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And just to be explicit, the 6 who voted to not do their job were: Joe Petty, Candy Mero-Carlson, Donna Colorio, Kate Toomey, George Russell and Moe Bergman.

That was the vote to hire Batista. The vote to not bother searching for anyone else was 6-5.

So you guys would prefer a nobody from a Western state lead the city over a guy who's been and raised here for years? Clueless and racist.

That's a roundabout way of saying gentrification.

5? I thought the vote was 8-3?

At least the recent burst of business closures are ones that only opened a few years ago. Factor in the pandemic, and they never really had time to establish roots in the Worcester community in the first place.

Are these commercial locations actually unaffordable? I'm unclear on whether they are being left vacant or new businesses are moving in shortly. That also holds a bunch of weight when it comes to if/how much improvement is happening.

Rising residential prices definitely have a negative impact on people who have lived here a long time, but I'm not sure the same is true of these business closures.

Doesn't matter unless we convince 6 city councilors to care. We only had 5 on this one.

Gentrification

>And just as an aside your source is Teen Vogue? 😜

Kim's a respected labor writer who's been published inThe New Republic, WaPo, and Esquire as well as had a literal book about the labor movement published by Simon and Schuster. But sure, go off about how writing for Teen Vogue is something to scoff at as if it's some great accomplishment to be the least liked person on a municipal subreddit.

I was incredibly disappointed in how this all played out and it really puts a cloud over Eric. No shade to him, he seems nice, but we really don’t know much about him and what his vision is.

The City Council should be ashamed that they didn’t do their job to look for a new manager the standard way. It would have been so valuable to see Eric and others with experience in city management show their fresh ideas for managing Worcester. I realize this is now the third time they’ve abandoned one of their major duties, instead pushing a guy through from the inside. It feels so icky.

I certainly hope the best for Eric in this role, and absolutely hope he might be able to make good recommendations for progress. But I also think if you live in the district of a councilor who chose to not do their job, you should start looking elsewhere for a representative who actually cares and is fully committed to the job of being a city councilor.

Pretty much everyone knew it was gonna happen. Plenty of people kicked up a fuss but...no dice.

Thanks! Got it working. Seems like the direct link was being wonky for some reason.

Try this page and choose a different format: https://archive.org/details/FoxCopsOut

A39 year old?

It’s a great liberal hypocrisy. You know it, I know it, everyone knows it. Liberals love free speech, until they don’t. They love unions until they don’t. Spin it anyway you’d like, it doesn’t change a thing. And just as an aside your source is Teen Vogue? 😜

We’ve already used up our snow budget for the season 🤪

Gonna be clear, I'm not interested in whatever Karen's response to this is because, let's be real, it's gonna be some braindead NIMBY shit, but for anyone who is actually curious about the tension between the labor movement and police unions, read on...

Karen would like people to see her response and think, "Wait, that's hypocritical! Stupid liberals!" Unfortunately for them this line of thinking falls apart when you apply even 30s of critical thinking to the question, "Are police unions part of the labor movement?"

They're not, but let's examine why they're not, and why it's not only fine to be pro-labor and against police unions but why it's arguably hypocritical to be anything else.

Why would members of the labor movement include police unions in our number when, push comes to shove, the police will never support us?

One of American law enforcment's earliest activities was strikebreaking. Why? Because it was politically and economically useful, of course!

>The use of public employees to serve private economic interests and to use legally-ordained force against organizing workers was both cost-effective for manufacturing concerns and politically useful, in that it confused the issue of workers rights with the issue of crime.

But it's not like you need to go back to the 1800s to see this in action. Remember how much money the cops got paid to stand there and harass people during the St. Vincent Nurse's strike?

In fact, it wouldn't be out of line to say that much of our image of modern policing developed largely in response to the police's role in suppressing organized labor.

>Anti-labor activity also compelled major changes in the organization of police departments. Alarm boxes were set up throughout cities, and respectable citizens, meaning businessmen, were given keys so that they could call out the police force at a moment’s notice. The patrol wagon system was instituted so that large numbers of people could be arrested and transported all at once. Horseback patrols, particularly effective against strikers and demonstrators, and new, improved, longer nightsticks became standard issue. Source

Which brings me to my second point...

Police do not see themselves as part of the labor movement.

Let's get this out of the way early, yes, the main role of any union is to protect the interests of their members. In that respect, police and labor unions don't differ much. But as you can see from the AFL-CIO page on What Unions Do, part of what makes a union strong is that no union exists in a vaccuum. They're part of web that strengthens and supports each other in a struggle that tries to benefit all workers. It should perhaps come as no surprise then that only one single police union: The International Union of Police Associations (which represents only 2.7% of American police) is actually affiliated with the AFL-CIO. And that affiliation is...troubled at best.

Kim Kelly, the incredible labor writer for Teen Vogue, says it best:

>Williams argues that the shared workplace identity that makes up the “thin blue line” mentality for cops transcends other identity markers, and shows how they view themselves as police first, and everything else second. As such, police unions tend to keep their distance from the rest of the labor movement (unless they’re cracking its members’ skulls). Even the basic terminology is different. These organizations are usually broken down into “lodges” instead of “locals,” and are more often known as “associations” rather than unions. Some people balk at the thought of referring to police associations as “unions” at all, and it’s understandable why, though for the sake of this piece, we’ll hold our noses and use the more common term. Labor unions exist to protect people; police exist to protect property. They may carry their version of union cards and enjoy the benefits of collective bargaining agreements, but that’s about where the similarities between cops and unionized workers end. Source

So yeah, no...police "unions" are not unions. Don't let people like this fucking troll try to convince you this is some great liberal hypocrisy. The Labor Movement is just that, a movement. Cops only care about themselves, you don't owe them a fucking thing.

Worcester once had a large DPW and a fleet of trucks. They did an excellent job of plowing and snow removal. Sometime in the 1970s the city decided to privatize all of that. Anyone with a pickup truck with a plow became a contractor. These guys had areas they were responsible for and were on call. Once the call was made they were on the clock even if it hadn't started snowing. There was a threshold at which point they had to go to work. Say it was six inches, nothing got touched until it reached that. So while the clock was running, these guys picked up private jobs while they waited for the snow to hit the threshold. The city determined when the threshold was met or not and the clock stopped or kept going. I don't have to tell you that Joe pickup truck was raking it in all winter on the taxpayers dime. Worst yet, this began a long history of shitty roads in Worcester. The plowing went from excellent to maybe a single pass if you were lucky. A lot of these guys went to a bar once they got the call and got fortified for what may be a long night and some of them ended up playing bumper cars. I don't know what Worcester does now. I don't think the tax base would allow a bigger DPW.

I'm pretty sure at least four or five people actually cared, that's gotta count for something, even in a city of 205k people

Success for wealthy people.

In 2020 I paid $3,500 for a Roth tank. It would've been $3,200 for a regular tank. For the peace of mind it's worth paying only a bit extra for a Roth time.

Without reading the article:
Making the city unaffordable is a success? Is this some type of a joke?
Pricing out people who have lived her for decades, generations without improving the city much is a success? Got it.

ETA: article behind a paywall, based off of the two sentences I could read. Jacking up prices cause richer folks see an investment opportunity sounds like a successful strategy to me.

We didn't even do that much. Maybe "pretended to care about trying to try".

Exactly. This is a weird definition of success. I guess it raises a question of how does Worcester grow and reinvent itself as a community without pushing people out? Perhaps that's just a sad reality but not one that should be celebrated as the city progressing.