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Title : porter tv stand ashley furniture
porter tv stand ashley furniture
hello and welcome to somerville neighborhoodnews. i'm monica akhtar. and i'm andrew mcleod.today is nov. 26th. somerville neighborhood news is a communityservice production of scatv... put together by staff, interns and your neighbors. we bring you the news every two weeks righthere on channel 3, and on our website -- scatvsomerville.org -- where you can watch the news in your language. that's right, with just a few clicks, youcan see this newscast with subtitles. tonight our reporters bring you stories onthe mcgrath highway, somerville's bikability, on tufts' payments to the city, and on ourveterans.
but first, let's look at the big news fromthe past two weeks. a few programs ago, we reported on a campaignto raise the minimum wage... well, just last week the massachusetts senate voted to hikewages up to $11 an hour by 2016. we'll be watching to see how our representatives vote... somerville boys soccer came this close towinning the division 1 state championship! congratulationsto the team, parents and coaches for a great season. the redevelopment of union square has hitthe press! wbur and somerville media did stories on changes that are in store, including propertiesbeing taken by eminent domain. we'll be sure
to explore this in future programs. the mcgrath highway is the road that nobodyloves. the state is planning to take down the overpass portion and turn it into a citystreet, but that work will take at least 10 years.in the meantime, some short-term improvements are slated to begin next spring. dan reinerreports. the state says it will take ten years or moreto bring the entire mcgrath down to ground level. the short-term safety improvementsare slated for next spring. the public got a glimpse of the plans at anovember 13th meeting at the argenziano school, with presentations by the massachusetts departmentof transportation and their consultants. some
big names in the audience included formertransportation secretary fred salvucci and state rep tim toomey. massdot officials and consultants presentedthe plans and took questions, and a little heat from the audience. there is a commitment to ground mcgrath atsome point in the future. we are not here to talk about grounding mcgrath. groundingmcgrath is a parallel initiative to what we are doing here and i think that it's consumeda lot of the energy up to this point. what we are here to talk about tonight iswhat can we do now-- to give some much needed investment to this area surrounding the elevatedportion of mcgrath highway-- the mccarthy
overpass. there are really 3 components andwe will get into each one of them. there's the closure of the down ramp which is mcgrathhighway coming through and down towards cambridge. and we'll get into why, but that ramp andits current operations there presents a lot of safety and operational deficiencies.another point was the addressing, essentially the tunnel which we have come to call it,which is the passageway beneath the elevated structure that gets people up to washingtonst. and is there a way to improve upon that? inthat is there a way to maybe do some things that are to the advantages to the brickbottomneighborhood which is currently pretty much cut off from the rest of somerville. and finally,and i think, you know, i don't want to say
most importantly, but certainly not a secondarycomponent of this, is significant pedestrian and bicycle improvements. the audience had questions and some good adviceof their own. the advantage of switching the bike lanesto the insides of the curb is that then you can actually have that raised area includethe bike lane through the intersection. which makes it a little bit more of a table, whichis also good for pedestrians if there's no bikes there. from what we have today to what we can haveby the end of next summer, the beginning of next fall, after this project is completed,will just be a real step above what we have
presently. you know, any time you come to a communityand you talk about fixing a bridge that nobody wants, it takes courage. so, [laughs] we appreciatethat. i mean, there is a new urbanist vibe in theair, um, it's bigger than us, this discussion, its not political, it's simply, i think, playingout quite a bit in somerville's ground zero amongst some other communities around here. the final details still need to be workedout, but when it comes to the mcgrath, any change is an improvement. in somerville, i'mdan reiner for somerville neighborhood news. earlier this month, espn sports center featuredour very own somerville high soccer team. the
cameraman, senior anthony scrima, tells howhe got the network to pay attention to this incredible goal. i was actually filming the game for the soccerteam, and thayrone is one of their best players and he did an amazing thing which is called"bicycle kick" where basically you almost do a backflip and you kick the ball withouteven looking at the goal, and he scored. [deleted] yay! the whole crowd was going wild and i saidto the person next to me, "i have to get on sports center." so i go home, i put all the film together.i usually send the goals to the team and let
them see them scoring. and i took this onespecial goal, and put it as a separate video on youtube. sports center does this thing where, if youtweet with the hashtag sctop10, standing for sports center top 10, and if it gets trending,they'll see it, and if they like it, they'll put it on top 10, so, my goal was: get thisvideo wherever you could. i posted it, and i said, "guys, share this,put it on twitter, tweet with this hashtag," and then it just went from there. everybodyshared it on facebook, and if you went on twitter, everybody's twitter was filled upwith that. shortly, i got an email from espn assignmentdesk which is for sports center and they said,
"we want permission to use this clip," andi was totally for that. look at this! i can't get it! bring me thesomerville lumber! this is the actual video. right now it's at4,800 views, and it's only been about two days. that video now it has almost 7,000 hits. wow,teens are so great with social media people must flip out when they see this. last month the city of somerville announceda new, five-year agreement with tufts university. tufts will pay the city $275,000 per year. that's $100,000 more than the previous agreement.
tufts makes a number of contributions to somerville,like running a "homework-help" workshop and other programs... but this money will be much-neededrevenue for the cash-strapped city. many universities, hospitals and other largenon-profits make such payments to the cities and towns where they are located. most of them call these payments a "pilot,"which means "payment in lieu of taxes" because they don't have to pay real estate taxeson most or all of their property. somerville neighborhood news director janeregan takes a look at the new agreement. tufts' payment is part of theuniversity's partnership with the cities of medford and somerville. but tufts doesn'tcall its payment a pilot...
i wanted to find out why, and also to findout more about pilots in general... i started my research at the lincoln landinstitute, a recognized authority on pilots. on of the rationales for a pilot is that thecity is providing police protection, fire protection, street cleaning, snow removal,all those services carry cost, and the non-profit uses them but are not paying them in propertytaxes, unlike other taxpayers. there are some problems with pilots. theytend to me negotiated in ad hoc ways. there's no real rhyme or reason for how much differentnon-profits are paying and they can be contentious sometimes and sour important relationshipsbetween the non-profit and the local government. that's what happened when state rep. deniseprovost supported a bill that would make pilots
mandatory for all private institutions ofhigher education. the bill did not pass... this is an issue all over the country, soit's a perennial problem in communities where there is a lot of land that's owned by a non-profitorganization that's exempt from paying the property tax. tufts university has about $286 million dollars'worth of tax-exempt property in somerville. if tufts had to pay taxes on that property,it would owe the city about $5.8 million dollars in 2014. langley calls the exemption from local taxesa "geographic mismatch." there's this major geographic mismatch betweenthe benefits and costs of the exemption. the
benefits of charitable activities like educatingstudents, like providing research, are very widely dispersed throughout the nation andthroughout the entire world. it makes sense that our country wants to subsidize thoseactivities. but at the local level, with the property tax exemption, the cost is borneentirely by city residents, and those benefits do not stop at city borders. in boston, a task force determined how muchlarge non-profits should pay.... their main recommendations are, first of all,that all non-profits above a certain size should pay 25% of what they would owe in propertytaxes if they were taxable, so that's the first main recommendation. and the secondone is that they included services provided
by non-profits in their formula so that collegesand hospitals can reduce their cash pilot to the extent that they are providing servicesto the city. how do tufts, harvard, bu and other institutionsmeasure up? it's hard to compare them because of differing endowments, student bodies, etc. in boston, many have now raised their pilotpayments. .... like bu -- which has about the same endowment as tufts. in 2013 bu paidalmost 20% of what it would owe - over $6 million in cash and another $6 million inservices. for its boston properties, tufts paid almost 15% of what it would owe, with$375,000 in cash, representing over 7% of what it would owe that city.
but in somerville, tufts will be pay onlyabout 4.7% of what it would owe. still, langley thinks the tufts payment isn'ttoo bad... my overall impression is positive. i thinkthat the amount that tufts is paying is within the range that i would expect from an institutionlike that in this region. certainly it's not a huge amount of what they would owe if theywere taxable. it seems very low to me, especially considering,for instance, tufts is going to be getting a brand-new green line station at its frontdoor. i think it would probably be helpful if dispassionateindividuals could come up with some kind of formula for figuring out what is fair forany given institution, recognizing that they
differ a lot. if tufts were to pay 25% of what it wouldowe in property taxes, it would have to pay the city about $1.45 million dollars in fy2014. asked about this formula, tufts said: "each city will have its own approach to workingwith tax exempt institutions. somerville has not adopted the approach boston uses... wegreatly appreciate mayor curtatone's willingness to work with tufts on what is reasonable whilestill increasing the university's annual payments and adding new benefits around college admissionfor shs students and playing fields for youth soccer."
i never found out exactly why tufts doesn'tcall its payments "pilots." but in any case, as cities and towns continueto struggle to make ends meet, the debate over how much non-profits should pay hostcommunities for the fact that they get out of paying property taxes -- no matter whatyou call the payments -- is not going away any time soon. for somerville neighborhood news, i'm janeregan. i had no idea that non-profitsgot a property tax exemption. have you noticed that somerville has a lotmore bikers lately? well, the city just got a great ranking for its bike-ability. caymeewood brings us more...
in october, somerville was named a silverbicycle friendly community by the league of american bicyclists. this award recognizes that we are making progressin terms of infrastructure and also in terms of programming and really working towardsachieving some of the goals set out the comprehensive plan. two years ago somerville was awarded the bronze,so the 20 miles of cycling markers like bike lanes that have been added since 2010 havecertainly made a difference. we are also working on a number of projectsthat will further improve that infrastructure such as the extension of the community path,both the phase that's currently under the
construction and the phase that's in planningalong with the green line extension. in the past few years, the number of bicyclistshas gone up significantly. but somerville still has a ways to go. there are still areas that are a little hostile.some very hostile frankly where a lot of people arent comfortable biking. powderhousecircle comes to mind. this is probably the toughest nut to crack as far as a really messyand scary intersection in somerville. it's neither a roundabout nor a rotary nora proper stop-control or traffic-controlled intersection. it's a frankenstein of an intersection. bikers also say other tough spots includebroadway at foss park and washington under
the mcgrath highway. as far as i know the city's been paying attentionto all of them. they are just in different stages of getting improved.many bikers are not convinced that somerville is silver medal-ready. but the recent awardshows the improvements the city has made thus far. reporting for somerville neighborhoodnews i'm caymee wood. we decided to ask bikers what they thoughtabout the silver medal... do you think somerville is bicycle friendly? yeah, i definitely think so with all the bikelanes. i feel like a lot oft he cars are aware of it. they definitely slow down when you'rebiking.
parts of it are. i live in porter square.i used to live in union square this summer. certain streets are a lot more friendly, likethis has a bike path. but people drive pretty aggressively on this street. it's certainly more friendly than other citiesi've lived in. if you go to any of the back neighborhoodsits good. it's pretty open. i think as a driver its bicycle friendly butit makes it very difficult to maneuver through the roads with bikes here. a lot of peopledon't follow the rules of the road. what would you rate somerville then? wouldyou rate it a gold, silver, copper? what are the standards? like, can i give worsethan tin?
well there's always room for improvement. idon't know what those terms mean but i guess silver's as good as anything. i'd say somerville by merit might be likecopper i would say a ten, i dunno i haven't had anyproblems. when i ride here as i just did i get in themiddle the lane where the bike symbols are and i don't have people on my tail and i don'thave people doing illegal things as frequently as they do in other places. somerville has so many interesting peopledoing interesting things. our next segment will really amaze you...
nervous system is an experimental design studio.we focus on using techniques from science and mathematics, but for design. so, we producesoftware to generate products that are essentially grown in the computer using scientific andmathematical algorithms that are inspired by how things grow in nature. at nervous system we work with a few differentmanufacturing techniques. one of the techniques that there's a lot of buzz about right nowis 3-d printing. we also work with laser cutting, which is like the opposite thing. it's subtractivemachining, so you've got a piece of material and you're using laser to carve out sectionsof it, remove material, rather than adding stuff.
we sell a lot of jewelry, that's how we startedout. but, we're pretty product-agnostic. we makewhatever we think is interesting and fun. so, we make jigsaw puzzles... we make lighting...we make some furniture. one of our main things at nervous system isthinking about how we can replace mass manufacturing, which encourages people to have millions ofunits manufactured of exactly one design, with a method that allows us to make customized,one of a kind objects. rather than designing individual objects,we're designing systems that can create an infinite variety of objects, and instead ofjust using those ourselves, and making designs we can sell, we create versions that anybodycan use online to design their own products.
the target users of our online applicationsare people who are not designers, people who don't have any experience with 3-d modelingor 3-d printing or really making anything at all. they're designed to just be playful toolsthat you can experiment with that sort of suck you in and get you to design stuff, eventhough that might not be your initial inclination. when somebody places an order on our websitefor a custom piece, we send it to shapeways to 3-d print. they're a 3-d printing companyin new york. they print it and get it back to us. we dye them different colors, based on whatthe customer requested. we spray-coat them with a protective coatingand then we pack them and ship them to customers.
we're not just exploring customization orgenerating unique products using algorithms, but we're making it really, really easy forpeople to buy the products and play with the process. wow, you never really know what's going oninside some of these ordinary-looking buildings... until you go in! next up, dan atkinson, editor of the somervillejournal, fills us in on the most important issues he'll be following this week. hello, it's going to be a somewhat quieter week this week withthanksgiving, but there's still plenty of news happening in somerville. the journal'sgoing to take a look at a new proposal to put gps devices in all city-owned vehicles,as well as following up on a proposal to eliminate
the 48-hour parking rule, and we'll also be checking in with a bunchof local writers who have been participating in national novel-writing month this pastnovember. so check out the somerville journal. it hitsthe stands on november 28 and you can always look at wickedlocal.com/somerville, and getin touch with us at datkinson@wickedlocal.com or 617-629-3385. thanks. earlier this month, somerville celebratedveterans day. monica, you have a report for us, right?
somerville celebrated their veterans thismonth with multiple events throughout the .city vets were honored with a wreath and the unveiling of a new chair dedicated to prisoners of war. by establishing a permanent display here incity hall we will remind the public to keep not only our missing personnel in our hearts,but also their families. patriotic people make this kind of sacrificeevery day, every week, every year because that's the price of maintaining freedom and democracyfor the luckiest people in the world and i thank all of you veterans for making us theluckiest people in the world. what do you think of this chair being putin place here in somerville?
i'm happy to see it. it reminds me of a boyi went to school with, george cipani, he's in the 24th division, he was taken prisonerof war early in the conflict and he died as a result of lack of medical treatment.the north koreans weren't too keen about treating our prisoners. he died in captivity. about 2,700 residein somerville. the city provides many services for those returning soldiers. a lot of the older veterans play a big rolein what the city actually does. like today's ceremony and the museum, that was all becauseof larry whitworth that we all got involved. so, i think the veteran's community alongwith jay weaver who runs the veteran's services
here in somerville have been fantastic andit just gets better every year. despite these services, many veterans stillsuffer from homelessness, joblessness, and post-traumatic stress disorder. nationally, an estimated 18 veteransper day take their own lives and this year more veterans lives were lost by suicide thanby combat. you can look at our va system and how screwedup it is with medicine and everything else. they can fix it physically, but they can'tfix it mentally and this is what's happening to some of our veterans. they're getting pushedto a side. they give them a pill and say, "okay, you'll be fine. mellow out and sitin the corner." you have to do one on one.
if a veteran wants to talk to someone really,they don't need to talk to a shrink. talk to someone else who has been in that situationand they'll talk better than medicine. to date, the federal government has budgetednearly $1.5 trillion dollars to the wars in iraq and afghanistan.at the same time, the va is unable to provide returning veterans with fully adequate treatment. those in washington should think twice aboutcommitting our sons and daughters in these brush fire wars or things going on withinother countries. still, those who take part of the veteranservices community find a unique sense of camaraderie and understanding among theirveteran brothers and sisters.
what can you say to another veteran? you canlook them in the eye and you don't have to say anything. a veteran knows a veteran. itdoesn't matter. there's a little twinkle in their eye that doesn't go away. the names listed behind me are the somervilleveterans who died serving our country. reporting for somerville neighborhood news, i'm monicaakhtar. to learn more about somerville's veterans,i invited mark allston-follansbee, executive director of the somerville homeless coalitionand a veteran himself, into the studio. hi mark, thank you so much for being withus today. we really appreciate you joining us. you have a really unique perspective toshare with us. i know you're a vietnam veteran...
that's correct. and now you are executive director of somervillehomeless coalition. thank you so much for being here. i first want to talk a little bit about howreturning home after war is so different for different veterans and i want to ask you howit was for you. i was traumatized bythe experience in vietnam. in many ways i was very lucky but i had plannedon a career as a journalist, but i never wanted to write another story or take another photograph. and in fact, as soon as i got out of the army,i went and hid out in the woods for six years.
we were not supported when we came back fromvietnam, we were looked at as child-killers. i never had anybody spit on me but there wasthis general impression that we were the bad guys because we had been soldiers in vietnam. and i know many veterans suffer from homelessnessand joblessness and there's a high rate of suicide. can you shed some light on those issues forus? i didn't know much about homelessness untili moved to somerville-cambridge in 1985, and i started talking to people on the streetwhen they would ask me for money because there was something about them that felt so familiar,and most of them were veterans and i got angry that they were homeless because they weretraumatized from the experiences that they had.
and i knew that it was only because of thesupport i had from my family and friends when i came back that i didn't end up that way,too. trauma affects different people in differentways and it isn't just veterans that have ptsd, although a lot of the work about ptsdhas been done with veterans groups. but anybody who has been in a kind of tragic, traumaticexperience -- women who experience sexual abuse or sexual violence, or people who arein horrific accidents -- but this is one subpopulation that has a disproportionate number of homelesspeople because of the trauma they experienced. probably a common denominator among the homelessis that these are people who are traumatized and have somehow lost the supports that most of us depend upon.
can you tell me a little bit about the rate of suicide - is that for the lack of resources? when the return home, we can't take care of them the right way? everybody is different.one of the difficult things about ptsd is that you can come home, i know peoplewho came home from vietnam, got jobs, had families, bought houses... i know we have some great servicesin the city. we have veterans services and the va,is there a difference there? veterans services really focuses on immediate needs,here in the community, and can give people small cash assistanceand other kinds of support.
the va is really where veterans turn to,for things like healthcare. and the difficulty is that the va doesn't haveenough beds, enough resources for everybody that needs them. that's why, in my opinion, the suicide rate is as high as it is. wow, i've learned so much thank you for sharing. i wish we had time to learn more but we are out of time. i'd like to thank you once again.you're welcome. thank you. thanks for joining us. we'll be back on december 10th. remember that you can watch somerville neighborhoodnews any time on our website where you can view the news with subtitles in 44 differentlanguages. if you want to get involved, or if you haveany story ideas, drop us a line at news@scatvsomerville.org