They look at this beautiful garden and see only weeds

A week of truly petty politics

Hello hello! I’m kicking off this post with an experiment in form: Before going long on any one bit of news, I’ll be providing a very short recap of all the news. It’s fun to try new things!

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The week in one graf

City Manager Eric Batista refused to allow the Human Rights Commission to release a statement condemning transphobia in city hall, showing everyone exactly why he changed the rules to make sure every statement by every board under his purview goes through his office. Commissioner Jacqueline Yang said she was “very disgusted” by it, a sentiment I co-sign. The city council returned to form, spending nearly six hours airing grievances about snow plowing and debating the finer points of what chickens add or subtract from the character of the neighborhood. They accomplished nothing, demonstrating the “council business” they desperately wanted to get back to after being made to weigh in on more pressing issues over the past few months. City Councilor Etel Haxhiaj, thrown into the Fox News spotlight, received threatening messages so serious she plans to attend all meetings remotely until further notice. The school committee yet again voted down a resolution submitted by member Sue Mailman (this time, it was a reconsideration) that pointedly pledges defense of LGBTQIA students, particularly our trans students. Only Mailman, Vanessa Alvarez, and Jermaine Johnson voted for it. Molly McCullough, who introduced the “all lives matter” re-write at the last meeting, opted to just stay home this time. Paul Saucier was formally made police chief. No interview or search process. Khrystian King announced his mayoral bid and Mayor Joe Petty went full nuclear, releasing a response statement apropos of nothing (he hasn’t himself announced yet), calling King “(a) City Councilor who has contributed to weekly chaos and gridlock, making dysfunction the hallmark of this council term.” This is a bad look for Petty (who advises him now?) and sets the tone early that this election is going to be downright nasty.

And that’s it! The week in less than 300 words. What do we think?

Here’s what I think: At times it becomes exhausting, this neverending slew of embarrassing bullshit. To read it back in condensed form magnifies the feeling. So before I get to any of the news items mentioned above, I’m going to share a personal anecdote—one that serves as both a palate cleanser and a crucial reminder: there is something special about this place, and we need to fight to keep it.

A night on the town—Petty politics—equally petty School Committee politics—shooting down senior tax relief—odds and ends

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To look at the garden

Friday night Katie and I hit the town with her coworker Katelynn. I met them at the brewery under their shop. The big-block jenga therein—that corny relic of 2014—fell with a crack loud as a gunshot. Scared the shit out of me. Remember when the cops got in trouble for doing blow and playing jenga? Amazing. Then we went to Wooden Bar, then the new Cafe Neo. It was a great and much-needed reminder of what I love about this city.

Wooden Bar was fantastic, per usual. Best restaurant in the city right now and that claim is easy. On our way out the door the maître d’ handed me a loaf of bread and some sweets from their new bakery. Until I get around to actually subscribing to the newsletter, he said. Or something to that effect. I said this’ll do nicely don’t you worry about it. I carried my new loaf out of there like a football from the endzone, ready to spike it.

We rolled into Cafe Neo’s new location to find a 1:1 replica of the original, just transposed a block over. Owner Panagiotis “Peter” Tsigas’ commitment to his own style is simply unmatched. Who else would go through such an effort? This city tried to kill him and he said fuck you as he birthed his karaoke phoenix from the real estate ashes. Beautiful.

He was there as always with his signature glasses, doing up his signature cocktails with a bit too much fruit to demonstrate the bit too much love he has for his customers. I sang “Mother” by Danzig because you can’t go to Cafe Neo and not do karaoke. I changed every “mother” and “father” to “mommy” and “daddy” and made myself cry laughing. Katie and Katelynn got invited to join a summer kickball league. We left before midnight, buzzed and hearts full. A night immersed in the pleasures afforded by our entrepreneurial weirdos—those singular individuals who have been and will always be the beating heart of this city. Who will never put the city “on the map” and wouldn’t have any use for it. What the hell is the map anyway? An open question, far as I’m concerned.

I really do love this place with all my heart. My disdain for city hall and the machinations therein stems from that love. The beginning and end of my politics: if only city hall could just get the hell out of the way of the city we’d really start to come into our own. The tragedy: city hall types fail to understand what they’ve got on their hands here. They look at this beautiful garden and see only weeds.

The horizon is a city hall in the hands of the gardeners. We’ll get there one day and while I’m not sure it’ll be soon, I am sure it’ll happen.

In the meantime I’m writing jokes for the upcoming Roast of Worcester, which I’ll be doing yet again. The lineup this year is great! Come hang.

Tickets here.

And if you have any jokes lemme hear ‘em! I’m running out of material.

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Petty politics

On Thursday, Khrystian King announced his run for mayor. In his statement, he flipped the narrative Mayor Joe Petty has long employed against him and other progressives.

As City Councilor, I led on allowing homeowners to build accessory dwelling units and lowering rents for seniors. I secured 1.5 million for youth sports, and took on the political establishment when it came to transparency and accountability. In hard times, I lead.

City Hall is failing you. There is no real leadership, no accountability to residents, and the divisive politics is causing dysfunction. Meanwhile, housing prices and the cost of living are pushing both long term and newer residents out. We can’t let Worcester become another unaffordable extension of Boston.

We need to reject petty politics, come together, and get things done. Working families are tired of the same song and dance. I’m running for Mayor to listen, lead, and deliver results. I humbly ask for your vote on Tuesday November 4th.

Then, the next day, Joe Petty showed us exactly the sort of petty politics Khrystian called on us to reject. He produced a classic statement about a statement, released through The Talk of the Commonwealth, it looks like. The statement isn’t about his own campaign but rather a targeted rejoinder of King’s announcement.

Councilor King has once again declared his candidacy for Mayor. As I stated in 2023, we have starkly different perspectives on what true leadership means and how best to advance Worcester's future. His statement today is a prime example of why so many people are disillusioned with politics.

Consider this:

• A City Councilor who participated in an illegal, non-public council subcommittee meeting-casting votes and now facing multiple open meeting law violations-announces his candidacy for Mayor on a platform of "transparency and accountability."

• A City Councilor who has contributed to weekly chaos and gridlock, making dysfunction the hallmark of this council term, now claims that "divisive politics" are to blame for the city's stagnation.

Worcester deserves a Mayor who provides stable, inclusive leadership-someone who genuinely unites the community, rather than deepening its divides. I firmly believe that the only way to move our city forward is by bringing people

Let’s take those bullet points one at a time.

The first is an obvious “mountain out of a molehill” situation. The education subcommittee put out a statement in support of Mailman’s LGBTQIA resolution¹ a few weeks back. One of the least important and most redundant subcommittees, Petty used it as a catchall for the council’s progressive bloc, assigning all three of them—King, Haxhiaj, and Nguyen. Faced with wanton obstructionism on the full council, they decided to put out a statement as a collective, using the subcommittee because it was, well, there. The open meeting law violation complaints they incurred for this are from people who personally dislike progressives: Steve Quist and Nicole Apostola, both longtime city politics commentators. It’s very obvious they don’t so much care about the open meeting law as they’re seeking out a way to bludgeon with bureaucracy. It is well within the realm of possibility that Petty himself had a hand in either Quist or Apostola’s decision to go through with filling out an OML complaint form. Who cares, though. The net effect is the same: they have this thing they can say that sounds bad to an audience that doesn’t know the specifics, and can be relied on not to seek them out.

In the same week that the city manager blocks the Human Rights Commission from releasing a statement of their own on the matter, this is a weird hill to die on, and a weird thing to lead with. Is that really all you got, Joe?

Point number two is rich coming from the guy who almost certainly but for legal purposes allegedly (by others, not me) instructed the city clerk to block the Gaza ceasefire petition from getting on the agenda back in October—the disastrous, dirty move that set off all of the “weekly chaos” that Petty puts on King in the statement. Really, it’s the other way around.

The anger from Petty et al. stems from their getting called on the traditional backroom games that quietly preserve the dysfunction in city hall. The Gaza ceasefire issue blew that neatly preserved tradition wide open. They are frustrated they can’t do that stuff anymore, at least with full impunity. And so they’re blaming the people who took that entitlement away from them.

Petty says King’s brand of politics sows disillusionment but like everything else he has this backwards. The disillusionment underpins the entire model of city governance that Petty’s political career rests on. They need people to stay home and tune out for the whole thing to work. The “chaos” of the past few months is best seen as a challenge to this disillusionment. And, for someone like Petty, that’s a threat.

It should be said that Petty hasn’t even announced yet. I personally think he’s playing a game of chicken with Maureen Binienda, rumored to be considering a mayoral bid. But it’s an exceedingly strange move to go nuclear this early—usually we keep up the pretense of “positive” and “issues focused” campaigning until at least September. Now, Petty’s doing it before papers can be formally pulled.

That starts next week, by the way! Buckle up, baby.

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“It’s really stunning”

Over on the school committee side, things aren’t going much better. In fact now that I’m thinking about it, seems to be a weird coincidence that Petty’s the only one who sits on both the the council and school committee, and both boards are “dysfunctional” in the same exact way. Hm.

As mentioned up top, Mailman asked on Thursday for a reconsideration of her LGBTQIA resolution that got All Lives Matter’d at the last meeting. Yet again it failed, and along the same lines. Petty and the cranks on one side, progressives on the other. There was another round of testimony from parents and educators and other members of the public. They were yet again ignored. It was a crazy move for Molly McCullough to stay home for the reconsideration, given she was the one that introduced the All Lives Matter rewrite.

After the meeting, Mailman put out a candid statement on her Instagram. In the short video she vents her frustration with these two votes on what should be a simple moral statement. She says that the Pittsfield school committee took some language from her resolution and passed it 6-0. Meanwhile, in Worcester, it’s a no-go. She continues:

So it's really stunning when you listen to the testimony and of people with their educators, families, parents, and we are not listening. We don't want to acknowledge.... I don't know what to—it's stunning. And tonight, there was a presentation by the superintendent and the theme was about culturally responsive schools. I found it incredibly ironic. So, I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

What can you say besides that? I’m sorry! I’m sorry too. This is ridiculous.

Now’s a good time to mention yet again that there’s a really cool event coming up on Wednesday night.

If you’re pissed off and want to do something about it but don’t quite know what to do, this is the event for you. See you there. RSVP here.

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Snubbing seniors out of spite

Unlike Worcester, Boston has a real city council and a real mayor.

That real city council and mayor passed a home rule petition in January to expand the existing tax relief in state law for senior homeowners.

On Tuesday, Rob Bilotta had a petition on the city council agenda to do the same thing here in Worcester. During public comment, he said:

I think this could be a great opportunity to explore how we might be able to expand the Worcester Senior Homeowner Tax Break. This is something that the Boston City Council just did with a home rule petition. Boston's legislation would increase the amount of existing property tax exemption for senior homeowners and also expand income eligibility requirements.

Kate Toomey promptly stood to offer a counterargument. She had the city’s CFO come up to the bench to explain the existing senior relief in state law, as if to say “see, we’re already doing it.” But we’re not already doing it! (A little later, the CFO explained that.) Nevertheless, she motioned to file Bilotta’s suggestion, implying it was redundant, even though it wasn’t.

The motion passed along the usual lines. Petty, Toomey, Mero-Carlson, Russell, Bergman, and Colorio effectively voted against pursuing more aggressive tax relief for struggling seniors, and they did so for one very clear reason: the person who proposed it. That was the beginning and the end of their opposition. Bilotta is running against Candy Mero-Carlson, so his suggestions must be pooh-poohed and voted against by any means necessary. Only Haxhiaj, King, Ojeda, and Pacillo voted against filing.

You only start to understand how ghoulish this vote was when you dig into the fine print. This moment didn’t get much attention because it’s deep in the weeds as they say. (I only really came around to understanding the significance midway through recording the most recent Outdoor Cats episode.)

This stuff is a little dense, so bear with me.

Under state law, there’s a set of exemptions for senior homeowners. In Massachusetts fashion it’s highly limited and densely proscribed. Qualifying seniors are eligible for a $700 deduction. There’s a local option for cities and towns to expand that to $1,400, an option that Worcester and most other places take up. That’s what CFO Timothy McGourthy explained to Toomey. It is not what Bilotta was asking for.

He wanted to see the city pursue an expansion of that deduction—both in the amount offered and the criteria for eligibility—like what Boston just submitted to the State Legislature, via a home rule petition. In this state, you have to submit such a home rule petition to go over and above state law with your local ordinances. The petition that Boston submitted was to expand the amount of tax relief offered, up to $1,500 with the local option to go to $3,000, and widen the income restrictions for accessing it, by tying it to the 50 percent area median income figure. Here’s the substance of the change, from the text of the home rule petition.

Like I said, it’s dense stuff. But a real city council and a real mayor are equipped to take on this sort of thing. That’s what Bilotta was asking for: tax relief over and above what state law allows, by means of a home rule petition.

No one on our fake city council acknowledged this. The closest we got was Jenny Pacillo, who asked McGourthy: “So basically everything on this is set by the state, essentially?”

McGourthy said: “The existing exemptions are defined under state law. The petitioner mentioned the idea of home rule petition. Home rule petition allows you to create unique elements.”

No follow up. No, “so why don’t we try our own home rule petition, then?” Because that would mean running with an idea Bilotta put on the table. Instead, it went straight to roll call. Pacillo’s was the last comment made, the closest to discussing the actual substance of Bilotta’s petition, and only very briefly.

Before that, though, much time spent pooh-poohing. The most egregious was the invocation of the senior tax work off program—a real thing the city offers.

Kate Toomey got up a second time, after having just clearly spoken with Mero-Carlson to say oh and one more thing.

“Just one more thing my colleague just reminded me, but we also have the senior work off program, which is available for seniors as well. And I don't think it's been utilized very much, but it's there for folks. So I know there were people that were passionately looking for that and we supported that as well.”

The manager said yeah we have that and briefly explained it. He said there’s been low interest and after I did some digging it’s not hard to see why: in order to get $2,000 of tax relief, seniors have to work at minimum wage for at least 125 hours—almost a month of full time work!

And then Candy got up to do the same thing Toomey did—ask leading questions in service of pooh-poohing Bilotta’s idea. In her attempt, she exposed one of the darker elements of the city’s tax debt labor camp system.

“If we do have a senior who is not able to perform those duties in the senior workup program, somebody else can actually do, perform those duties for them, correct?”

The manager said yes, that’s correct. A senior unfit themselves for labor can appoint someone to work for minimum wage for a month in their stead. (The nature of the work is unspecified in city documents, but the application suggests it’s secretarial in nature.)

As property values inflate wildly, so do property tax bills. Since 2018, home values in this city have doubled.

From 2024 to 2025 alone, there was an 8 percent jump in the average value of a single family home, per city documents—up to just under $400,000. The tax rate the council recently adopted for FY 25 is 13.19 per $1,000 value. An average tax bill on an average home is in the ballpark of $5,266 a year.

The work off program and state-proscribed tax relief together, a maximum of $3,400, don’t come close to covering that. Meanwhile, social security has actually lost value, down some 20 percent in buying power since 2010. Seniors are being absolutely squeezed. At the same time, we’ve seen a sharp increase in senior homelessness. The need for bold action from city hall is increasingly dire. But our city council this week summarily wrote off the idea of taking that bold action and, more insulting still, tried to insinuate they’re already taking it. All in an effort to snub the opponent of a councilor at the heart of the crony patronage network that puts a cap on the horizon of our imagination. They’re doing the bare minimum. The suggestion they do more makes them indignant. They lie to cover themselves. That’s all on display in this one small and little-discussed moment from the meeting Tuesday.

These are not serious people. We do not have a real city council. Nothing changes until that changes.

Vote Bilotta.

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Odds and ends

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The Worcester Public Library is doing March Meowness again! Get your cat pics over there for a good cause! Here’s mine of Mr. Bear, whilst reading:

A really fun event coming up, courtesy Worcester Havurah!

woohavurah

A post shared by @woohavurah

It’s a live stage show and based on some sneak peeks of the script I’ve received, it’s going to kick ass.

The Telegram sent a reporter around to check out all the eggs in all the supermarkets. Pretty funny.

Aidan Kearney’s due back in court on witness intimidation charges. At a hearing on Wednesday he’ll try to get them dismissed. Here’s hoping that doesn’t work.

Very excited to check out the opening of Implacable Books, a new store some friends of the newsletter are opening soon! Good feature on it in MassLive.

Oh and several readers pointed out that the song I shared at the end of the last post has some issues around it. Buffy Sainte-Marie, the artist, is what they call a “pretendian” it turns out. I didn’t know that, or anything about her frankly. But suffice it to say you shouldn’t do that!

Anyway here’s a non-pretendian song (I hope) that Mr. Bad Advice himself Shaun Connolly introduced me to this morning. Very nice! Local band too, out of Boston.

Ok that’s all for now. Talk soon!

1. The original version sent to inboxes had this as “in support of Nguyen.” That’s wrong. I misremembered the content. Here’s the statement in full.