Political signage

We are publishing a letter to the editor from Jon Puopolo requesting that the city do something to curb the use of political signage or to do away with it entirely.

In a city where politics rules and where awakening is considered a political activity, the suggestion of stopping the placement of political signage all over the city is a very bold suggestion indeed.

We don’t know if residents and politicians would go for such an order against political signage.

After all, the signage only stays up for months and months as political campaigns wind down to election day.

Then, like magic, the signage disappears.

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Modular classrooms

The city is set on adding modular classrooms wherever it can, except for at the high school (unless space can be found for such classrooms).

The cost will be about $14 million, give or take a few million.

The result will be that overcrowding at most of the smaller public schools will be alleviated while overcrowding at the high school awaits a different fate.

Residents here with children, many of them, do not want their children packed into modular classrooms, or so is the claim by several councilors, led by Councilor at Large Stephanie Smith.

Smith refused Monday night to vote for the $150,000 the city requested (and which it got by a 6-4 vote) for an analyst to head the beginnings of the complex operation that will lead to the placement of the modular.

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A new high school

(Photo by Joe Resnek)

The mayor continues to advocate for a new high school.

This is sound judgment.

However a new high school, by his own admission Monday night at the city council meeting where he appeared, will likely cost “north of $500 million.”

A new high school, even if approved by the state at some point in the future, will take longer than ten years to become a reality.

There is a movement underway right now at the State House to redo the percentages in funding that cities like Everett could depend on if given the OK by the state to move forward on a new high school.

That might be as much as 50% reimbursement under a new plan or even higher.

This would be a good thing for a Gateway City like ours.

However, even if the reimbursement is much higher, the cost remains almost prohibitive.

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Inflation

Nearly all of us who are part of the American economy are right now suffering from the worst inflationary spiral in many, many years.

The Federal Reserve has raised interest rates consistently for the past year, and there is the belief interest rates could go even higher. By raising the cost for money, the tendency is to rely on less money being borrowed, fewer homes being built and sold, fewer automobiles, and fewer everything being bought and money spent by consumers.

Raising interest rates also causes the job market to contract, rather than to expand. This is also perceived as a policy by the Fed to bring down inflation – that is – the cost for goods and everything else we spend and or buy.

In the post pandemic world that has gone back to work, the expansion of world economies happened so fast and so powerfully that inflation got its hold on nearly all the major and minor economies on the globe.

That expansion was at first a welcome sign that we could come back from the pandemic in a big way and expand our economies and survive.

Inflation, however, is like poison to struggling people dealing with getting by.

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Running out of open space

The proposed Rivergreen development project spread over many acres and intended to produce almost 600 new units of residential living spaces, is, on its face, an incredible project that most cities we believe would welcome.

However, Everett suffers from a lack of open space.

This is a very crowded city.

The Rivegreen property – about 25 acres – is one of the last sprawling open spaces in Everett where multiple acres are available, presumably, for a variety of developments.

The mayor has written to the Planning Board that he is against this project – not because he is against projects like this, rather, because this project would take away open space where he envisions a new high school might possibly be built.

How that new high school can come to be is problematic as it will likely cost $500 million and will take at least a decade to get off the ground.

What to do in the meantime?

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