UnVaudeville comes to Johnny D's Tuesday evening

[hahathor.livejournal.com]

Somerville/Jamaica Plain troupe, Unreliable Narrator, is presenting a musical this summer, and is doing a fundraiser at Johnny D's Tuesday, March 30. You can check out the info on our Facebook page or simply read the text ( Under the cut )

Be there or be orthogonally quadrilateral!

Theater this weekend in Davis

[bex77]

Just a quick reminder--our exciting new project,
"Bare Bones: Staged Readings at Theatre@First"
has its first opening night this Saturday!

"TRAGEDY: a tragedy"
by Will Eno

SATURDAY & SUNDAY, MARCH 27 & 28 at 8PM
Unity Church, 6 William Street at College Ave in Somerville
4 blocks from the Davis Square Red Line T stop

No reservations, no reserved seating,
come as you are and catch us as you can!

SUGGESTED DONATION $5

For more information: http://theatreatfirst.org

Lost mailbox key

[starry83.livejournal.com]

I just lost my mailbox key walking between Chester St. and Downtown Wine. It fell out of my pocket on the block surrounded by Chester/Cottage/Bowers/Elm. It's a single small silver key on a white ribbon.

It would be wonderful if anyone happened to pick it up! I've retraced my steps twice but it seems to be gone already. Thanks!

open letter to Somerville Traffic and Parking

[rosif3r.livejournal.com]

what follows is the actual email I sent them last night:



I find it amusing that in troubled economic times your Traffic and Parking Dept. has set up a situation where the most efficient ways to get monies into your coffers from parking violations are the least likely to be used, due to the the $3.00 "convenience fees" you assess for online and phone payments. However, since a stamp is still way cheaper than $3.00, I'm planning on mailing my payment in, which means you'll just have to wait for the USPS to get it to you. And unless you are paying the credit card companies some excessive amount for every transaction, you would not be losing much (and would be getting your monies faster) if you didn't charge an extra fee for an automated system to process your payments, rather than wait for people to mail them in or bring them in to the Holland Street location in person. Not to mention the staffing costs of the people manning the windows or opening the envelopes.

(I will mention as an aside here that I work for a large company that processes thousands of payments daily from our customers, and while we do charge a convenience fee if they pay with a phone representative, we waive that if they pay with the automatic phone system or on our website, specifically because of the inherent cost-saving efficiencies (for the company) built into those methods. Also, unless you charge a "convenience fee" for processing a credit card transaction at the Holland Street location, you're also setting up a system where you are rewarding people for coming in person, clogging up your office, and justifying the staffing of your walk-up windows (and your mailroom))

Also, after finding out that the website charged a 3.00 fee for a credit card transaction, i tried to use the automatic phone payment line (not realizing that it too wanted to ding me $3.00). I find it interesting that it waited until the absolute end (luckily I caught it before I OK'd the transaction) before it told me that this method also charged a 3.00 fee. In fact, it doesn't explicitly say that - it just gives you a total that's $3.00 higher than the amount of your ticket and asks if that's OK. I personally find that a little underhanded, as by this point (after minutes of entering info into a phone menu) a goodly number of people will probably miss the distinction and just OK the transaction without realizing that they've been charged extra. I'll mention as well that the letter you sent me with options on how to pay make no mention of the fact that two of the four methods penalize people financially if they are used.

I also find it extremely interesting that the Somerville Public Library, according to your own website, does not share your policies vis a vis credit card transactions (from the website: "Pay library fees: No service charges for credit/debit cards!!") So, I have to ask: Did the Library get a special dispensation from the credit card companies? Or are they taking a financial hit to accept fines in the most efficient manner possible, for both the public and the library staff? It makes one wonder exactly how much money Traffic and Parking is actually paying for these transactions to the credit card companies, since they obviously feel that they can't afford it without charging the public an extra fee, but the Library seems OK with it.

I really don't expect you to reevaluate your policies based on one email. But you may want to think about the fact that your public image has already been going down the tubes in light of your increasingly rapacious ticketing practices - it doesn't do your image any good to make people think that you're either charging the convenience fees because you're greedy (or at least greedier than the Public Library), or because you want to encourage inefficiencies that perpetuate your own staffing needs. Just a thought.

Will we ever get FiOS?

[nvidia99999.livejournal.com]

"Verizon is still negotiating for franchises in some smaller communities, mainly in New York, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, but it is not working on securing franchises for any major urban areas, Wilner said. For instance, it's halted negotiations for the Washington suburb of Alexandria, Va."

http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2010/03/26/verizon_winds_down_expensive_fios_expansion/