George King: The Wrong Choice to Lead Framingham's New School Project

On January 25, Mayor Sisitsky announced the 13 member School Building Committee (SBC) which will oversee the city's plan to build a new elementary school on the Bethany property in South Framingham, with support from the Massachusetts School Building Authority (MSBA). The committee composition follows the MSBA guidelines:

https://www.massschoolbuildings.org/sites/default/files/edit-contentfiles/Documents/Forms/EP/School_Building_Committee_2016.pdf

and looks to be a group of folks who are certainly up to the task. The list of members will be submitted to the MSBA for acceptance.

The formation of the SBC is just one of seven steps which have to occur now that Framingham has been invited into the MSBA Eligibility Period. Those steps are laid out in:

https://www.massschoolbuildings.org/building/prerequisites

and include:

• Providing a summary of the District’s existing maintenance practices;
• Confirmation of community authorization and funding to proceed (see MSBA Vote Requirements);

These MSBA requirements are in place for a very good reason.

The MSBA knows that for a project to be successful, the community must support it by approving a debt exclusion to pay the city/town portion of the project cost. For the Fuller Middle School MSBA project, Framingham had to approve a debt exclusion for $60 million, which it did. The MSBA also only wants to invest its money in schools, which will be properly maintained and not allowed to fall apart by deferring maintenance.

In short, a community has to support property tax increases and maintain its school buildings.

This immediately raises red flags on the Mayor's choice of George King to be Chair of the SBC, as he is the city's chief opponent of property tax increases, and he has played a pivotal role in deferring maintenance on school buildings.

If the MSBA finds out that the Chair of our SBC has led the effort to oppose property tax increases since 2014, and from 2018 forced 0% property tax levy increases on the city for 4 years and continues to suppress property tax levy increases, as Chair of the City Council Finance Subcommittee, it will wonder how the community could possibly approve a project debt exclusion, with such leadership.

If the MSBA also finds out that all our school roofs had reached the end of their expected life in 2018 and not one of them was replaced for 5 years, Framingham's MSBA standing will plummet if the MSBA realizes that Framingham has also made the person most responsible for that, Chair of our SBC.

Even more egregious is the fact that in the last MSBA project to rebuild Fuller Middle School George King was diffident at best. He did join the City Council vote to put a debt exclusion to the voters, but then just 4 days before the December 11, 2018, vote, when everyone else was working hard to get out the vote, George sent a newsletter update to all of his supporters in which he not only failed to encourage people to vote for the debt exclusion, but, even worse, never mentioned the upcoming vote at all.

That truly was a slap in the face for everyone who was working so hard to get the vote out and support a critical investment in education for Framingham. The email is included at the end of the article for readers to examine.

It should also be remembered that when the Framingham High School renovation was done, George King was centrally involved in that, and for cost cutting reasons, the air-conditioning system was never completed. One of the first tasks of the School Committee, when I was elected for the 2018 term, was to put an end to high school students and staff being roasted to 95 degrees on hot June or September days, by completing the air-conditioning system installation.

A genuine fear is that George King will play a similar strong cost cutting role in this new project and that may produce some very poor outcomes.

Further, the new southside school will be all electric with a solar roof and solar canopies in its parking lots. It will pay off for Framingham to build that school to the best possible energy conservation and climate change mitigation standards. George has never been an advocate in this area and in the Energize Framingham forum prior to the last election, voiced his opposition to Framingham adopting the state Net Zero building code which supports those goals.

Finally, it seems that George King is aiming to expand his domain of control over all things financial in Framingham. He is Chair of the City Council Finance Subcommittee, and with that power dominates decisions on the city operating and capital budgets. As Chair of the SBC, he would also have a dominating influence on the scope and cost of the largest capital project in the city.

George King has such obvious drawbacks on so many issues:

1. Opposition to tax increases to support sound educational investments.
2. 5 years of starving the school district of capital to replace its school roofs.
3. Making short sighted ‘cost cutting’ decisions in past projects.
4. Having an inordinate amount of control over city financial and capital project decisions.

It seems that it would be very wise to choose another person to be Chair of the SBC, to optimize our chances of both securing MSBA funding and successfully completing a very important school building project.

George King email:

Here is the email George King sent to his constituents on 12/7/18, 4 days before the Fuller Debt Exclusion vote:

From: George King

To: George King

Bcc: geoffreynepstein@gmail.com

Subject: Constituent Update

Date: Friday, December 7, 2018 1:00:35 PM

Greetings!

Welcome to my last constituent update of 2018. There are new people added to this edition, some by request, some I added. As always, if you prefer not to receive this just let me know. Again, for new recipients my intent of the update is to offer some of my thoughts about the happenings of the City in general, and the City Council in particular. If you would like to offer feedback, I welcome it and find it valuable to carrying out my duties.

I cannot help but reflect on the fact that we are coming to the end of our first year as a city. There is no question that there have been some stops and starts, some ups and downs, but also some successes that we may not otherwise had. To be honest, I have found it frustrating at times, but I think we all are adjusting to roles. I believe the experience and adjustment in year one will benefit all of us in year two.

One of the reasons I ran for councilor at large is that my interest in government is most keenly focused on the operations, finance and efficiency of government overall. Although I certainly am happy to address any issue anyone has individually, I am motivated by addressing the interface of government with the citizens as a whole. I believe we should strive to keep Framingham affordable, while maintaining the excellent services we provide. I know we can do that. One of our successes this year was our ability to reduce the tax levy below the prior year’s level. This helped mitigated substantially a value-based rise in the residential tax bill.

One of the latest items that has come of interest to me is the proposal that a permanent change in the City’s operating hours. This would be achieved by being open for two extra hours on Tuesday evening, and closing four and half hours early (12:30 P.M.) on Friday afternoon. I applaud the desire to service residents in the evening, but I think we can do it without closing on Fridays. To me, this sort of schedule changing is not efficient when there are ways to achieve the goal and not close up early for the weekend. I would be interested in hearing from people about this issue. My biggest challenge is to find a good public policy reason to justify it, as I have heard none to date.

If you would like to read my more in-depth thoughts on this issue my campaign website has the full view. http://www.georgekingframingham.com/2018/11/expanding-summerhours.html

We recently approved the Mayor’s nomination of Steve Trask as police chief. I have known Steve a long time, and I am hopeful he will bring stability to the ranks of the police department. There was some controversy around the appointment, more regarding the process than the appointee. I truly had mixed emotions through the entire discussion, because I am a big believer in process, and I think a full public process would have been helpful. At the same point I respect the right of the Mayor to appoint people to serve with her. I believe the council should only withhold approval when the choice significantly objectionable. That was not the case here. So while I would have preferred more of a process, I ultimately decided to approve the Mayor’s appointment. Choosing between the two approaches was one of the most difficult votes I have encountered this year.

The Mayor has appointed Alaa Abusalah as the City’s first Citizen Participation Officer. The Council confirmed the appointment on December 4th. I do not know Alaa, but she has worked for the City for a couple of years and those that know her speak very highly of her ability. Her background and credentials are impressive. I am hopeful that she will have a meaningful impact in this position.

A few quick items to mention:

• Framingham lost Steve Ryder, a lifelong resident, a few weeks ago. For those that knew Steve you know he was a very special guy. He lived over 20 active years as a heart transplant recipient. He was just a rare person with an amazing story that touched almost everyone he came in contact with. I had the benefit of living next door to Steve from the time I was a young child. He will be missed.
• I met with the Council of Aging a few weeks ago for a general discussion. We do not spend a lot of money on the Senior Center, but we get a huge return on the dollar. The number of programs available and the efforts put forth by so many are very impressive. It was great to visit just to be reminded of this tremendous community resource.
• The Finance Subcommittee of the council, which I chair, is working on a new approach to capital budgeting in our utility enterprise fund. We have asked the City CFO and DPW management to consider building a capital budget process with the goal of maintaining a more predictable rate structure. The large capital investments we have made are one of the main drivers of the rates. We are looking to establish a program that will allow the necessary capital improvements to continue, while supporting a more stable rate structure.

• I have the privilege of being a founding member of Framingham FORCE. The group was formed to help respond to the opioid epidemic and the issues it poses. Last Saturday evening we held a vigil on the Common in Framingham Center. We placed purple flags to represent the lives of everyone who died in Massachusetts last year from opioids. Silver flags with the names of local victims were intermingled in the display. The display will be up until December 22nd, weather permitting. It is quite powerful, I hope you have a chance to see it.

I would like to offer my sincere Happy Holiday wishes for whatever holidays you and yours are celebrating this season. Thank you for taking the time to read my thoughts, and please feel free to offer feedback on any issue at any time. Feedback is a critical component of representative government, please give yours.

George