Tuesday, October 17, 2006
6:00 p.m.
Committee Room (City Hall, second floor)
93 Highland Avenue
Finance Committee Meeting
meetings of the Committee on Finance are open to the public

UPDATE 3:40 p.m. I received a follow-up e-mail from Alderman White suggesting that constituents direct comments on Zero New Washington Street to the City Clerk, John Long* (617-625-6600 ext. 4100 or jlong *at* ci.somerville.ma.us), with instructions to share a copy of their comments with all eleven of the Aldermen.

*John Long is the City Clerk: I've always found him and his staff to be competent, friendly and helpful.

via e-mail:

the Mayor submitted his new proposal for the sale of Zero Washington Street. The Finance Committee meeting is scheduled for this Tuesday at 6:00 pm to discuss it.
Bill White

When Jacques Chirac, now President of France, was Mayor of Paris, he dramatically increased municipal open space:

There had been absolutely no addition to Parisian green space since 1945, but Chirac changed this dramatically. Over the period of his mayoral office, from 1977 to 1995, no fewer than 134 gardens [jardins] were created. This represented an increase of well over one-third above previous levels. The parks added 118 hectares of green space to the city aggregate [a hectare is almost 2.5 acres]—out of a total for Paris as a whole (excluding the Bois de Boulogne and Vincennes) of 484 hectares. . . . Some of the parks were created as a result of removing defective and over-crowded housing plots. . . . Others were located on the sites of former industrial plant[s] and the like. . . .

The imaginative creation of green space marked a concern for the Parisian (or tourist) pedestrian. . . (source: Paris: The Biography of a City by Colin Jones [Penguin, 2004], p. 462).

Since Fall 2005, members of the Mayor's administration, Stan Koty, Commissioner of Public Works, and Carlene Campbell, Director of Community Outreach and liaison to the City's Dog Owners Task Force, promised citizens that an OLRA at Zero New Washington Street would open simultaneously with the Nunziato ORLA (which opened in April 2006). Then, in Spring 2006, we learned that instead of creating new open space, the City had decided to sell the property.

Zero New Washington Street is located behind the Holiday Inn in East Somerville. The property has no immediate residential abutters, yet the site is easily walkable to residents of the Cobble Hill neighborhood—people who presently drive to the Nunziato OLRA, which, as the only public open space in Somerville where it is safe an legal for residents to socialize and exercise our dogs off-leash, currently sustains greater use than it can accommodate.

A Sullivan Square resident has observed that a park with an off-leash recreational area "would bring integrity to the area." A Cobble Hill homeowner describes the property and the desperate need for open space in East Somerville in "The Case for Zero New Washington Street."

Friends and residents of East Somerville have submitted a petition with over 350 signatures in support of a park for people and pets at Zero New Washington Street.

Please join us at the Finance Committee meeting, Tuesday evening, for the Committee's recommendation on the Mayor's proposal to sell Zero New Washington Street. If you cannot attend the Finance Committee Meeting, please contact the Chair of the Committee, Alderman White (617-625-9110 or william.a.white * at * verizon.net), and tell him the Board of Aldermen, c/o the City Clerk, John Long (617-625-6600 ext. 4100 or jlong *at* ci.somerville.ma.us), and tell them not to sell out Somerville's future: don't sell our open space!