Somerville Development is Main Agenda for City Aldermen

SOMERVILLE — The January 25 Somerville Board of Aldermen meeting — which started 25 minutes late with a flag-facing prayer in the frigid, half-carpeted Aldermanic Chambers on the second floor of City Hall — continued until the hour was so advanced that veteran Alderman Bill White began to joke about breakfast.

For three-and-a-half hours, substantive discussion focused mainly on issues of city development, its problems and promises. Forty-one orders and resolutions were approved — from affordable housing surveys to snow-clearing in Winter Hill — many without debate as the night rolled on.

National politics appeared in the form of Resolution #17776, signed onto by all aldermen at 9:53 p.m., acknowledging the board’s “support for the continuance of temporary Protected Status for Salvadorian residents.”

“The item keeps coming up, unfortunately,” Alderman and Board Vice President Matthew McLaughlin explained, alluding to President Trump’s early January termination of protections for certain El Salvadorian immigrants.

“Just wanted to express the new board’s support for the immigrant community here in Somerville,” McLaughlin said. (In 2015, there were 4,739 Salvadorian-born residents in Somerville, according to Census Bureau statistics.)

Meanwhile, the sleek-suited, verbiage-and-statistics boys from the mayor’s office presented an update about the extension of the MBTA Green Line — a project described in fluent, very professional prose as a “1,065-day contract,” with an end goal of late 2021 — and helped manage the many questions about 311 put to Goran Smiljic of the Inspectional Services Department.

311, a telephone and multi-platform system designed to help residents access City Hall about disturbances, especially construction noise and development-related snow removal, is evidently not working perfectly.

“We all hear these complaints — I mean, suggestions,” Smiljic corrected himself.

The aldermen then made suggestions for 32 minutes.

In the argot of City Hall, statements of opinion often begin with “my constituents.” The central chamber around which the aldermen are seated is “the horseshoe.” The attending audience, which fluctuated between three and 20, is “the community.”

From the right side of the horseshoe, McLaughlin, who represents Ward 1, called for discussion to protect Somerville’s interests should the city’s Amazon headquarters bid be successful. (Both Somerville and Boston are shortlisted for e-commerce behemoth Amazon’s second headquarters.)

McLaughlin — whose ward includes East Somerville and Assembly Square, possible Amazon build sites — cited lessons learned during the recent planning phase for the development of Union Square.

At Union Square, “we gave the developer everything they wanted,” McLaughlin recalled, and only when it was too late asked, “Hey, what about community benefits? How are we going to pay for all of this?”

If Amazon were to come to Somerville, McLaughlin argued, “I want to make sure that we start from the beginning and talk about what exactly are we giving and what exactly are we getting in return.” All aldermen supported this order.

With or without Amazon, “what’s going to happen in Somerville is such a fundamental change,” rookie Alderman Ben Ewen-Campen volunteered.

The aldermen facing these changes include a new cohort that has made the 2018 Board of Aldermen perhaps the youngest in Somerville history. Five members are freshmen elected in November 2017, and four of that number — Aldermen J.T. Scott, Will Mbah, Jesse Clingan, and Ewen-Campen — have no prior city government experience.

At 10 o’clock, third-term Alderman and native Somervillian Mary Jo Rossetti provided an update about the demolition and rebuilding of Somerville High School. Teardown is scheduled for June 2018, and the project continues, according to Rossetti, on budget and on time.

Change is not coming to the city without opposition, nor without nostalgia for the Somerville of old. A last, public tour of the high school is provisionally scheduled for March 24, and plans are also being considered to give interested parties a piece of the old building — perhaps a brick — after demolition.

“A lot of people in the community would like to have a brick,” Rossetti reported.