Following on this thread I participated in over at BMG earlier this year, it appears that the Worcester School Committee has voted to close four elementary schools in Worcester. It remains to be seen what impact this will have not only on the City of Worcester but on Tim Murray's LG candidacy.
There were some interesting comments over at the BMG thread and I encourage you all to read through it. Now that we're 2 months past that thread, what do you think will happen? What will the political fallout from this be?
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4 comments:
Hey, Hoss. I love your coverage of the LG Race. You will enjoy the article in today's Worcester T & G. Silbert released her tax returns and encouraged her opponents to do the same. Murray's flack says he will, but called it a "distraction." Well, the interesting thing to me in that article is that the reporter says that Murray's mayor-ship is "part-time and without executive authority." He'll want to distract people from that. His tax returns will likely show that as well, that he's a full-time lawyer and a part-time mayor.
I hate it when people post anonymously, at least be creative and make up a name - or continue using the same user name (besides my guess is that "Anonymous" is "field guy" from BMG)
The only controversial reporting about the school closings I've seen seems to be on the blogs. The people of Worcester understand the difficulty of the decision and the rational behind it. By making this decision Murray & the School committee are saving several teachers' jobs. And Worcester wouldn't be in this predicament in the first place if cities & towns received the proper education funding. Where is the outrage about the talks of Chapter 70 cuts!?
This is simply an example of the problem Murray continuously speaks about. . . Cities & towns are put in horrible budgeting situations due to a lack of support at the State level. This is why they are forced to rely on the property tax, which leads to more problems.
Oh, and as another BMG blogger explained Murray puts in many more hours then what he is paid. He is a full-time Mayor on a part-time salary.
The problem is called lack of state revenue. Mass is losing workers, families, jobs. Every legislator wants to support cities and towns - do we really need an LG to do the same? As I don't see any great fixes in Worcester under Tim's 'leadership' (to quote the T&G Worcester seems to be following Springfield and may go bankrupt if they don't solve the firefighters' contract...) Is this what we want for the whole state?
There seems to be a problem and it needs fixing. For my money (and vote) I want someone with a proven, life long record of accomplishment in economic development to be able to solve our state's fiscal issues. So far there is only one but I am open to persuasion. I just haven't seen that Tim has actually accomplished anything as 'mayor' to convince me...
(BTW this is my first post and I shall remain honorably anonymous.)
I can just say this to those who poke their head in Worcester for a day and act as though they know the city dynamics. With a large majority of the vote mayor Murray won the mayors office handidly. Worcester is often called Wormtown and we don't walk more than 100 feet to go to a store. We have alot of pride and in the past few years with Mayor Murray and city manager Mike O'brien we have more of a reason to. The city of Worcester has a weak reresentation in Boston but we still manage to moderately grow. Mayor Murray has worked with brownfields which is the rehabilitation of factories that are no longer their. There are many examples of this in Worcester which usded to be a tremendous manufacturing city. Tim led the fight to abolish the Worcester Fashion outlets which was later sold and is planned to have a half million dolllar rehab of mix used developement. WPI a local college is collaboratting for a project to create what will be a biotech park which will be the source of new jobs. Worcester will have 1 billion in economic developement and there is more on the way. My primary reason for supporting Tim Murray is economic development and creative ways of bringing jobs to the state. So far Tim seems to be the only candidate with comprehensive planes with substance on a number of different issues.
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