1. Day 387.
2. Marilyn to the Governor on Obama Moneys and the Outrage on Memorial Drive.
Bob La Trémouille reports.
1. Day 387.
This afternoon, October 10, 2009, I did a visibility at the Destroyed Nesting Area.
It is such a relief to be talking to decent human beings. I know they are the majority, but there are so many bad guys floating around in Cambridge politics that, when you are doing Cambridge politics, the bad guys make themselves appear something other than the tiny, vile, minority they are.
This afternoon: Lot of nice people, people driving by beeping and showing support.
Some very good people talking with me.
Very nice afternoon. Normal, very nice people. Not Cambridge pols.
2. Marilyn to the Governor on Obama Moneys and the Outrage on Memorial Drive.
Marilyn filed the following today, October 10, to the governor through his “email” technique on his website.
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 is Obama moneys.
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Dear Governor Patrick:
Midnight tonight is the deadline for the state to submit its Section 1512 Report to the Federal Transit Administration for use of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 under that section.
Section 1512 covers Grants, Cooperative Agreements and Loans and includes what the state has received for the Department of Conservation and Recreation’’s ““Memorial Drive Historic Parkways Initiative Demonstration Project”” Phase 2.
Please note, at ARRA-2-06, that the report must “[e]xplain how the infrastructure investment will contribute to one or more purposes of the Recovery Act”:
(1) To preserve and create jobs and promote economic recovery.
(2) To assist those most impacted by the recession.
(3) To provide investments needed to increase economic efficiency by spurring
technological advances in science and health.
(4) To invest in transportation, environmental protection, and other infrastructure that will provide long-term economic benefits.
(5) To stabilize State and local government budgets, in order to minimize and avoid reductions in essential services and counterproductive state and local tax increases."
“Mem Drive Historic Parkways” Phase 2 is worse than wasteful. It diverts money from essential services for DCR assets. It destroys trees that sequester carbon and so contributes to climate change. It removes habitat protected by the Wetlands Protection Act.
One possible argument of transportation or long-term economic benefit would be that it increases the capacity of Mem Drive and thus furthers the diversion of traffic from Storrow to Memorial Drive. Another would be that it continues to create an Urban Ring Phase 2 infrastructure off the official books, to keep UR2’s total cost deceptively low.
Your Administration’s Section 1512 Report will surely be explicit if these are the reasons for the project.
I hope you will decline to fund the DCR’s “Memorial Drive Historic Parkways” Phase 2, and will follow the Section 1512 Report with interest.
Yours sincerely,
Marilyn Wellons
