Why?
The funding that it gets through the contract?
Yeah, but why?
Why?
Yeah, why it's going to lose that?
This is the current contract.
Because that's what they've covered, that's what it looks like, is PIP contract being
proposed on the decision.
I know, but that's not correct.
The contract addresses it.
Oh, it does, but you won't have a contract if they don't sign it.
Yeah, but we keep extending it, so that is the contract by default.
They'll extend it again.
I hope so.
Really?
You want them?
Hi everybody, welcome to Soapbox, I'm Maro DiPasquale.
Soapbox is produced right here at WCCATV 13, the People's Channel, we're located at 415
Main Street in beautiful downtown Worcester, Massachusetts.
And, again, if you're interested in being on this program, we invite anyone to just
give us a call at 508-755-1880, extension 10.
We'll be happy to schedule you for this program.
Now bear in mind, we do videotape on the last Monday of the month.
Now, if that schedule doesn't meet your needs, if you have an important event or announcement
or festivity you want to get out to the public, we have many opportunities, including hundreds
of programs that are produced by your own neighbors here, community members, who are
very welcoming to the various guests to be on their shows.
So please give us a call at 508-755-1880, and be sure to connect and reach out to our
city through WCCATV.
Speaking of, one of the hundreds of producers happens to be my guest today.
She's here and she does her own TV show called Coffee with Connie, and I'm sure she's
looking for guests from time to time, so you can also give her a call to be on her show.
Connie, good to see you.
Hi, Paul.
Mayor of Worcester, Madam Mayor, I'm sorry.
Thank you.
And one of your neighbors.
Yeah, literally.
It's always a pleasure to see you.
Well, thank you.
It's a pleasure to be here.
You know, so many people call.
When we did the citywide survey, we did an entertainment survey regarding the cable
franchise stuff we were talking about earlier.
You know, your show is one of the top five shows that people watch.
I didn't know that.
Why didn't you tell me that?
Yeah, Coffee with Connie.
I've been intending to.
Oh, okay.
So congratulations.
Well, thank you.
That's a pleasant surprise.
And we did, it was actually a Maryland communications company did the survey citywide.
And, you know, one of the questions was, you know, do you watch?
71 percent of the people said they watch WCCA frequently, and out of those, the poll came
back with your favorite shows, and you were one of the top five.
Oh, well, that's a pleasant surprise.
So it's a good surprise.
How did your show rank?
I'm not really surprised.
We weren't even one of the, actually, I think we were like six.
Oh, well, why am I sitting here?
Get out of here.
No, I think we were like six or something like that.
Yeah, it's high because I know I watch it.
Yeah.
No, a lot of people do comment.
I get comments all the time about this show, and I'm sure you do too.
Oh, yeah.
You know, it may seem or appear anecdotal, but I bet you a lot of times people come up
to you and say, I see you on TV or watch the show.
As I was just coming into the lobby this morning, somebody said that to me.
Is that right?
Yeah.
So you know the people watching, and I think they enjoy, in your particular case, the show
was in a different location.
Yeah, we like to go to coffee shops and promote local businesses and go into the neighborhoods,
although I've had the use of conference rooms if I was interviewing a CEO.
We did it over at the T&G once when I was interviewing Bruce Bennett because that's
where he had his coffee and the Worcester Club.
So we've been out and about.
Yeah.
Do you find people, is that part of your program?
Do you ask, like, where do they normally have coffee?
Yes.
Do you show, you do.
That's it.
Some people say, I have it in my kitchen.
All right, we'll be there.
Put the pot on.
We're coming over to your kitchen.
Well, that's nice.
Yeah.
So there really are a lot of really kind of quaint places in the city for coffee.
There are.
I've learned about a lot of places, and the people that run the businesses, it's very
tough being in the food service business.
Oh, yeah.
Whether you're in a restaurant or a little coffee shop in the neighborhood, because my
parents both were immigrants and they worked in a family restaurant.
So I grew up in a family restaurant, and it was one of those seven days a week, 24 hours
a day, constantly there.
You couldn't take a vacation.
And the failure rate is very high among those businesses.
So when we talk about Worcester and the great success on Shrewsbury Street and now Water
Street and Green Street area, you know, that's hard work, and I'm very sympathetic to those
folks.
Yeah, absolutely.
Now, do you find from doing a program like that where you take, you know, kind of, I
don't want to say forces you, but you have to commit a certain amount of time every week
to sit down with somebody?
Do you find that that drives you closer to your constituents?
Does it give you something different that you may not have had years ago?
Well, you'd be surprised how often people feel very similar on certain issues, because
we discuss Worcester on the shows.
And my attempt, even though I may have, like Roy Lucas from The Surge, talking about his
football team, we still talk about his experiences in Worcester and what his feelings are about
what basically was his hometown and what he'd like to see happening in the future.
And a lot of people overlap on their opinions about Worcester.
They think it's a great location, a great place to live and work.
They love the cultural and ethnic diversity.
The location is always a plus rather than a minus.
And everybody has strong feelings about downtown Worcester, and that's where this building
is located, in downtown Worcester.
And lots of folks remember what it used to be like, and they really have a strong yearning
for a return to a bustling, busy downtown.
And I don't think you can really do that unless you make it a neighborhood.
You've got to have people living here.
And that was part of the city square concept, mixed use.
You have retail, commercial and residential.
Unfortunately, it's been off to a very slow start, and we haven't seen the cranes yet
or the shovels in the ground or the mall going down.
So we're still waiting eagerly for that.
I can remember back as far as two or three years ago, we've been thinking,
is this the summer we're going to get the crane?
Is the wrecking block out?
So it does take a while.
Are we pulling away from that concept of the downtown neighborhood kind of residential?
Well, with all the big projects that we've had going on,
and our attention is always drawn to those big, sexy projects,
whether it's the courthouse or a DCU or the convention center or the new hotel
or the walkways connecting the hotel with the convention center,
which now is a pipe dream because we can't afford it right now.
But they're still working on it.
Those, I think, detour us a little bit from the real strength of this city,
because once you look at any kind of revitalization, you have to start from the strengths.
Don't say, oh, we're weak here, let's fill that gap.
Let's say, where are we strong and how can we build on it?
In spite of our big-town agenda and our big projects,
what I think is the saving grace here is that we have a small-town attitude.
We have hospitality. We have closeness.
And in all the events that I've been going to in the four months I've been mayor,
I am still pleasantly surprised at the number of people that volunteer in this city
and that work in various institutions or for causes,
literally thousands of people who give hundreds and thousands of hours for free.
And it is amazing that if you didn't have those volunteers,
I mean, things would come to a dead halt in Worcester.
So the small-town attitude, the closeness, the strength of the neighborhoods,
is all something we should, I think, draw on and make stronger.
Everyone cites Providence as a great example of revitalization.
Well, the strategy in Providence was to dedicate all their dollars
into a specific geographical area in downtown.
You go beyond those boundaries and you see decaying neighborhoods.
And you see crime and you see the kind of degradation of a city that should not exist
and does not exist here.
Look at all the great things that...
So it's kind of like a facade. It's like a signature, a signatory facade.
Yeah, or we don't have a facade.
And part of the disappointment is that we've had so many large projects in downtown Worcester
that we don't have that strength of neighborhood.
We don't have the residential atmosphere that we should have
that brings people, that keeps people in downtown Worcester for 24 hours a day,
never mind 18 hours, 24 hours a day.
And we should have that.
And hopefully with some of the new development going on,
we'll see more of the condos, the townhouses, those kinds of concepts
coming in closer to the heart of the city.
When we look at what some of the neighborhoods have been doing,
if you've done any work at the South Worcester Industrial Park area,
there is an enormous amount of positive work being done
and probably was one of the worst parts of the city.
New homes going up, just clearing the way.
Clark University is a very good neighbor because they've been participating in the effort.
And the South Worcester Community Development Corporation
has been on the cutting edge of design and energy efficiency.
Long before, we were talking about it in government,
long before it even became trendy in this part of the country,
because the northwest part of Seattle, Washington, Oregon,
even parts of California have been leaders in the country on green building and energy efficiency.
Here where we need it most in the northeast, in New England,
where we rely heavily on energy and where we have old industrial cities
that needed to be revived but in a very environmentally friendly manner
and looking at energy efficiency goals.
We haven't done that until recently.
Now all of a sudden, members of the city council are so aggressive on this subject
that I am pleasantly surprised.
When I suggested that we go green on City Square,
I had to sit down with Young Park and he basically told me,
and this was three or four years ago,
that he could not go green because it affected his bottom line and it was not marketable.
He can't say that today.
In fact, he is saying he is going to try and do as much of Leeds strategies as possible.
Leeds is an industry-based certification process in building.
It is leadership in energy and environmental design and it is used throughout the country.
So when we talk about Leeds, we are talking about a standard and practice
that dictates what is environmentally appropriate in building and design and energy efficiency strategies.
Unfortunately, Gateway Project doesn't seem to have that built into it right now.
That is unfortunate because WPI is on the cutting edge when it comes to teaching their students these principles.
Although WPI has applied some of those principles in their campus buildings,
they have not done that major commercial endeavor in Lincoln Square, which is unfortunate.
Do you think there may also be some federal funds that might be available to help move that forward?
I don't know that there are a lot of federal funds for anything anymore.
As we speak, Congress is still dealing with the funding of the war in Iraq.
That has been a drain.
I think it is soon to come though because it is just on so many people's minds,
especially with gas prices now over three bucks.
All the current surveys indicate that people are less optimistic in this country than they were ten years ago or five years ago.
We have this general feeling of unhappiness.
It is showing over and even in this budget that we are dealing with on the City Council,
I have more people who are telling me don't raise taxes.
I have had it because they are being burdened with increased energy costs.
We are going to have increased food costs.
The weather patterns are changing and are changing farming habits and techniques.
I think in the next ten years we are going to see more local farming.
Unfortunately, our seasons are now unpredictable.
We are going to see people buying smaller cars, more energy efficiency just using light bulbs.
These are very simple, basic things to more sophisticated design issues.
I went to a farmer's market a few weeks ago and stopped at a table and they had this beautiful pottery.
I said to the woman, this is nice. Did you make it?
She said, yes, I made it. There was yon there.
She said, yon is from my sheep. I make the pottery. I grow my own vegetables.
You guys can buy some vegetables.
I thought this must be where we are all headed because things are changing.
I hope it is not a trend.
In the early 70s when we had the oil embargo, that was the trend.
Everybody was going to get back to the earth and do things and be more self-reliant.
Then all of a sudden when the price of gas went down, the big cars came back and our habits got lazy and sloppy again.
We can't have that kind of rebound.
I think it is different now though with the climate action plan that the city has developed.
We are very sensitive to the issue of energy savings and recycling.
Now we have the EPA angry at the city or demanding that we spend another $200 million in terms of the Blackstone Canal and the sewage that is pumped into there.
You are seeing everybody on the city council and I think in the general public educating themselves.
I tried to get some, this is a commercial name, the Hardy Board installed on my house.
That is a cement based product rather than wood or vinyl.
I had the hardest time finding somebody who knew how to install it.
While you may have these products out there, there is a gap.
We have to teach our vocad students, our tech students, the name has changed.
Those techniques we have to have an educated workforce that deals with those green issues, energy savings and efficiency issues.
Knows how to do the practical installations and renovations.
Is this what inspired you with the Green Awards to move that forward?
Part of that, yes.
I think we need to really highlight that this is more than a trend and it is more than a cute idea.
We gave the award to seven different categories.
There were overlapping, one category had three winners.
We started with some homeowners in the city who had installed solar panels and the energy efficiency there.
We even cited Dougherty High School when they had to replace heating and ventilation systems.
How they did it in an energy efficient way and had as high as a 70% savings on the usage in that building.
So it can be done and since installers and manufacturers are becoming much more sensitive to the issue, I think they are ready now to do that.
I would like to see more energy efficient houses actually being constructed as new homes.
We are going to have to do much more with our zoning and design and building codes to spur that on.
We haven't done that yet.
There is one or two companies that I am aware of.
I have a friend who has a company up in New Hampshire that dig these thermal wells.
Thermal? That is going to be very trendy but you can only do it with new constructions.
It has to be new from the start up and they dig down into the ground.
Geothermal.
It is an idea worth pursuing.
No energy cost at all.
I don't know, no energy cost.
It is going to reduce it.
In the winter it will keep it warm and in the summer cool because of that constant heat or temperature you get when you go five or six feet under the surface.
So your constituents are telling you to not raise taxes, property taxes.
Oh absolutely and that doesn't make any difference.
If they are working in the system or out of it they are still upset with the cost of living in Worcester and it is mostly the housing costs.
And the housing costs still haven't, my son is getting married and he is looking for a home.
And I am amazed that people still have high expectations of the value of their real estate even though the market and the foreclosures are driving prices down.
So we are going to be seeing I think many more foreclosures from the subprime mortgages that were out there, the predators who are out there looking for people who really couldn't afford to pay the loans and the mortgages that they were applying for.
Now I know a lot of our budget depends on state funds. I think it is over half is state funded.
I don't have the figures right in front of me.
Well usually about 53, 54 percent.
Right. Now has there ever been any proposals on the council to say let's keep our spending down to what the property tax income is?
That is sort of difficult to do because 85 percent of our budget is salary and entitlements.
And so if we are going to be serious about keeping expenses down since only 15 percent is non-salary related, we have to look at the way contracts are bargained.
And that is going to take cooperation from the bargaining units.
And that is difficult to get because the bargaining units are mostly staffed by people who are seniors in the system.
I mean in terms of seniority, they have been there the longest, they benefit the most from contracts going up because it is calculated in their retirement figures.
And when we, for example, look at all the slots that we unfortunately are going to be cutting on the school side and lament the fact that we are losing our younger people,
the phrase has always been used that we eat our young over there without any kind of attempt to look at how we bargain, what our pay rates are, our salary rates, etc.
I always ask for every year the 250 highest paid employees.
And we don't compete with the private sector anymore. We are better than the private sector, especially when you look at the benefits that are attached to it.
We had to bargain long and hard in our last round of negotiations to convince unions to have a 20 percent contribution rate on the health insurance premium.
20 percent. Most private employers are increasing that percentage. So if it is 50-50 at least, that is the rate.
But we also got 25 percent for our new employees who are hired after a certain date.
But what good does that do when health insurance goes up? 10 or 15 percent a year. And that is a budget buster and it is a crisis.
If we didn't have a war going on in this country, we weren't supporting a war.
I think we would recognize that that is a crisis that is going to drive this country basically into almost a bankruptcy.
Of course countries don't go bankrupt. They just print more money. But it is a crisis.
And that is an overused word. But health insurance has never gotten reformed and it doesn't look like it is going to for a long time.
And as a result, the cost is going to skyrocket more and more, cut into budgets.
I mean we raise taxes just to pay for salaries, pensions and health insurance. How does that get you any more services?
How does that make the city a better place to live? How does that provide for better education for the kids?
It doesn't. And we are struggling with that overwhelming burden without making the quality of life significantly better.
Now, has there been any thought to the issue? I know we are lucky we have what they call school choice here in Worcester.
And there is a lot of busing going on. And we have a very high level of diversity in all our neighborhoods now.
I would say pretty equal in most of the places. Has there ever been any thought to maybe eliminating the busing?
I had suggested that casually and the response was that if you make kids pay for busing or make them walk, they won't go to school.
Oh, okay. We used to walk. I don't know.
I walk too, yeah. It's a good thing because that's the only thing that's kept me from getting really old and decrepit.
It's good to get some fresh air.
It is, yes. I know. And kids don't get it in school. I mean this is a very sedentary group of children that we're raising.
They spend most of their time in front of a computer. They don't go out and play anymore because it's dangerous to do that.
It is dangerous because you don't know who's in the neighborhood and all the publicity about predators and sexual abuse is somewhat frightening.
If I were a child being raised now, I think I would be overwhelmed by all the fears that are pounded into kids.
So as a result, parents keep them inside. They go in front of a computer and who do they meet there? Predators and strangers who you've let into your house even though the house is bolted like a prison.
Right, yeah. It's ironic. We have to keep our eyes on the kids the whole time.
Absolutely.
The issue of the traditional Mayor's Walk came up recently. We talked about that I thought a few shows ago.
You're going to continue that tradition and you still kind of do it through your TV shows too.
Looking forward to something soon. Do you have any plans to go out and walk?
We've been requested, the Mayor's Office has been requested by a lot of folks to have Mayor's Walks.
I've talked to a few counselors about it. It's a matter of where to go and how to set it up.
Finally, the weather has settled down because any time before now it would have been very risky given the unpredictable nature of the weather.
But that was an unfortunate discussion on the City Council.
The item was filed by Councilor Rushton to have the City Manager take at least seven walks.
I was concerned that we were then turning the Manager into a pseudo-Mayor who was going to have to deal with his own political base and act like the voice of the people.
That is clearly the job of the City Councilors.
Everyone who supported that particular order then decided it was better as Councilor Rushton decided to withdraw it.
I think you're probably going to see a lot of other items that don't make sense being filed.
As Nick Katsop was saying in his Sunday column, silly season and people are likely to do things during the election cycle they wouldn't normally do.
Unfortunately, that was one of them.
It's some exposure time, I guess, or whatever.
From my recollection, past walks always included members from the administration who came.
If not, the City Manager wasn't tagging along, there was the Chief of Police or somebody.
It's the Mayor who invites everyone and the Manager is always cooperative and lets members of his administration participate in those events.
They're mostly for the benefit of the neighbors and for the public officials that need to have that kind of input.
In the last few minutes I thought we'd talk about the Mayor's youth philanthropy and civic involvement council.
Why is this important and tell us what's going on with this?
As you know, for many years our voter participation rate has been dismal.
It's been awful and it's embarrassing and it's been troublesome.
When we look at how to get more voters, we have to look at young voters.
Getting them involved is a crucial part of having them understand what government is all about
and what they can do in terms of acting as a real force of change in their city, where they live and where they go to school.
I thought the best way to do that, by the way, this has been a program that's been growing under the leadership Maureen Benyenda down at South High.
I was fortunate enough to attend some leadership sessions they had teaching them about government.
As a result, a few of the kids are volunteering regularly in the Mayor's office.
When they were looking for some real involvement in City Hall, we thought it would be appropriate to get them physically in there,
have meetings in there, a meeting place where they could deal with the issues that were on their agenda.
So we got them a meeting place in room 303 where they can hold scheduled meetings to deal with grantsmanship.
They have a grant from Worcester Community Foundation and they dispense that according to guidelines.
So they learn how to deal with grants and how to deal with the various agencies in the city and what the goals of those agencies are.
They're also on at least a half a dozen, they serve as members, at least a half a dozen advisory boards for various agencies in the city.
And they're getting involved in the kind of work that really forces them to understand how the city works and how they can make a difference.
And I am really impressed with the kids.
What are their age requirements?
They're high school students.
High school?
Yeah.
That's fantastic.
It is.
And the manager is coming out with his own recommendations for having a youth coordinator.
Yeah.
So is that something that you think is an important step to do?
Would you agree with that, with a youth coordinator?
I think if you don't start now, you're going to lose folks.
And it's already proven that most people feel cut off from their government.
They don't feel like they can make a difference and they don't feel that involvement, even voting, is an important part of their life.
Yeah.
I know we had some kids here that they just finished because they're going, you know, summer's here and they're done with their program.
But they did a fantastic job.
And they learn, they really do get excited when they can interface with the community.
It makes their life meaningful.
Yeah, right.
And even just to go, like some of them will go and they cover, you gave an award, they go and they cover that, they get excited.
Or they'll go to the convention or something.
It was great.
We're out of time, Marla.
Oh, we were just getting started.
I know.
It's good to see you.
Thank you, Marla.
We look forward to seeing more of you on Coffee with Connie.
Thank you.
Thank you for being here.
I want to thank Mayor Lueck for joining us on Soapbox.
I'm Marla Diepersquale.
Until next time, I look forward to seeing you on WCCATV13, the People's Channel.
Thank you.