davis_square | Single issue voter

(http://www.flickr.com/photos/16889258@N03/2759811595/)

Did you notice that none of the contested primary elections are for city officials?

Aldermen and mayor have a lot more to do with no-turn signs than state reps and US Senators I'm thinking.

"no turn" signs: City election is on odd years.

"caters least to families, children": be more specific please?

If I see you turn onto my street between 7-9am (or 5-7pm), I will cut you, I swear.

Take the train to work?

I think a lot of drivers tend to miss the point that most of what hey see as "annoying" in terms of traffic engineering in Cambridge and Somerville is really just the city's attempts to make things easier and safer for pedestrians at the expense of drivers so as to encourage more people to walk or take public transit instead of driving in the first place. IMHO people who say that pedestrians should suck it up so that drivers can drive through the city faster are barking up the wrong tree/living in the wrong city.

Additionally, there is a definite finite number of cars per hour that all cities can "process" on their streets. Walking and public transit have no such limitation (or at least in the case of PT, it is so much higher than our current usage that it is not worthwhile to consider), so engineering more efficient roads is not really in the best interest of the politicians of cities like Somerville and Cambridge because they are essentially fighting a losing battle. Say you re-engineer things so that the roads can handle 10 percent more cars per hour, so then the driving population goes up by 10 percent, but achieving the next 10 percent increase in roadway efficiency is 10 times as expensive as the last 10 percent increase, so that approach isn't really financially sustainable.

In other words, if you don't like driving in the city, why not explore alternate modes of transportation?

I think that's at least three issues.

Five if you count turning at 7, 8 and 9 a.m.

Maybe what you're really looking for is the candidate who's strong on arithmetic?

BIKE ONLY streets during certain hours? Or on weekends?...

I think we've entered a new era if Somerville (with traditionally lousy schools and parks) has any taint of "mollycoddling" breeders - I am a breeder so I can use the phrase ;<)...

The problem is that bad parents are never the ones who "pay" (via consequences/legal or social) for being bad parents. Under your system, kids with non-involved parents (which, sorry to say, is a lot more than you'd think) are the ones that ultimately suffer.

Also - the argument for paying for schools even though you don't have children is that schools exist for the public good whether or not you use them. Like roads, parks, trash pick-up, etc. With every municipal service people will put demands on the system to varying degrees but in general, we all pay equally - I guess it's a bit socialist that way.

Did you get an education? Do you benefit because you live in a society where people are afforded a free education? Is your quality of life improved (in the same ways it is for other things that you might not have a direct use for) because of free education? Let's say that you don't want to fund education that you are not directly using but that that money doesn't come back to you either - where does it? What would you spend it on that you think would be a better use of your tax dollars?

I don't plan of having kids but I am going to graduate school to be a teacher - I have my own opinion on this (i.e. more money should be spent on education rather than less - esp in a time when some schools lack the most basic of supplies) which is that money doesn't fix everything/fix a broken-at-the-core school but that a lack of money sure can exacerbate existing problems (lack of money to recruit good teachers, lack of money for supplies, for infratructure repairs, etc.). I'm also in favor of funding schools in a way that does not reply on property tax since that system only widens the have/have not gap. I'm in favor of pooling all of the money and re-distributing it equally (did I mention that I'm a Socialist, mostly? ;) so that a student in Dorchester had just as good of a chance at a decent education as a child in Concord without having to require that the kids in the low-income areas travel lots to get to a good school.

Not to sound curt, but have you stepped into a high school recently? Or read any of the state-mandated curriculum frameworks that teachers are obliged to teach to?

There are also several studies that show that parental involvement is not an indicator of student success - that in fact, parental involvement usually is more indicative of the property tax revenues in a particular city/town and it is the revenues and school leadership that have the biggest impact -- if you want more info on this google "paternalistic education" and you'll find a slew on that methodology.

;-)

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