Mystic View: A drama by Joe Curtatone
As election day nears here in Somerville, MA, the mayoral race is heating up. With current mayor Kelly Gay having been voted out in the primaries, it’s down to Tony Lafuente and Joe Curtatone. I have to say that Curtatone’s campaign has been doing a better job of getting his message out to me personally—his flyers, with their excessively large type and relentless pimping of his cute kid, have become a weekly staple in my mailbox. By contrast, I think I may have gotten one piece of mail from Lafuente a while back, and the link to his platform on his website was broken until I emailed him. Also, this Weekly Dig article might’ve been more even-handed if they could’ve reached Lafuente for comment. Incidentally, that article noted that Curtatone was “challenging his opponent to run a clean campaign, free of negative personal attacks”; I guess he changed his mind, since today’s Curtatone mail was an attack ad (PDF, 370k) trying to pin Lafuente to the Mystic View Task Force’s efforts regarding the Assembly Square development. So, where can we go for more commentary and background on this Assembly Square controversy? Well, there’s the MVTF’s own article roundup. There are also some comments from the peanut gallery on LiveJournal (here and here), many of which are just pining for some versatile solutions for modern living, while some regard the MVTF as unproductively obstructionist. Finally, there’s the opinion section of the Somerville Journal, which hosts a few letters on the issue.
I’ve asked the Progressive Somerville Discussion List for comment, and I will publish their responses with their permission. If anyone else wants to add their two cents or point me to more resources, please add a comment below.
Update: Bill Shelton responded with some detailed background on the Assembly Square situation, as well as a spreadsheet (XLS, 88k) with tax projections for the proposed development.
Update: Jeff Levine, Somerville’s city planner for Assembly Square, pointed me to the city’s official page on the development, which he helped put together.
Update: I just stumbed across an interesting third-party assessment of the Assembly Square affair posted on current Alderman Denise Provost’s site.