Alderman at Large Questionnaire: Fred Berman

  1. What political or community activism accomplishments are you most proud of during your last term in office (or the last two years if you have not previously served)? What specific things do you want to accomplish during the coming term?

    Probably the accomplishment that I am proudest of over the past two years is my involvement with the Mystic View Task Force in negotiating the settlement to the eight-year-old Assembly Square conflict. Negotiating that settlement had many components, including sustaining support within the Task Force for negotiation, articulating the parameters of the solution, and building support among the Task Force Members for specific compromises. Building support for adoption of our terms by the other parties was another challenge. And making sure that the legal agreement that purported to follow the terms of our agreement actually was true to those terms, and re-framing the language and amendments to make it so was another challenge. The negotiation process was a year well spent.

    Other accomplishments that I am proud of are

    1. My participation in the successful advocacy for Green Line extension, although successful is a relative term, and to paraphrase the PDS tag line: Green Line Extension Demands Ongoing Participation.

    2. My participation in the successful campaigns of Pat Jehlen, Denise Provost, and Deval Patrick. Although Marty's campaign for Alderman at Large was ultimately unsuccessful, I was proud to be part of it.

    3. My participation in the PDS forums that I organized or worked with others to organize: on the Budget, on the proposed siting of a jail, and on the proposed re-write of the condo ordinance. I think that one of the best things that PDS can do is to spark more public dialogue on issues that will affect us.

  2. How will you balance business development with the needs of low-income residents as the Green Line comes to Somerville?

    I don't think that business development and the needs of low income residents have to clash. In fact, business development means job creation, which, depending on whom the jobs go to and what kind of jobs we're talking about, is exactly what low income residents need to stabilize their circumstances.

    The City does need to find a way to stabilize housing prices along the Green Line corridor. I'm not talking rent control, which is politically out of the question. Let's be creative. There is no reason why the City can't make low/no-interest loans to owners of triple deckers or larger apartment buildings in exchange for deed restrictions which maintain rents in the rehabilitated units at an affordable level. And there is no reason that the City can't use the permitting process for new businesses seeking zoning or other exemptions to implement "first source" hiring agreements which prioritize Somerville or neighborhood residents, to require such businesses - depending on their size and scope, to offer training or other opportunities for local employees, to offer summer internships/jobs for local high school students, etc. There is a balance between over-burdening a business and offering a free ride. Our policies should be supportive of businesses, while ensuing that they do what they can to create benefit for Somerville residents.

  3. Would you support instant runoff voting (or similar voting reforms) for city elections? Why or why not?

    I am generally inclined to support IRV, but would want to get a handle on the cost of implementation before I gave an unqualified "yes". In speaking with Greg Dennis about IRV, I came to understand that the easiest implementation might entail limiting Somerville voters to three Alderman at Large votes instead of allowing the four we now have. While Greg made the case that the voting mechanism of assigning first, second, and third choices would give voters greater influence on the outcome of the balloting than the current system of voting for up to four candidates, I think that such a restriction could easily be perceived as disenfranchisement by some. But these kinds of problems could probably be easily worked out by some software whiz. Ultimately, if it becomes too costly to implement, it will be harder to convince people to go that route, as compared to the current system of primaries and finals.

    Another route which Greg mentioned is treating the general election as the only election, unless none of the three or more candidates gets an absolute majority, in which case you would have a runoff between the two highest vote-getters. That would at least reduce the number of elections, which would save the City money, and make running a campaign less expensive, and therefore less prohibitive.

    One way or the other, we need to change the current system. While we're at it, we might want to adopt a system whereby the fifth place Alderman at Large finisher fills the first vacancy.

  4. Why is the gang ordinance not enforced, and what do you plan to do about it?

    The difficulty in using the Somerville ordinance is eloquently captured in the following Boston Globe article and described in great detail in Former Alderman Denise Provost's explanation of why she opposed the Ordinance (published in the Somerville Journal, and reproduced below). As she concludes in her article, "To address crime, we need to focus on criminal behavior - and most real criminals do not call attention to themselves. We risk being seriously distracted by questions of who is hanging out with whom in public places. Let's focus on intimidation, violence, drug dealing, and other conduct that plagues our community - regardless of who is doing it. We already have the laws to do that."

    I would add an additional piece to the "what do you plan to do about it" question, and that is, the best thing we can do to reduce gang involvement is to offer young people meaningful alternatives: a hopeful and attainable future and attractive school and after-school activities. To the extent that young people feel hopeless or marginalized by the mainstream, they are more likely to seek acceptance and "meaningful" roles in gangs. We need to make sure that our schools are attentive to the individual learning styles of all students, and don't write off or leave behind those students who are unprepared to keep up with that mainstream. Likewise, we need to make sure that young people find fulfillment in the afterschool activities that are available to them, lest we leave them perceiving no good alternatives to gang affiliation.

    Boston Globe: Anti-loitering bill withdrawn after opposition
    By Heather Allen, Globe Correspondent | November 5, 2004
    © Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

    Police, civil liberties activists, community leaders, and youths from several Boston neighborhoods blasted a proposed anti-loitering law yesterday, calling it racist and useless in curbing violence.

    Stung by the criticism, the petition's sponsor, Councilor Paul J. Scapicchio of East Boston, later withdrew the proposal. ''We pulled back and decided not to vote on it, because the police had issues with it," he said. ''If they're not going to enforce it, then we have to take it off the table. We'll go to the police and work on something different."

    In sometimes emotional testimony before the City Council's government operations committee, several witnesses said the measure would unfairly target innocent members of minority groups without achieving its intended aim of stemming gang problems.

    ''I am here to say that if you pass this ordinance, as is, you are stealing the ability to have the rights that any other kid in any other neighborhood has," said Donovan Walker, a community activist in Roxbury and a member of the Developmental Neighborhood Coalition. ''I grew up with the opportunity to hang out on the block. If you are going to go after the gangs, then you need to provide the police with the resources, not this tool."

    The proposed law, which would have targeted neighborhoods where gangs are prevalent, would have given police authority to arrest youths who gather in public places if they are suspected of being gang members. After a similar law was enacted in Somerville, Scapicchio proposed the measure last month, saying that gang members assembling on street corners in his East Boston district have frightened and intimidated residents.

    Like Somerville's law, the Boston proposal has become intensely controversial, with proponents lining up behind it as a solution to enduring problems with gangs and critics calling it thinly veiled racism.

    Yesterday, several councilors not on the committee came to support the measure, including Jerry McDermott of Allston-Brighton and Rob Consalvo, who represents Hyde Park and Roslindale. Several others, including Chuck Turner of Roxbury and Councilor at Large Felix Arroyo, opposed it.

    At one point, Maureen E. Feeney, the chairwoman of the committee, lashed out, interrupting as Walker criticized the proposal for having a ''racist slant."

    ''It's not about the white community," said Feeney, a district councilor who represents Dorchester. ''I can take you to Bowdoin Street and Geneva Avenue [in Dorchester] where not just white people, but black people say: 'Help us. Our child cannot go outside.' I am about making our streets safer for every child, for every stranger."

    Police Superintendent Paul Joyce, who heads the department's Youth Strike Force, said the ordinance would do little to curb violence in the city. He said such a law would set Boston police policies back 20 years, to a time when officers used a ''stop and frisk" strategy that targeted young black men. At that time, the Police Department's relationship with the black community suffered, he said.

    ''We want to utilize every legal option to shutting down gang activities, but we don't want to jeopardize the trust we've built with the community over the years," said Joyce, who worked in the department's gang unit in the late 1980s. ''Issues of crime can't be put on the shoulders of police officers alone."

    Joyce said the key to combating violence is partnerships between police and community activists and clergy members. ''I think we have a lot of tools at our disposal," Joyce said. ''We have challenges. We have gangs. The key is sharing information."

    Scapicchio said he was moved by Joyce's words. ''If the police have issues, then [Mayor Thomas M.] Menino's not going to sign it, and then it's not going to pass." he said.

    State Senator Jarrett T. Barrios of Cambridge, who attended the hearing, opposes the law and called on the council to look at alternatives.

    ''I agree we have to do something, but we don't just have to do anything," said Barrios, who is chairman of the Joint Committee on Public Safety. ''We want to build bridges, not put up barriers."

    To take effect, the ordinance would have to be signed by the mayor and be passed by the Legislature, and then be signed by the governor.

    Menino said the city needs more funding, particularly block grants that support community groups to combat gangs.

    ''They continue to talk about the numbers [of crimes] going up in urban areas," Menino said. ''It's because they don't have strong neighborhood organizations for police to partner with."

    Gang Ordinance is not common sense
    Opinion piece by Denise Provost, published in the Somerville Journal on June 17, 2004:

    A recent letter to the editor criticized my vote on Somerville's Home Rule Petition for an ordinance prohibiting "gang loitering." The writer asks, "Ms. Provost, why would you be against this common-sense action step?" The short answer is, that if I thought the "gang loitering" ordinance was a "common-sense action step" against street crime and violence, I would have voted for it.

    Instead, from my perspective of more than twenty years practicing law, I see an ordinance riddled with constitutional flaws, and so complex as to be practically unenforceable. Its chief potential use is street harassment, exposing Somerville to liability without having significant impact on crime. Is this what we want?

    The Somerville "gang loitering" ordinance is based on Chicago's 1992 Gang Congregation Ordinance. The Illinois Supreme Court found that ordinance unconstitutional, a decision upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in its 1999 City of Chicago v. Morales decision. The Somerville ordinance retains many constitutional defects of the Chicago ordinance, while overcorrecting other problems to a degree that makes the ordinance almost useless.

    To understand why, start with the legal concept that every crime consists of "elements" - separate features, which must be proved to sustain a conviction. The more elements a crime has, the greater the difficulty of proof. Murder has two elements: 1) killing another person, 2) with "malice aforethought." Arson has three: 1) setting fire to 2) a building, 3) willfully and maliciously. "Gang loitering" requires an astonishing thirteen elements to justify an arrest:

    1. that the arrestee be a "member" (undefined), or with a member, of
    2. an "ongoing organization...or group of three or more persons"
    3. having as "one of its substantial activities" the commission of one or more listed crimes, and
    4. members of which have been judged by a court to have committed any of fifty listed crimes, provided
    5. that the offenses were committed by two or more persons, or by one "at the direction of" or "in association with" a gang, and
    6. committed with the intent of furthering criminal conduct by gang members; and provided that
    7. two such qualifying criminal convictions of gang members have taken place within five years of each other;
    8. that a member of a gang fitting this description and another person were in a public place,
    9. previously designated in writing by the Chief of Police as subject to gang control through loitering,
    10. and, having "the intent to further the common purpose or existence" of the gang, these individuals were either:
    11. A) engaging in "conduct which would cause a reasonable person to believe that entrance to a specific area may not be made without unreasonable inconvenience or hazard;" B) threatening to commit a crime; C) defacing property; D) intimidating or accosting another; or E) engaging in disorderly behavior or a breach of the peace;
    12. that a police officer warned them that they were "gang loitering," and ordered them to disperse; and
    13. the individuals failed to disperse, or returned sooner than three hours from the time of warning.

    Only then can the officer make an arrest. If the individuals return to the original location three hours and five minutes later, the process starts over with another warning. If they disperse, and regroup at a non-designated location, not even a dispersal order is authorized. Even if an arrest is made, how would you like to be the prosecutor who has to prove in court all thirteen elements of this crime?

    Having such stringent requirements for the police to take action increases the danger that the ordinance will be used improperly. As the US Supreme Court observed, "an officer conscious of the city council's reasons for enacting the ordinance might well ignore its text and issue a dispersal order...." If an officer thinks that the "reason" for the gang ordinance is to break up groups of teenagers, or to get Latino-looking people off the street, then that's what could happen, creating the risk of lawsuits.

    As a former attorney for Somerville, I don't advocate high standards of constitutionality for idealistic reasons alone. Unconstitutional laws - even unconstitutional actions based on sound laws - can have expensive consequences for taxpayers. In the 1980s, for instance, Somerville lost big time for having an unconstitutional ordinance forbidding yard signs. Revere recently paid almost $1 million for using an "adult entertainment" zoning ordinance to stop a video store, also violating the First Amendment.

    I don't doubt that gangs exist, or that gang members commit crimes. Yet arrest records show that gangs presently account for a tiny amount of crime in Somerville. Though we have a serious drug problem, our Chief of Police has told the Aldermen that MS-13, our only "criminal street gang," is not dealing drugs in Somerville.

    To address crime, we need to focus on criminal behavior - and most real criminals do not call attention to themselves. We risk being seriously distracted by questions of who is hanging out with whom in public places. Let's focus on intimidation, violence, drug dealing, and other conduct that plagues our community - regardless of who is doing it. We already have the laws to do that.

  5. What specific steps will you take to strengthen the community policing program?

    Community policing means different things to different people. To me, it means putting the same patrolmen/women in the same community over an extended period of time, so that they can build working relationships and trust with the members of that community. It means proactively building in time for meeting with residents and businesses from as many constituencies as possible, working together to brainstorm solutions and approaches to policing challenges, and working together to review police actions ? or lack of action ? that may have raised concerns in the community. Whether or not the police travel in a car or by bike or on foot, it means making sure that the majority of time is spent making contact with people, and not in isolation.

    If as a community we agree on specific goals of community policing, and we agree what it looks like, then we can develop metrics that let us know whether we are getting there. I don't think that there is only one recipe for success, however. Obviously, staffing levels determine the number of police who can be on the street at any point in time; the fewer the number of patrolmen/women, the bigger the area they have to cover, and, therefore, the more time they spend in transit instead of interacting with people on their beat.

  6. What specific steps will you take to increase the civic involvement of immigrants?

    People are civically involved when they perceive that it will benefit them or the people they care about. The more direct the relationship between action and benefit, the more willing they may be to act. The more disenfranchised they feel, the less likely they will be to act. Civic involvement is also something that takes time and energy; if you and your family are on the economic margins, you are more likely to focus on putting bread on the table, than on attending a community meeting. Increasing the civic involvement of immigrants (or any community residents, for that matter), depends, therefore, on (a) framing the issues so that they have a relevance to members of the community, (b) building a sense of enfranchisement ? that is, being in a position to command the attention of leaders -- among the members of the community, and (c) supporting the members of the community in moving from the economic margins to the economic mainstream, so that "survival" is not the primary preoccupation.

    Voting is one mechanism for enfranchisement. At this point, there does not appear to be anything close to a majority in support of according non-citizens the right to vote, nor are there adequate precedents elsewhere in this country. While precedent need not be the only basis for advocating in support of a policy (for example, it was not and should not have been a requirement for discussing gay marriage), there simply isn't a basis for making electoral progress on the matter of non-citizen voting, and it therefore becomes more of a lightning rod for conflict, rather than a basis for rational discussion. I believe in fighting battles that can move us in a positive direction, rather than battles that merely reinforce entrenched positions. (For a good discussion about perceptions on the two sides, see www.csmonitor.com/2004/0427/p01s04-uspo.html.) So, rather than fighting for immigrant voting rights in municipal elections, I would rather see us explore strategies for expediting the process of becoming a citizen, and for strengthening the economic standing of immigrants and low income non-immigrants alike (because in our society, buying power, and the ability contribute to campaigns are metrics of enfranchisement).

    The current backlash against immigrants is not surprising, given the economic hardships that many Americans (citizen and non-citizen alike) are experiencing. In the same way that in a better economy, employers will be more generous about hiring folks with blemishes in their work histories, so in a better economy, citizens will probably be more generous about making the American dream more accessible to aspiring citizens.

    I would also explore strategies for involving people from the immigrant community in community projects that are sponsored by non-immigrants. It is much easier to marginalize strangers than people you know; much easier to marginalize people who speak a different language?.. to the extent that we can break down some of the us/them tension that too often characterizes the debate about immigrants, it will be easier to find mutually agreeable strategies for inviting immigrants to participate more fully in community.

  7. What specific steps will you take to promote pay equity in Somerville? (see http://www.mass.gov/women/payequity/payequity.htm#legislation)

    Although I was familiar with Evelyn Murphy's recently published research indicating that we are still far from achieving pay equity, I was not very familiar with the players in the pay equity issue, nor did I know about Sen. Jehlen's legislation. I am glad to see the Somerville Commission on Women is a supporter of the campaign to bring pay equity in Massachusetts. Based on the Somerville Commission's 2005 report on the Status of Women, pay equity was not identified as a specific area of concern by Somerville women. Instead, the top five priorities were affordable housing, more public transportation, safer pedestrian access, better access to health care, and better access to child care. In fact, to the extent that poverty, lack of access to health care, and inability to afford prevailing rents disproportionately affect female heads of households (my assumption, not something that I read in the Commission's report), those problems may very well stem, at least in part, from the pay equity problem.

    Perhaps Somerville can make pay equity one of its criteria for bidding on contracts to do business with the City. Certainly, to the extent that pay inequities are identified in the municipal workforce, they should be remedied. Supporting the statewide efforts to more systemically address the issue of pay inequity seems like one of the most important things we can do.

  8. What will you do about Somerville's budget crunch?

    There are no easy solutions.

    1. Generally speaking, it makes sense for the City to encourage the kind of development that will yield the highest net taxes (gross taxes minus the cost of infrastructure and services to support the use) per square foot; of course, the nature of each site, the nature of abutting uses, and a whole range of factors specific to the site and prevailing/predicted economic conditions determine the kind of development that is economically possible in any given location. So there can be no across-the-board rule about the type of development that is favored.

    2. We should be aggressively pursuing whatever grant funding we can obtain to supplement tax revenues and local aid. The risk of building a portion of our operating budget on the basis of grant funding is that it adds a level of instability to those programs and services. To some extent, just about every non-profit is subject to the vagaries of grant funding, and that's a level of instability that we've grown to accept. In the meantime, our operating budge has had the instability of not being able to count on stable (inflation-adjusted) local aid.

    3. We should support the Governor's proposals to close corporate tax loopholes, especially the obvious ones, like combined reporting and the telecommunications loopholes whereby certain utility poles are taxed and others aren't. The local option tax initiative appears politically dead for this year, but it represents an attractive possibility for a cash-starved municipality like Somerville. Should local option taxes gain new traction, it would be important to address the inevitable concerns of local businesses about the potential adverse impact of Somerville implementation in the absence of implementation in surrounding communities. To some extent, Somerville and its neighbors addressed the same kind of concerns when regional leaders worked together to enact comparable indoor smoking bans, ultimately paving the way for statewide action that eliminated any competitive disadvantage for businesses in any single town.

    4. We should seriously review the effectiveness and cost effectiveness of every element of the municipal budget, to ensure that our limited revenues are being used to the greatest effect. We should investigate partnerships with other municipalities that hold the potential for reducing health care or prescription drug or other employee benefits-related costs, provided that such partnerships don't unilaterally erode benefits that these employees or their unions have negotiated.

    5. At present, the municipal Budget development process is essentially a one-sided process in which the Mayor proposes and the Board of Alderman agrees. By the time the Budget gets to the BOA, there is little opportunity for meaningful debate and constructive dialogue. Implementation of Somerstat has provided a basis for linking expenditures with measures of impact. The next step is inviting the Board of Aldermen and the public to review the relationship between spending and outcomes during the early stages of budget development, so that meaningful choices can be made. Of course, to the extent that hiring decisions in the past may have been based on patronage, scarce resources are being wasted, and the BOA and Mayor should work together to implement an impartial review process for identifying personnel who are unable to properly fulfill their job responsibilities, and an impartial process for addressing the situation.

  9. How will you create a town-gown relationship with Tufts comparable to that of Cambridge and Boston with their universities?

    Cambridge and Boston each have their challenges when it comes to town/gown relationships, and neither presents the perfect model. A university and the City in which it is located inevitably have both shared and distinct interests. I believe that a forthright discussion of the benefits that the university provides and the pressures and problems that it creates is prerequisite to building a more productive relationship.

    My work in gaining Tufts participation in bringing the National Student Partnership to Somerville is an example of capitalizing on mutual interests. In the end, Tufts and some of the key non-profit human services agencies in Somerville recognized that supporting a chapter of the NSP was in everybody's best interest, and the most important beneficiaries were the hundreds of City residents who have received free job search assistance, tax filing assistance, assistance signing up for health insurance and other mainstream benefits, and other supports. At the same time, Tufts added a very popular community service option for its students, and leveraged the Americorps supervision that ensures the sustainability of the program. Likewise, with the help of the NSP student volunteers, local non-profits were able to extend their services to more clients, and were able to leverage services in languages that their usual staff could not speak. Everybody won.

    That's the approach we should use whenever possible.

  10. What else should we know about your candidacy?

    I'm a bridge-builder and a hard worker. I'm committed to working to solve problems collaboratively, to involving Somerville residents in the deliberations about the challenges facing our City, and engaging them in the processes of decision making and priority setting. I'm principled and honest and value the trust that people might put in me by supporting my candidacy. I'm serious about winning, and believe that to the extent that I am successful in connecting with the voters, they will embrace my message about taking Somerville's future seriously, and will prefer my thoughtful discussion of the issues to a perhaps more polished recitation of platitudes