There’s always a Worcester angle
Kearney & Pool, the school committee & MCAS, a gas station proposal on Hope Ave
Hello, everyone! Lots of things to get to today. I’m leaving for vacation as this post is hitting the net. Hell yeah! I’m rushing to get work done and get packed. So no chit chat. Let’s get to it.
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In today’s post:
Aidan Kearney and Tim Pool—School committee (sorta) says yes on 2—Hope Ave gas station proposal stinks—a $6 million rubber stamp for 340 Main—city council preview—next WCU Local 69 book club!—the harm production regime—odds and ends
There’s always a Worcester angle
Headlines were dominated by Russian disinformation last week and wouldn’t you know it there was a direct Worcester tie to the story. Always is.
In January 2023, Turtleboy Sports founder Aidan Kearney was featured on Tim Pool’s “Timcast” podcast. They employed a particular brand of anti-critical race theory that both Pool and Kearney specialize in to talk about the police slaying of Tyre Nichols in snarky terms that took little to no stock in Nichols humanity. The episode is two hours long and the 10 minutes I listened to while writing this were pure garbage of the Zynternet variety.
In November 2023, Pool was among several podcasters who launched Tenet Media, a right-wing “mega channel” that weird YouTube fascists were excited about.
On Wednesday, the Department of Justice indicted two Russian media executives for allegedly funneling millions of dollars to Tenet Media as part of a disinformation scheme. The money was shuffled to Pool and others to “create and publish propaganda videos that racked up millions of views on U.S. social media,” according to the DOJ. (Full text of the indictment.)
Tim Pool is saying he's innocent and unaware of the scheme, rather than a willing party. From the Chicago Sun Times:
“Should these allegations prove true, I, as well as the other personalities and commentators, were deceived and are victims,” Pool wrote Wednesday night.
Hmmmm claiming victimhood I see. Pretty blue hair lib behavior.
How much do we think Kearney made off that podcast appearance? And where’d that money come from?
Ah oh well guess we’ll never know.
So anyway please give me $5 if you can afford to and if you can’t, I get it.
“We know this is bad education”
The school committee voted 6-2 in support of ending MCAS as a graduation requirement. Opposed were Maureen Binienda and Alex Guardiola, whose comments sounded awfully familiar to his old boss Tim Murray’s.
“To eliminate something without a plan is not the answer,” Guardiola said.
In a letter posted to the Chamber of Commerce website, Murray wrote:
“However, in the absence of an improved alternative, it would be both foolhardy and irresponsible to eliminate the MCAS as a graduation requirement without an alternative.”
Binienda said she saw that “education got better” after the MCAS was implemented. She then sang a familiar tune:
“Even as the standards are being held, as Guardiola says, there is no plans in place as to how those standards will be assessed.”
Dianna Biancheria opted not to vote, but in her comments she signaled she was probably against it. See if this line sounds familiar:
“There seems to be no other plan,” she said.
It seems they’ve decided on their talking points! “There’s no plan.” It doesn’t make any sense as a criticism. The question is whether to remove the test as a graduation requirement. The plan is to continue doing the test as is (unfortunately), just without the punitive consequences for students who don’t pass it. There doesn’t need to be a “plan in place.” They’re not trying to replace the graduation requirement with another graduation requirement. They’re trying to make the standardized test, which hampers teachers, robs students, and lines the pockets of testing companies, less of a corrosive force on our public schools. That’s the plan.
Hannah Weinsaft, a teacher at South High, spoke some needed truth on the matter—what she called “the degradation of our education system because of these standardized tests.”
The tests are rooted in eugenics, reinforce inequities, and serve up a slop of junk data that the state then uses to make funding decisions.
“This is not data that gives us meaningful information,” Weinsaft said. “We know this is bad science. We know this is bad data. We know this is bad education.”
Garrett’s, get out of here
You may remember that in early 2022 the city council narrowly struck down a proposed moratorium on new gas station construction. Proposed by resident Doug Arbetter, the petition would have prohibited all new gas station construction in the city. The idea is that we have enough already—that there are better uses of urban space, and that gas stations are particularly fraught developments for the environment.
Mayor Joe Petty was the deciding vote against the idea. He joined Moe Bergman, Donna Colorio, Candy Mero-Carlson, George Russell, and Kate Toomey in striking the proposal down. A decisive crank victory, as was common at the time.
Now, the owner of a plot of land adjacent to the Hope Ave rotary is planning to lease it out for a new gas station, and hoo boy the neighbors are pissed. I got to see that pissed off energy firsthand at a community meeting in the basement of a Webster Square church Thursday.
The property owners want to enter into a long-term lease with Garrett’s Family Market, a small regional chain of gas stations, the closest one being off I-495 in Milford. Most are on the Cape.
The plan would raze a block that’s currently home to Donut Express, Giovanni’s Bakery, and a barbershop, as well as two other retail spaces previously home to a restaurant and liquor store. In the place of those five small retail spaces would be a variation on the Cumbies theme.
The proposal, given where it’s located, is rife with environmental and quality of life concerns. Residents expressed concerns about environmental pollution, given it’s right next to a watershed, and light pollution, as it’s in a dense residential neighborhood. The environmental concerns are especially valid. One of the best questions at the meeting was about the harmful vapor emissions that fueling stations give off. A resident asked the gas station chain’s president whether their stations employ enhanced vapor recovery measures, as are required by the California Air Resources Board. The president didn’t have an answer.
The proposal goes to the Zoning Board of Appeals, tentatively on October 7. The ZBA will have the power to either approve or strike it down. If what I saw on Thursday is any indication, it’s going to be quite the meeting. It was a raucous mood in that church. Tensions flared. People shouted over one another.
“That’s crazy! There’s people that live right there,” one woman yelled, while at the same time the owner of the property, Bill Kasper, kept repeating “We want out. We want out.” His family doesn’t want to directly manage the lot any longer, but they also don’t want to sell it.
Several times, Steven Barrett, the pastor overseeing the meeting, had to get up and intervene, asking people to speak one at a time.
The chief concerns expressed were environmental pollution, light pollution, traffic congestion, and ‘couldn’t this be anything else.’ All of those are, to my mind, good questions to be asking. Pretty much any other type of development on this lot would serve the community and the city better than another gas station.
The land, and the five buildings currently on it, have an assessed value of about $750,000.
About 15 minutes in, Peter Garrett, president of the company, pointed to a map of the existing gas stations in the city, projected on the wall. He said there’s a concentration of stations up toward Park Ave. Then he moved his hand down to the Hope Ave plot. “But there’s a significant amount of traffic that goes—”
“Exactly!” one woman yelled. The entire crowd roared up at once, a chorus of groans, cutting him off. Garrett wasn’t able to finish his point.
“We don’t need another gas station,” a man shouted from the back.
The neighborhood around the proposed gas station isn’t a wealthy one. The median income is about $40,000 and 70 percent of the residents are homeowners. It skews 20 percent older than the city overall. That all tracked with what I saw in the church basement. There was quite a bit of “you’re not from here” nativism at play—directed, refreshingly, at someone from across the state as opposed to another hemisphere.
People asked Kasper if he’s had any other offers. He said, with not a small amount of pride, that there’s “a lot of interest in the property.” But he’s committed to the idea of a long-term lease to a gas station.
On that front, I asked a question myself: Why not sell? If his family wants out of managing the property, which is understandable, why not cash all the way out? Why a long-term lease instead?
“We wanted to keep the property in the family, to be honest with you. My father bought the property in 1971 and he’d have liked to see us keep it in the family. We can hand it to our kids, and hopefully keep it for generations from there,” said Kasper.
I asked because I felt a long-term lease arrangement with zero property management responsibility on the part of the owner left little wiggle room. Whereas the property might be more valuable to, say, a housing developer, that sort of company isn’t about to build without ownership of the land. Few companies would. But, for a gas station franchise, it makes a certain amount of sense to seek a lease. For one: It spares you the trouble of worrying about what to do with the underground gas storage tank when you pack up and leave.
“That was the plan,” Kasper continued. “Not saying it will be the plan if this doesn’t work. We might have to go to Plan B.”
So, reading between the lines, a ZBA denial of the gas station idea might force him into simply listing the property for sale, in which case we stand at least a small chance of a more useful development at the location.
What we have here is an opportunity: a delightful little example of NIMBYism coinciding with good city planning and good environmental policy. I suppose the trick here is using NIMBYism toward a righteous aim.
See you all at the ZBA in October!
And just remember, if you’re mad about this gas station, you have Mayor Joe Petty, along with Councilors Moe Bergman, Kate Toomey, George Russell, Donna Colorio, and Candy Mero-Carlson to blame.
Speaking of Toomey and Mero-Carlson...
It’s free real estate!
A developer is about to get a $5.7 million tax break from the city without attending a single public meeting.
The Standing Committee on Economic Development, chaired by Candy Mero-Carlson, unanimously passed a tax deal for SMC Management Thursday despite the fact that no one from the company attended the meeting to answer questions from the public. The full council is expected to vote it through next Tuesday. Developers rarely if ever attend the final approval meeting. The public interaction is typically expected to happen in subcommittee. This time it didn’t happen at all. The council has never, to my memory, voted down a tax increment finance agreement.
So this developer is getting almost $6 million of our money without being made to explain even once why they deserve it. Great.
Technically, SMC is picking up 340 Main Street from another developer, SilverBrick, who dropped it in 2022. They plan to convert the 340 Main Street building into a roughly 150-unit housing complex, at 100 percent market rate rents—starting at $1,783 for studios and going up to $3,780 for three bedrooms.
To comply with the city’s inclusionary zoning ordinance, the developers aren’t going to build any affordable housing units, but instead shuffle $2.4 million to the city’s Affordable Housing Trust Fund, which may in the future use it to maybe build some affordable housing. I guess we’ll wait and see. The 340 Main Street development won’t have any affordable housing whatsoever.
At the meeting Thursday, labor organizer Kevin Ksen hopped up to the podium and asked “who is the SMC representative that’s here?”
Mero-Carlson said there wasn’t one.
“Is SMC online?” Ksen asked.
The clerk said no.
“At this point we’re already off the rails if the applicant isn’t meeting with the ED committee,” said Ksen.
Peter Dunn, the city’s chief development officer, said no meeting had been scheduled with the Worcester Jobs Fund either, but that it might happen within the month. He didn’t sound reassuringly confident.
Last November, the city council passed a responsible development ordinance that placed new restrictions and expectations on developers that get city tax deals. The ordinance sets hiring requirements for women, people of color, and locals. It requires they have apprenticeship programs and meet with the Worcester Jobs Fund before hiring contractors.
Ksen, as well as Fred Taylor of the carpenters’ union, said they hoped to be able to ask the developer about, well, any of that stuff. But since they didn’t show up, they couldn’t ask them.
“I’m supportive of this project,” said Ksen. “But I have serious issues when we keep creating special cases to sidestep the responsible development ordinance.”
Ksen brought up the fact that SMC couldn’t even issue a comment to the local press on its most recent development, the 210-unit housing complex in the Poet Hill neighborhood. Mero-Carlson said this time it’ll be different because of the responsible development ordinance, while at the same time allowing the developer to sidestep the spirit of it, as Ksen said.
While the developer wasn’t there, the Economic Development Coordinating Council sure was. Craig Blais of the Worcester Business Development Corporation threatened that if the subcommittee didn’t take the vote that night, 340 Main Street may well sit empty for another 10 years.
Peter Dunn, the city’s chief development officer, said the developer had a scheduling conflict that prevented sending a representative to the meeting. Everyone in the whole company has the same schedule, I guess. He also said, vaguely, that time is of the essence “in terms of when the closing is.”
Translation: the developers need this TIF passed ASAP, but they can’t make it even on Zoom to answer any questions. Sorry. It’s entitled behavior, but the Worcester City Council has historically done nothing at all to disabuse a developer of a right to that entitlement.
They kept up the trend on Thursday: Mero-Carlson made the motion to approve the tax deal. Kate Toomey voted in favor without comment. In casting her vote, committee member Jenny Pacillo said, “I do wish the developer was here to answer some questions.”
But they weren’t, and they suffered no consequences.
That’s a good segue to a preview of the council meeting on Tuesday....
City Council preview
Real quick: a few interesting things on next Tuesday’s agenda. (I won’t be watching as I’ll be on a much needed vacation. But the rest of the guys will be streaming it, 6:15 p.m. Tuesday on the Wootenanny Twitch page.)
Number one, of course, is the vote on 25 mph citywide speed limit (Item 17a.) Read up on that from Thursday’s post. There’s also Etel Haxhiaj’s resolution to support 25 mph as well as other traffic calming measures in the Vision Zero plan (19b). Donna Colorio held that out of spite last meeting.
There’s an item from the law department to lower Belmont Street to 25 mph specifically. As it’s a state road, it needs a separate vote. (9.15a)
The 340 Main Street tax deal (15a), discussed earlier in this post, is up for vote.
There’s a resident petition (8hh) to dedicate a water fountain in the Worcester Common to homeless veterans.
Candy Mero Carlson has an order on (12f) to “convene in executive session for the purpose of discussing all legal avenues” against WPI. Also covered the stupidity of that on Thursday.
Khrystian King wants to see empty police cruisers placed around the city as a traffic calming measure (12s).
Mayor Joe Petty is making the council vote on the MCAS ballot question, as the school committee did last week (13a). Sure to provoke a lot of kicking and screaming about how it’s not the council’s role to stake out clear political positions on issues affecting city residents. It’s not like that’s the whole point of the council or anything.
A terse report from the police department about Shotspotter (which we will break down in another post later this week) is up for comment after King held it last meeting. (19f)
Harm Production Regime
There was an event at Castle Park a few weeks ago that, on first glance, seems innocuous.
But if you hone in on the word “reclaim,” it takes on a different meaning. Reclaim from whom? The answer is, unfortunately, unhoused people.
Project Priceless, a coalition of unhoused women, staged a demonstration at the event.
“The castle is for everyone,” and “the war on drugs is a war on women.” Other signs said “displacement kills” and “how many of us have to die?”
The demonstration was accompanied by a policy brief in defense of the park’s encampments as “a safety network of people surviving the streets to share our resources and watch each other’s backs.”
It’s very rare around here to see that sentiment expressed. The majority of the city is quick to write off encampments as de facto blight, without deigning to entertain they may serve a valuable social function for the people made to live in them.
Most recently, Project Priceless put up a statement on Instagram.
When Project Priceless learned of the effort to banish them and their community from Castle Park, their initial reaction was anger, fear, and panic. However, the sense of hopelessness was eased by the sisterhood they’ve built in Main South over the past year.
On Saturday, August 31st, members of Project Priceless and SOS Worcester came together to defend their right to exist. We constructed a memorial for lost loved ones, especially women (including Project Priceless members) who have been killed under the harm-production regime of City Hall, Worcester’s ruling classes, and their enablers. The absurdity of fear-mongering pretexts justifying the repression of people living on the street is exposed when confronted by a community committed to upholding the humanity of homeless people who use drugs.
These are the people the event organizers sought to “reclaim” the park from. Like they were some invaders, not fellow residents. Like they’re not a member of the “public” that gets to be in a public park.
Next book club!
Next book club meeting will be Thursday, Sept. 26, 7 p.m. at Cordella’s Coffee (116 June St.) and on the Twitch page. You know the drill by now!
We’ll be discussing the last few chapters of Eight Hours for What We Will—7, 8 and the the conclusion. Part IV: Culture, conflict and change: the working class world of the early 20th century. Here are scans of each chapter:
Chapter 7: The commercialization of leisure
Chapter 8: From rum shop to Rialto: workers and movies
These chapters offer a bridge from the early days of industrial Worcester to something more resembling the present. Going to be a fun discussion! One question that immediately springs to mind: Why is the cost of fun on an exponential upward curve?
If you need to catch up: Folder of the entire book by chapter.
By way of a group scanning effort—thanks Lydia, Jess, Molly!—that folder is the only publicly available digital copy of this book. Which is neat. It was annoying that we had to do that but it is nonetheless a great resource to have in the back pocket.
And here are all the meetings so far: Meeting #1 (Intro Chap 1) / Meeting #2 (Chap 2 and 3) / Meeting #3 (Chap 4, 5, and 6)
We’ll also be deciding on the next book on the 26th! So bring some suggestions. Or send them here: Next book suggestion form
Also, never too late to sign up or sign your friend up! Sign up sheet
Odds and ends
Hope you liked this one! It was a deceptive amount of work (lots of meetings).
Reminder that I’m checking out starting today and won’t be back around until the 19th. I’m scheduling two to three general interest pieces, but they’ll be pre-written and shorter. So if anything dramatic happens I’ll just have to wait to hear about it. I am fully checking out because I freakin’ need to!
WGBH’s Sam Turken has a story up on the housing crisis that’s well worth a read/listen: “An overlooked result of the housing crisis? Renters stuck in shoddy apartments.”
Clark University has started offering a tuition discount to city employees, which reads to me like a ‘please don’t keep talking about PILOT reform teehee.’
The WRRB has a new report out on the civil service drama re: Saucier as the forever interim police chief. This Week In Worcester has a good summary.
Iconic Massachusetts behavior right here: guy dunks his Boston Creme in the Charles.
Once again, any recommendations for Amsterdam, London or the Republic of Ireland are welcome!
See you in a few weeks. Here’s a good song for the road:
As someone who regularly travels through that part of Hope Ave, putting a gas station there would pull traffic from 290 through that rotary and would be a nightmare.