. The third line is anyone’s guess.
Last Tuesday, there were two council orders on ShotSpotter, both held like nearly everything else on the agenda for the June 11 meeting.
Thu Nguyen submitted one of them, which asked for a bunch of information we should be able to get on Tuesday if the cops don’t actively avoid it (they will). The order asked for “the cost, data concerning predicting police, how Shotspotter activates policing and patrolling vs. evidence of a shooting, and what types of arrests have they led to.”
The other comes from Kate Toomey, asking for an expansion. It reads “request Police Chief review the current boundaries of Shot Spotter and any data that would warrant an expansion beyond the existing footprint.” It also asks for a “report estimating the cost of such an expansion.”
Back to the schools, the city has underfunded the school budget by $1.14 million, despite a $22 million deficit in state funding which is manifesting in more than 100 teacher layoffs.
Meanwhile, the cops have a $1.5 million pool of money for vague tech expenditures. Of that pool, $1.18 million is dedicated to ShotSpotter and body cameras.
That’s $1.18 million to the police department for spurious technologies as part of a 9 percent budget increase, and $1.14 million away from the Worcester Public Schools, who are looking at a staggering number of layoffs.
$1.1 million away from desperately needed teachers, and $1.1 million toward two private security companies—Sound Thinking (ShotSpotter) and Axon (body cameras)—despite the thin evidence that either provides an especially useful service.
Do teachers provide a useful service?
Can you find the wolves in this picture?
Odds and ends
Thank you for reading! Please subscribe!
The Shaun Connolly Matt Shearer collab video on a Dublin-NYC style portal between Boston and Worcester is a much watch.
More than 2,000 sorely needed new housing units have faced construction delays now that it’s not free for hedge funds to borrow money and gamble it on an “up and coming city.” Now that there are stakes it’s not worth it anymore they’re saying
This Week In Worcester has a new and very comprehensive story on city hall’s equity theft practices. More on that from the Boston Globe as well. Still crickets from City Hall.
Two people died in a fire within a three decker on Hancock Street on Tuesday. A dozen others escaped unharmed.
Another complaint was filed by nurses at St. Vincent Hospital. It’s the fifth such complaint filed about what nurses are calling a patient safety crisis.
Looks like no challengers whatsoever for the local state delegation this fall.
In New Bedford the city council voted to at least consider the idea of a sanctioned homeless encampment, putting them a hell of a lot further ahead than Worcester, where the idea was flatly rejected without explanation in March
Relatedly Christopher Gavin over at the Globe had a nice one today on the practice of “no cause evictions” gaining purchase in Massachusetts.
In it he cites a report on eviction data from the Massachusetts Housing Partnership which has some good Worcester tidbits. Like this…
That’s a lot.
Aaand this post has been a lot too, huh? Thanks for reading talk soon!