Our Elected Officials Are Afraid Of The People

What do they really mean when they say "common sense"?

Hello all my lovely readers—the best readers, they tell me, and [sucks through teeth, cocks head to the left] certainly the most beautiful. I have the most beautiful readers—today’s tone is evidently a manic one. And fast too. Because my sister is getting married tomorrow and I’m officiating and boy I’ll tell ya that’s a lot of faith put in the hands of a guy stupid as this one you’re reading. JK I’m gunna kill it but any official officiators out there feel free to drop me some tips or tricks in the comments or chat.

I’ve got a two hour window to turn this dumping ground of notes into a digestible piece. What it is at the end of those two hours is what it necessarily has to be.

I’m putting the finishing touches on in the car up to Maine, Katie carting me down I-290 while I draft my communique in the passenger seat like some sort of diplomat. But a cool one like in the movies not the fail-son of an oil baron or politically connected sex pest like real life diplomats. If this post ends up having a lot of typos know they were all done on purpose actually. In fact they were added in after the fact for effect. (I have a great new copy editor but I simply cannot go through that process in heavy I-495 traffic). If you find a typo it means you have to subscribe actually.

The buzz about town at the moment is at-large candidate Satya ‘Moneybags’ Mitra at the forum Wednesday openly advocating for sending the unhoused to a work farm.

I was door knocking different places, and one elderly gentleman told me that a long time back, he was probably in his late 80s, he said that there used to be a place where these unhoused people used to be sent, used to call it the ‘poor park,’ where they will go and work in the farm and also get a shelter to live there. So in a way, you find a way to engage them, do something, and also try to find a place to shelter them. So I think we should have some innovative ideas.

A few sentences earlier he made it clear the issue is that they can be seen in public. But he also said he used to be homeless which is a story I’d very much like to hear. It’s hard to imagine someone who’s been through it saying something like that.

It wasn’t even the best moment of the forum, as we’ll get to in good time. Also will be going over a spreadsheet I put together that lists all the split votes of the past two years. The two pair nicely. The gulf between what this crony political class says and what it does. How they see their role and the role they serve. Ooooo very divisive of me, I know.

Let’s begin though with the issue that will, with any luck, come to define the race in retrospect, as with the New York City primary: housing.

Over the past year, Worcester saw a six percent change in asking rents, according to a new MassINC report on the housing crisis. (“Asking rents” is their term, and I get why they’re using it but it suggests a negotiation that simply doesn’t happen in a city with near-zero vacancy rates.) The income needed to afford the typical asking rent in the city is $86,868, and the median renter income is $49,377. Fifty two percent of renters in the city are, then, “rent burdened,” per the report. Of that percentage, half are “severely rent burdened,” meaning they spend more than 50 percent of their income on rent. Put another way: their landlord takes half.

The sad part is, it’s only gotten slightly worse during the generally agreed upon terms of the “housing crisis” narrative. In 2013, 49 percent of Worcester renters were cost burdened.

In 2013, Joe Petty, Kate Toomey, Gary Rosen and Tony Economou were in office. Moe Bergman and Candy Mero-Carlson were mounting campaigns to join them.

Mero-Carlson, as we’ve discussed on a recent Outdoor Cats, put out a mailer claiming she was “demanding more affordable housing” at Alta On The Row, a development at the former site of Mount Carmel Church which offers not a single unit of affordable housing. But, more than that, is at the center of a national scandal so severe Pam Bondi had to take a break from scapegoating line cooks to do a press conference on it. The ownership group is party to a massive scheme to fix rent prices, thereby juicing all the rents around their buildings, with an algorithm called RealPage. What the thing does is it de-lists empty apartments in a company’s portfolio as it sees fit, maintaining an artificial supply shortage that drives demand. Candy Mero-Carlson has never said a word about that publicly (I’d love to be corrected), nor has Petty, Toomey, Rosen, Economou or Bergman.

If you’re not familiar with Worcester’s political culture it might surprise you that, while this city in the throes of a housing crisis, Democratic politicians are passing up on a slam dunk villain. If you are familiar, you may remember that our first Chamber of Commerce-appointed city manager, Mike O’Brien, works for a developer named in at least one RealPage lawsuit. And then you remember that the developers are their constituency, not you or I, as is evident in campaign finance reports. And they can keep it that way so long as voter turnout stays under 20 percent and the controlling majority is in the hands of a few neighborhoods with “character,” the extremely Massachusetts way of saying “exclusion zones”—those tree-lined streets protected by single-family zoning, where right to housing is secured for life by 30-year mortgages and various other insurances both financial and social. Each of them little isolated dunes of the American Dream on an island otherwise disappearing into the sea.

The dune residents are to whom Moe Bergman is preaching with a recent mailer that may, to the untrained eye, look comedically insane (Happy Gilmore). And to a trained eye looks... comically insane (Fargo).

I wouldn’t insult you, my lovely beautiful readers, by explaining a piece of art. It means what it means to the viewer. I will just point out that is a weird way to listen to a bird that is right next to you and also looking at you.

For real though there is a way of looking at this within the American Dream dune analogy: ‘ugh these drowning people won’t stop screaming.’

Computer, enhance:

Per the definition outlined in this mailer, “common sense” means

• keeping the roads the way they are. (Unmentioned obviously are all the recent pedestrian deaths. Our road designs kill people.)

• Lowest residential tax rate is something I need to do a whole post about. It has little to no bearing on the property tax bill residents get, but all of the cranks use the tax rate line to campaign and the vote every year is self-indulgent political theater. Only the most cucked individuals would vote for anything but the lowest residential rate. It’s a rounding error on tax bills decided by the vibes of the real estate market and the whims of the Assessor’s Office.

• Punishing critics of the prevailing order for the political statements they make and but being too bashful to say publicly who you’re talking about or what you don’t like about them

• Police get everything they want and more

• “Maintaining our streets” in a city where the streets are fucking terrible (Ask me sometime about my idea for a DPW Strike Team)

• Better snow removal, something the city council has no control over whatsoever so long as they let the city manager’s budget through unchanged every year, as is tradition.

This last one is particularly stupid because Moe Bergman was on the council floor arguing that we shouldn’t raise the pay for snow plow drivers because better pay should be a “reward.” Etel Haxhiaj then patiently asked the city manager to explain how a pay raise factors into recruitment and retention. The obvious problem vis-a-vis roads not getting plowed is there aren’t enough people to plow them. The manager explained that in order to retain labor in a competitive labor market you have to pay laborers more.

Bergman begrudgingly voted for the pay raise then the next meeting offered a full throated appeal to buy the police department, where overtime for a third of the officers is well above your average WPD salary, another $30,000 drone. (Someone should do that math, btw: how many other types of employees we could afford with police overtime spending.)

It’s a good thing Moe has no power over snow removal! But the lack of competency is a feature not a bug, remember, for the police union officials who pick him to serve next to Toomey on the public safety subcommittee, as the second vote against the prospect of that theoretically important committee ever actually doing something. (Third member Luis Ojeda has already, in just a term, done too much critical thinking to get reassigned. We’ll see.)

Besides a limp-wristed shot at Thu Nguyen, the mailer doesn’t elaborate on the “nonsense” rejoinder. What does Bergman consider “nonsense?” The hardest question in local journalism, one that few even dare ask: What does he actually mean?

To answer that question, I took myself down an elaborate How To With John Wilson-style detour into the land of spreadsheets. The city’s open data portal has a download available called
“City Council Agendas and Minutes Data 2020 - Present.” You have to figure out how to get to this page to download it as a large text file. You import that file into a spreadsheet and you try to make sense of categories like NAME and UNIQUE ID with entries like “cc2024dec05032940” and “20241217tup (10)” but eventually you’re able to arrive at a full list of the 5766 items that passed through the city council in the current session, 2024-2025. And then, you can whittle that list down to 73 split votes. The rest either being unanimous or going through by voice, these 73 votes give you the best indication of what it is exactly councilors are opposed to. In other words, what Bergman considers “nonsense.”

But you’re not done yet! Because this spreadsheet doesn’t tell you who voted which way. You have to build that dataset yourself, because the clerk doesn’t keep it, and that first involves building a simple folder of all the meeting minutes, which the clerk used to have but sort of went away with the shift to a new hosting service called PrimeGov, which feels designed to be bad on purpose. So you have to make your own folder of the minutes and you use a bookmark manager that provides permanent copies and stand alone links and eventually after a full day’s labor you get something like this. You then have to manually cross reference the two, a task I am still not done with and I have to get this out so it stays a work in progress. Will hopefully be able to link the whole thing next post.

But I’m far enough I can provide an incomplete list of Bergman’s “nonsense,” based on what he voted against: pedestrian safety measures, protected bike lanes, resolutions in support of ending a genocide, cutting surveillance technology spending to increase social service spending, putting a moratorium on routine encampment sweeps (a practice that has been empirically demonstrated time and again makes homelessness worse, as we’re seeing in real time right now), allowing for more public participation in government meetings, investigating the transphobic remarks made by his colleague Candy Mero-Carlson, issuing a public apology for said remarks, declaring the city a sanctuary for trans residents, preserving residents’ rights to submit petitions to the council, creating an oversight board for police technology, a preemptive ban on future police cooperation with ICE, strengthening the fire code around sprinklers in multi-unit buildings and, last but not least, scarves and mittens for the homeless.

This is an incomplete list, but still, it’s whiplash to read through it. Also more or less the same as it is for Donna Colorio, the board’s only republican, And is just a few shades darker than Kate Toomey, Candy Mero-Carlson, or Joe Petty’s. They almost always vote as a bloc, as I’ve covered in individual cases so many times over the past five years it feels pointless to link any one instance.

All of the above things—many of them extremely popular with the public at large—constitute the substance of the “nonsense” euphemism in the cranks’ agreed-upon rhetoric. Opposition to them is the “common sense approach” they advertise.

Back to the candidate forum Wednesday, and the first question was housing. Bergman was called on to answer first. Here’s his answer in full. (The more you know about housing policy the worse it gets.)

We are trying a number of different avenues to create additional housing units. I do think we should we have been making it easier for ADUs dwelling units to be used in more financing has become an issue for those that want to use ADUs. I think we need to help those that want to create additional units to get financing. We need to be creative and work with our banks to do that.

In 2023, Moe Bergman voted for two additional restrictions on an already restrictive ADU policy proposal—to require owner occupancy and planning board approval. While the latter was defeated on the floor, the former was in place until state law was changed last year, overriding it. In case you thought he really wanted ADUs or saw it as a legitimate policy prescription for the housing crisis (it’s not). How the city will “work with our banks” goes unstated because they can’t and the banks won’t. Ok, so that’s one “avenue.” What else?

I also think that in a city like Worcester, which there’s not a lot of free space or buildable space that’s left. The one thing that I think we’ve been lacking in our efforts is we need to start building up. We have no more room to go side to side and we are losing out on the ability to create many more additional units. How do we encourage incentivized people to build up? We need to find tax incentives to do that because otherwise people aren’t going to do that. We have modified our zoning ordinances to make it easier, um less parking restrictions for additional housing units. Um we’ve provided incentives for people that are going to invest in building more units in the city.

This is mind numbing and I don’t have time to explain why but take a look at the city’s building codes. I’ve wanted to visit this point for quite a while. It’s dense. But “building up” is made thoroughly impossible by zoning and building codes Bergman would support to his dying breath. Then to conclude he just throws his hands up in the air. Lol.

But let’s face it, this has grown more than any other city in Massachusetts over the last decade. And there’s every reason to believe it’s going to continue to grow. And as it continues to grow, we’re going to continue to have challenges in meeting the demand.

Cayden on the other hand spoke with fluency about reasonable policy proposals from this decade.

I think building is absolutely important, but building takes a very, very long time. We need to put a bandaid on the housing prices that we have right now and building is not going to address those issues soon enough ... there’s no way that we can just keep building housing and wishing and hoping that it’s affordable so absolutely we need stabilization.

I also would really like to see stronger requirement affordability requirements for developers that are receiving tax incentives. We need those developers to be building more affordable units in the developments that they’re using. And I’d also really love the city to explore an anti displacement ordinance to really ensure that new development is not gentrifying the entire city because we know it’s already happening. So we can get ahead of it. I’d really like to work on that.

Bergman chirped back with some drivel about how more people need to “financial literacy.”

Let me just say the statistics speak for themselves. Almost two thirds of the people in Worcester rent versus own. Home ownership does help housing affordability, particularly if you can kind of minimize on multi-sale units. I think there needs to be more education, more financial assistance. So that somebody who’s renting and paying two thousand dollars a month for a three bedroom apartment can pay a lot less if they’re able to buy a one floor unit in a triple decker.

What the fuck dude? What is this crap? The guy has absolutely no idea how hard it is to get a home before a private equity firm gets it, paying well over the asking in cash. He has no idea how hard it is to get a mortgage. And seems to live in a La La Land where landlords left and right are willing to sell off floors of their property and banks are willing to issue mortgages to tenants for a floor of a building they don’t own on land they don’t own.

To say “statistics speak for themselves” then say something so antithetical to any good faith reading of the data—the data I easily found, linked, and cited up top!—like I’ve been saying... these people are unserious. You see that unseriousness especially clearly in his last line on the matter...

I will say one last thing as far as zoning. I do think we need to make it more favorable. I said that earlier, but I would not eliminate single family zoning.

Tripping over himself, apropos nothing, to make it clear to the people he knows really matter that he’s not going to actually do anything about zoning. Listen, bud, relax. They know. We all know.

Financial literacy education is not a legitimate solution to the problem of someone paying half their income to a landlord every month. To even suggest it is condescending in a way that makes me furious. Only someone comfortably settled in the structure of whatever the opposite of a meritocracy is called would say something like that. Someone so narcissistic they believe their position gives them the right to play around with reality like it’s paper machete. Molding it to a preconceived and unbending worldview.

Watch the whole thing!

Also revealing is the distinction between Bergman et al and more normal people like Davis and Jermoh Kamara on how they’d handle controversial issues—what Bergman would call “divisiveness” but is just “politics” in any dictionary. Each candidate was asked to speak on vaguely stated “tensions.”

Bergman tied demonstrations at city hall to “political violence,” using the term in post-Kirk fashion.

The fact that we have to have police escort us to our cars during certain meetings, when the meetings ended, because of the level of threatening and intimidating language that was thrown at us justifies, in my opinion, canceling the meetings. And it’s sad that that happens. It’s sad that that happens. But with political violence that exists throughout the world, particularly in this country, you cannot just ignore the threats that come in the chamber.

Mitra, of the same mind as Bergman, made comments somehow a shade darker than the one about the work camps.

At the same time, I think law and order should remain tanned. And we should see that we’ve come up with some kind of a disciplinary action, discipline in the system that one can only speak for so long. And we should stick by that rule, not that they can speak for three, four hours and leave aside all the agenda of the city, which we never get to. I think it’s our responsibility as a city council to see the agenda of the city. And if this kind of disturbance happens, we’ve got to come up with some kind of policy that will not make them come and disturb it this way. So I’m all for maintaining law and order, but I would like to see that the city council continues the meeting and the method should be established so that we can continue the meeting and not have this kind of disturbance in the law and order.

Man I for one do not want to find out what he means by “method.” Yikes.

Compare this rhetoric to that of Jermoh Kamara:

We are the second largest city in New England. Tensions are inevitable. One thing that I’ve actually heard from everyone that’s spoken here today is that our electoral officials are afraid of the people that voted for them, and we need to address that.

Chef’s kiss. What a line! She continued, addressing Bergman’s “political violence” insinuation (the only actual instance, remember, committed by a supporter of his named John ‘Spray Paint Bandit’ Piccollo).

I don’t agree with any of the, you know, the political violence that has happened. But also I want to say that I’ve been in protest. ... And I want to say that a lot of the protesters, they come there with good intentions. And I have not seen a level of discordance and violence that I’m hearing here today. And if I’m wrong, I would love to be corrected. But we cannot be afraid of the people that are voting for us and coming to us for help. And when elected, I will ensure that you have my ear. Thank you.

Davis backed Kamara up on that point. He said.

I also thank you, Jermoh, for questioning how we are defining threats and violence? I think we need to be very, very, very careful and intentional about that. And then lastly, the piece I really want to highlight is the way people or the dynamic we model for people on the council floor is huge. And so I think I would like to see some more respect amongst councillors to each other so that we can model what we want our city to be like, which is collaborative and respectful and can handle disagreements.

Refreshing to hear some adults at one of these things to counter balance all the Large Sons.

And that’s where we’re going to have to leave it for today... I need to get on the road. In fact I am on the road, putting the finishing touches on this post in the passenger seat as we head to Maine. But mentally, I need to exit this realm and enter that one.

End communique!

Wait before you go, though, a note of appreciation.

I was reminded recently of how grateful I am to be making a meager living doing creative work in an economy and society that really is actively trying to kill the prospect of anyone doing that. Reminder came via “God, it’s brutal out here,” by Lindsey Adler in Critical Thinking.

We live in a hollowed-out ecosystem where media consolidation and an efficiency mindset means that the breadth of work that once existed in creative fields will never return.

The creative world is cooked. It’s time to find a new job. But without a return to higher education or a trade school, it’s tough to translate creative skills into dependable, routine work.

I know that other industries have undergone their own apocalypses in the past, and for those who made different career choices than we did only to wind up with the same existential hell, I have to say: It’s unfair, it’s impersonal, it’s not nice to know other people have been here in the flames of professional hell.

I think the municipal orientation of this newsletter, the pointedly insular and geographically-focused nature of it, is a template for durability in these hollowed-out times. The mission of this newsletter and everything else I do with the time you all give me to do it is rebuilding a genuinely unique-to-Worcester media ecosystem. What the alt-weeklies used to do. As the internet gets worse and worse, I think we’re going to find that the only thing we’re left with is the communities in the places we live. And I want to provide—think i’ve done a decent job providing—some connective tissue to get us there.

Sorry for going a little long on the idea, but the “what is it you think you do here” question is top of mind right now.

I met some folks from Free Press who are doing a little road trip across the state right now on some righteous media work. I’ll let them tell you about when they’re ready to tell it.

Here’s a good Q&A written by Julio Ricardo Varela, one of the people from Free Press I met with, in their Pressing Issues newsletter about a PBS documentary on private equity and local journalism. (Need to watch. Worcester Sucks Movie Night??)

And earlier in the week I spoke at a journalism class at Emerson (thank you for the invite, Prof. Gino Canella, and the class had fantastic questions!). I left the conversation with a new idea: I genuinely believe that bringing back classified ads would be a big hit. The students didn’t even know what they were. Like genuinely. If anyone reading this is jazzed about the idea and looking for a project hit me up.

And please, consider what your $5 is really doing here. Or what it could if you started giving it. You have trusted me to use my time in service of making local media better in this city. As long as I’m lucky enough to not need other work that’s exactly what I’ll be doing.

Or hit the Worcester Sucks Tip Jar!

And if you’re jazzed on what I’m talking about right now, feel free to join me in reading “The Freaks Came Out To Write,” an oral history of the Village Voice by Tricia Romano. I’ll be starting whenever my used copy comes in from the seller. Really hoping to unearth some forgotten stuff I can borrow for cool new features of this newsletter!

Ok for real bye bye! Talk soon. Share this with someone if you liked it!