Monday, December 17, 2012

Vacant Council Seat

These are the people who have submitted a letter of interest in filling the vacancy soon to be created when Councillor Ives leaves as of Jan 1, 2013.

I believe this will be on the Council agenda for our first meeting of the year.


First Middle Last Address
Paula  Hudson Chambers 31 Federal Street
Larry  G. Giunta, Jr. 139 Crow Lane
Steven R. Hutchinson 76 Longfellow Drive
Larry  V. McCavitt 5 Madison Street
Ralph  P. Orlando 4 William Hall Drive
Robert  R. Rothberg 15 School Street
Warren P. Russo 182 Northern Blvd
Mary E. Zinck 6 Laurel Road

Wednesday, December 5, 2012

Death By A Thousand Papercuts: 14 Russia

Zoning Board of Appeals Agenda for December 11, 2012
http://www.cityofnewburyport.com/Planning/Zoning%20Board/Agendas/12-11-12%20zba%20agenda.pdf 

2012-047 Brown Square Realty Trust - Al Clifford, Trustee 14 Russia Street Special Permit for Non-Conformities demolish existing structure and construct new 2 1/2 story single family home 

You can read the P. Preservationist's comments here: http://brickandtree.wordpress.com/2012/12/04/demolishing-one-house-at-a-time/

Here is the house:

Sunday, December 2, 2012

Public Transportation in Newburyport and other Boston Suburbs

This is something I stumbled on and it's a great way to visualize how people get around in general.

From http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/11/transit-visualizations/

Tiny lights swarm like fireflies, representing trains, buses, and ferries shuffling people across different metropolises over the course of a day. These videos show off 24 hours of public transportation in cities such as Boston; Chicago; Washington, D.C.; Auckland, New Zealand; and Montreal.
Programmer Andrew Walker, who runs the Vancouver-based Sumus Technology, made these videos using a custom-built software program in his spare time. Because he works mostly on scientific satellites, his original idea was to design a program for satellite-tracking visualization.
“As part of the learning process for that, I started thinking about visualizations for other things,” he said. “I just happened to go a local transit meeting in Vancouver where I learned about the GTFS format.”
GTFS stands for General Transit Feed Specification, a file format for mass transit schedules that Google maps uses to calculate how to get from point A to point B when you click on the public transit option. Google gets the information from transit authorities in cities around the world and provides them to make our lives easier. Walker has thus far made visualizations for more than 40 cities and said he plans to continue uploading new ones. Eventually he hopes to include more features, such as the ability to highlight one route and real-time data rather than just transit schedules, but only two or three cities have made such data publicly available.
Any city dweller can appreciate the videos. There is something mesmerizing about watching the place where you live slowly light up in activity as the day progresses. Some cities buzz with action, especially New York, but surprisingly Los Angeles, which is more well known for its freeways than its metro. Interestingly, many of the cities’ subways appear to be converging on an ideal form.

Here below is the Boston area video from a typical 3am to 3am based on schedules from the MBTA.  I don't know if the Regional Transit Authorities are included in the data but I was struck by 1) that there seems to be no public transit along the circumferential (is that a word?) routes like 128 and 495 2) if you don't have a car and you work at 3am, you probably can't get to your job and related to 1 & 2 is 3) our transit system is very outmoded and presumes that people only go in and out of Boston.



Perhaps this explains why a relatively small percentage of Newburyporters choose to use public transit (commuter rail, Merrimack Valley Regional Transit Authority, and the subsidized bus lines like C&J and Coach) to get to where they need to go.  The scheduling and routing stinks.  Combined with higher and higher fares it's no wonder that even people who are interested in alternatives choose to get in their cars and drive.



Wednesday, November 28, 2012

Newburyport Property Tax Rate in FY 13


Here is a link to the story on Newburyport's tax rate: 

Here is the link to the story on Amesbury's tax rate:

One simple way to describe Proposition 2 1/2 is that overall local property taxes can increase each year by up to 2.5% over the previous year's limit, plus any new growth and any overrides/debt exclusions.The bottom line is that for the first time in a number of years Newburyport's overall property taxes were not increased by the maximum allowed of 2.5%.

Newburyport's new rate is $13.32 instead of the $13.42 allowed.   So that is a bit of a break for taxpayers.

In 2010 Mayor John Moak and the Council reduced the tax rate from the maximum allowed by $0.01.

In 2003 Mayor Al Lavender and the Council reduced the tax rate from the maximum allowed by $0.15.

Our FY 2012 residential tax rate of $12.80 was the 114th lowest in Massachusetts; in other words, 237 communities had a higher residential tax rate.

Our FY 2012 commercial tax rate of $12.80 was the 82nd lowest in Massachusetts; in other words, 269 communities had a higher commercial tax rate.

Late note: One reader noticed a key thing: just because the tax rate is low doesn't mean that taxes are low.

So (as I said) we have a relatively low residential tax rate and 237 towns/cities are higher than we are.

But (and I'll put this online soon) our average single family tax bill is higher than all but about 68 communities.  Because our home values are on average higher, the average bill even with somewhat lower tax rates ends up being pretty high.

Below is a chart I created of the historic tax rate each year per $1,000 of value since 1982. The table of data is further below.  The information and much more is at http://www.mass.gov/dor/local-officials/municipal-data-and-financial-management/data-bank-reports/








City      FY  Tax Rate
Newburyport 1982 23.90
Newburyport 1983 24.60
Newburyport 1984 22.78
Newburyport 1985 22.78
Newburyport 1987 11.79
Newburyport 1988 12.61
Newburyport 1989 13.46
Newburyport 1990 11.72
Newburyport 1991 11.99
Newburyport 1992 13.53
Newburyport 1993 15.49
Newburyport 1994 16.02
Newburyport 1995 16.62
Newburyport 1996 16.65
Newburyport 1997 17.03
Newburyport 1998 17.59
Newburyport 1999 16.37
Newburyport 2000 16.81
Newburyport 2001 17.44
Newburyport 2002 13.11
Newburyport 2003 13.65
Newburyport 2004 14.29
Newburyport 2005 10.52
Newburyport 2006 10.26
Newburyport 2007 10.09
Newburyport 2008 10.13
Newburyport 2009 10.93
Newburyport 2010 11.66
Newburyport 2011 12.07
Newburyport 2012 12.80
Newburyport 2013 13.32





Wednesday, November 21, 2012

Happy Thanksgiving



Our rural ancestors, with little blest,
Patient of labour when the end was rest,
Indulged the day that housed their annual grain,
With feasts, and off'rings, and a thankful strain.
~Alexander Pope