Sit down with me and a Worcester employee for two hours, find out about the focus on Polar Park, why you get ticketed on random side streets, and how most municipal employees are just trying to do their job.
Apparently administrator Todd will will drive home and make 311 work orders off the clock to punish people with limited parking, and is particularly evil, even for Worcester.
Transcript compiled by Substack, may be innacurate
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Okay, so this is David Webb.
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I’m here with someone who works for the city of Worcester.
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And we’re going to talk about how they are,
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them and their co-workers are fed up with the internal systems.
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So I work for the Department of Transportation and Mobility.
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That’s the department that creates
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the bike lanes and a lot of the engineering decisions of the city,
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they also have parking enforcement off of the Department of Transportation and
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Mobility.
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The commissioner, Steve Raleigh, he’s newer to the department.
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Below him, there’s two different people.
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One’s in charge of the engineering aspect.
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Another person is in charge of the meters and the tickets themselves.
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In terms of like the structure, there’s
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Five engineers and I think six parking people.
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So, yeah, I mean, they’re there for the city.
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Cool.
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So that’s all within the city and under the DTM.
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I have to say, generally speaking, it feels like the DTM is one of the few organized.
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I like what everything Stephen Roll has done since he came on.
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And so I’m actually biased for your department compared to many departments within the city.
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I know there’s been some things that have been implemented poorly,
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but I don’t think that was on the planning side.
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I think that was on the budgeting and implementing and management side.
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But I’m open to being wrong about that.
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It’s tough because you’re damned if you do, you’re damned if you don’t.
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People want bike lanes and then they add bike lanes and then they don’t like the
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bike lanes because it’s a new change and it’s not something that people are used
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to.
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mill street is like an interesting case because the cars are in the middle of the
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road i can see why people are very apprehensive to like park there and then getting
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rid of the parking near coast pond the beach i mean that was that’s huge for a lot
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of the people and just the way that the city has it set up and they could do a
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better job you know advertising where you can and can’t park sporadic signs right i
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mean some signs are 200 300 feet apart and you know the city wants you to go tag
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some of these people but if the signs are
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too far you’re never gonna be able to see them and as you wrap around towards like
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park ab around coast pond right you can park halfway around coast pond but then
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once you reach a certain point you go on the straightaway past the like the auto
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repair place then you can’t but you can park directly across the street in the auto
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repairs where the old price chopper is and there’s no issues like at all but people
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don’t know that but they don’t know that because the signs are bright red and so
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when you see a red sign typically you think it’s either like a tow zone or no
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parking thing but all it says is
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no parking for semi trucks between Sunday night to Monday morning or something like that.
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Got it.
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So there’s signs that are like that,
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that,
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that tell people things,
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but,
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but people think it’s,
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it applies to them too.
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They don’t bother reading the whole thing.
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Honestly, I think mill street is such a good example of that.
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That’s part of what I was thinking of when I was like, you know, the design is, is good.
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Um,
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it kind of,
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well,
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one,
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the implementation wasn’t great because apparently the,
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the bull yards were like seven months late or something.
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And that was,
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if i understand correctly a budgeting issue on the city side or project i don’t
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know but but more importantly the you know we it’s the same thing as harvard square
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like that has been normal for anyone who’s been to boston has interacted with that
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before and that being said i think it’s fair to recognize and and the dtm might
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need to recognize that regardless of how good of a plan this is most people who are
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using mill street might not have been to boston
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Yeah, absolutely.
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And like when you turn off from June Street on to Mill for the first like year and
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a half,
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it wasn’t finished painted.
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So you didn’t necessarily know that it went from two lanes to one lane.
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So a lot of people for a good while were driving in the parking lane.
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Um, what they did to burn coach street, they tried to do a different bike lane design.
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So there’s no parking at all on both sides of burn coach street.
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Um, the businesses clearly aren’t in favor of that.
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Um,
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because you know,
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a lot of them don’t have driveways or if they do,
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you know,
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they’re pretty small for their employees.
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And you have a lot of these residential people where if you park in front of a
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house,
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you know,
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any specific house,
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I can’t think of any,
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but you park on burn coach street,
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you might have to walk six or seven houses past.
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to go park on a side street where your car won’t get towed or anything like that ticketed.
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It’s just difficult for a lot of people to find parking in general.
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I guess we’ve been talking about nicer neighborhoods,
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but if you go up towards Vernon Hill,
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right,
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that’s a good example where people have to park on the sidewalk or cars will not be
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able to get through.
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And you have some of the people in DTM who will drive around and make like a work
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order on three on one.
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And then we have to go address it for something that they’re not comfortable necessarily like.
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getting you know doing talking to people dewey streets like another good example
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the sidewalks are 25 feet wide no it’s an exaggeration they’re they’re probably
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they’re probably like 13 14 feet wide on one side and then on the other side
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they’re probably 10 feet wide and you know people park on the sidewalk but they’re
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not on the physical sidewalk it’s just like a paved rounded gravel part but it’s
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not a defined curb because there’s no curb stones or anything like that
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And it’s hit or miss because originally two or three years ago,
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they didn’t want us to tag anyone if they had 36 inches of room,
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which was 88 clearance.
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You could get like a stroller through,
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you could get a wheelchair through,
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you could get a power scooter,
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whatever.
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And then it evolved into anything eight feet from the lateral line of the curb
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over,
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which is just a fancy way of saying where the curb
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ends in the road to over.
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And so if it was like grass and there was no like paved sidewalk,
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they’d consider that like a sidewalk and they’d want us to tag people parked on
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grass,
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even though it’s not like a sidewalk.
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So we’ve come to like kind of an understanding where we won’t necessarily go out of our way
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I’ve been tagged unless it’s a go work order for certain areas just because it’s
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like kind of ridiculous that people have to park like that to meet the limitations
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of what the streets are.
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Like Hillside Ave is a really good one off of Vernon.
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It’s very, very, very tight.
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And unless you park,
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you know,
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specific ways,
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you know,
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it’s impossible to get like a fire truck down there,
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a garbage truck.
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They have to park like that.
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And, you know, the neighbors will call.
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four or five times a week because they got a ticket upset that, you know, other people haven’t.
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And it almost turns into targeting,
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you know,
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certain streets we hit a lot more than other streets.
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Right.
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And it becomes a matter of who can file enough 311 tickets to get it redirected to
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you rather than where do you guys actually need to be?
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Yeah,
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it’s weird with like 311 because sometimes you talk to the people and they say that
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they’ll make a report and within 20 minutes we’ll get it.
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And then other times we’ll do like a 311 request and it could be 12, 14 hours delayed.
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It’s kind of inconsistent.
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I’m not sure how like 311 delivers...
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They’re a separate department, but there’s multiple ways you can do it.
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One,
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you can call 311 on your telephone,
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and then they have a phone app,
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and then they also have a website.
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I’ve only seen the website.
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I’ve never called in,
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but you can view other departments’ work orders and everyone’s work orders,
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open-close status.
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Our department’s very active about closing them.
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Other departments, I can’t speak for, but we’re very on top of it despite limited staff.
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That makes sense.
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And honestly, it sounds like how, at this point, most of the different departments are.
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They’re all not just short-staffed,
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but also they’ve effectively come up with a way to manage not trying to be a
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minimal asshole while still doing their job.
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And there’s a guy... Here’s a good example.
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On the corner of Main Street in Montague, there was a camper that was parked on the sidewalk.
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He had two tires on.
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And the camper was...
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was under 10 000 or 13 000 pounds um so he was allowed to park there and it’s mixed
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use anyway so the the overnight commercial parking doesn’t affect it um he was
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registered he had insurance he didn’t have an inspection sticker and worcester pd
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and us were sent to go tag it multiple times a day we tagged it for about a month
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um on and off two times a day the vehicle moved
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up into one of the neighborhoods up past Montague.
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And the car was no longer an issue,
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but the car had become bootable because they had tagged it so many times.
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And then we went out and booted it and turned it into this big, huge issue.
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So when we do a lot of the campers, people typically live in them.
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They’re either doing drugs in them or they live in them for financial hardship.
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There’s usually more than one person living in them.
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If there’s animals in them or kids in them, then you’re complicating it even more.
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And you get a quality of life involved.
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You got to get the police involved.
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and you know that’s that’s something that we see a lot of now and i mean it’s tough
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for the people living in them but the situation for the people that physically live
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in those areas too they don’t want trash strung about they don’t want a camper in
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front of their house so you have to balance like that humanitarian part and it’s
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tough because the city doesn’t necessarily see it the same way as the people going
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out and enforcing it because they’re not talking to the people they’re not getting
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yelled at by the people so they’re not necessarily
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know getting the full scope of what the issue is and granted if there is a
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violation you know it sucks we have to tag it but you know it’s not something that
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you know we want to necessarily do most of the tickets we do in residential areas
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you know we’ll put as requested because someone will make a work order and a lot of
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that seems to get missed they think that we’re going after them and in some cases
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it kind of feels like if just because we’re getting sent there by neighbors or
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whoever makes the work order doesn’t have to be a neighbor it could be anyone
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Yeah, that was what I was going to ask, is how are work orders generally created?
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Like, are these specifically from other departments?
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It’s hit or miss.
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So some departments, like the DPW, they’ll make work orders for intersections.
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If they can’t clear an intersection, they’ll call and complain.
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Sometimes it’s businesses will call and complain they want,
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like they’ll put a 15 minute signage in front of their business and people from
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other businesses will park there,
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go do whatever they’re doing.
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Other times it’s residents upset.
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The most common one is going to be like abandoned vehicles.
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And people will say a vehicle’s abandoned for multiple reasons,
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hasn’t moved,
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has trash on it,
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whatever.
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They’re not always abandoned.
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I’d say it’s about a 50, 50 split.
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You get a lot of these cars, you know, they’re registered.
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They haven’t moved.
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but you know they’re just sitting for whatever reason another common thing is
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people will swap plates there’s a lot of people that swap plates and move around so
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we see a lot of unregistered cars in terms of what we do in a week you know i’ve
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seen 20 30 cars you know that we’ve removed and they just keep coming and coming
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and coming people will buy these cars and then they’ll throw just any plate on them
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and you know
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They just take up residential space in a lot of these triple-decker neighborhoods.
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And, you know, it’s tough for the people that live there.
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But,
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you know,
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if the car is active and registered,
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there’s not really much you can,
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I guess,
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do.
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Got it.
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It’s mostly just when they’re unregistered, you kind of have to at that point.
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You know, and like Worcester PD and us, you know, our hands are kind of tied.
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There’s a lot of vehicles that I personally think should be towed.
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And for whatever reason, I’m not sure what the policies are in place.
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We can’t tell unless it’s like a... Nope, you’re still recording.
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We’re good.
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We can’t tell unless it’s like a, you know, a booted vehicle or it’s an abandoned vehicle.
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But in terms of other things too,
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you know,
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we see so many vehicles that like...
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77 Stockton Street,
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right across from Providence Street,
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there’s a park there.
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And there’s some...
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handicapped spaces over there.
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There were two semi trucks parked in there for four or five days and they racked up
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about a thousand dollars in tickets.
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And for some reason, Worcester PD wouldn’t tow it and we can’t necessarily tow it.
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And then there was another example.
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There was a car, um, directly across the street.
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It’s a white BMW.
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Anyone that lived in that Stockton street neighborhood knows this white BMW smashed windows.
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All every single one of them was smashed.
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Um,
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know brand new looking car you know um it had a stack of tickets maybe 15 of them
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um but yeah they couldn’t tell it because it’s an active registered car the owner
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knew about the vehicle but you know at the same time you know any kid could walk in
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there it’s a hazard this class whatever so there’s just a lot of vehicles that
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should be towed because of health hazards and yet you know they kind of sit there
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yeah yeah it’s inconsistent but uh it comes down to whether or not the vehicle is
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registered effectively
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Yeah, for the most part.
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That’s usually the biggest factor.
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But you’ll see some of these cars too.
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They’ll have brand new inspection stickers, stuff like that.
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And then you run the VIN and it hasn’t been registered in six, seven years.
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And there’s so many cars too that just driving around that look brand new,
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you would never even think of it.
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And people just don’t even care.
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And a lot of them too,
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they’re out of states,
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they’re New York’s,
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they’re Vermont’s,
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they’re Connecticut’s.
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And California is,
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and once they’re out of state,
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you know,
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all of these out of state ones,
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it’s,
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it’s,
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you’re adding another level of complexity because now you’ve got to run through
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another state’s RV.
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They don’t all necessarily communicate,
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but there’s a lot of people here who have cars and aren’t,
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you know,
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paying their taxes on the cars.
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You know,
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you’ve lived here long enough now and you haven’t necessarily switched your
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registration over.
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I mean,
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especially if you’re living in Worcester,
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it gets expensive to register your vehicle here.
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Oh gosh.
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Yeah.
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You go one, one time out in any direction, your insurance drops almost half
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Anyone I’ve talked to, you know, their insurance is a lot cheaper.
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Four or five years ago, my insurance for the year was 700 bucks.
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I’m paying $700 for half a year.
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You know, I have a garage and it doesn’t matter, you know, high risk.
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We have so many unlicensed drivers, unregistered cars, you know, and they’re everywhere.
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And part of that’s just enforcement.
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You know, I don’t know why.
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You know, the police, I feel like they must have the power to do that.
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You go to other towns and stuff like that.
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If there was a car without plates, the car would be gone instantly.
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Worcester,
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there’s cars that get parked on the street weeks and they won’t get necessarily
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towed.
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Interesting.
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Yeah.
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19 Albany Street,
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right where the DPW buildings are,
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there’s four or five repair shops and they just actively dump vehicles onto the
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street.
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and you know it’s city property and yet they still won’t tow the cars and it’s on
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their property it’s not like it’s the street it’s like physical city property um
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yeah just weird if anyone else was doing that yeah no it’s got to be a relationship
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with that business and you know there’s other businesses too like shrewsbury
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street’s a great example where we’re pretty i don’t want to say they they tell us
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to not tag there but we’re pretty privy to not tag there because there’s
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um whatever events that they’re having down there or the the the businesses down
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there you know that’s an area where there probably should be meters compared to
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everywhere else in the city shrewsbury street is very busy shrewsbury street’s very
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long the people that are on shrewsbury street you know have more money than the
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people going to kelly square going to you know whatever businesses they’re going to
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on millbury street you know that’s a place where they can generate revenue and it’s
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it’s always kind of been like shrewsbury street exists if there’s a safety thing
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sure but you know don’t go out of your way to go
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tagged Shrewsbury Street.
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When they had the taste of Shrewsbury Street, not this season, but the season before,
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I only did the side streets around Shrewsbury Street and off of Shrewsbury Street,
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all the residential areas,
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the businesses,
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whatever.
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And I only tag safety stuff.
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And I have maybe 25, 30 tickets in about three hours.
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And I was told by Worcester PD that I had to leave the premises.
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That’s kind of hilarious.
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Yeah.
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You know,
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and they’re so weird about who we tag and who we don’t tag and how often we tag and
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don’t tag.
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You know, some cars, you know, they’ll tell us to go tag
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twice a day and then other cars they’ll tell us leave it alone for whatever reason
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and wait for it to be unregistered to go then give it the unregistered ticket but
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it’s just inconsistent especially with the work orders the work orders make it
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really difficult because the citizens if they make the request you have to do it
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regardless of you know what’s
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I guess fair or not,
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you know,
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some of these cars,
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you know,
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they’re getting five,
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you know,
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five inspections,
(00:16:10):
sticker tickets a week.
(00:16:12):
You know, it’s not feasible for them to, you know, move their car, do everything right.
(00:16:15):
You got to give them time.
(00:16:16):
And then there’s other cars will tag it, give it a week or two, then go back and do it again.
(00:16:19):
Yeah.
(00:16:20):
The people are just calling to try and get someone to do something different.
(00:16:24):
Yeah.
(00:16:24):
And, you know, unfortunately, I it’s the three on one system.
(00:16:28):
They need to have like a better communication with the people to explain to them
(00:16:31):
that,
(00:16:31):
you know,
(00:16:32):
a lot of the things that they want can’t happen overnight.
(00:16:34):
There’s processes to everything.
(00:16:36):
Everything has to be done in a certain order.
(00:16:37):
We can’t just tow someone’s car for,
(00:16:39):
you know,
(00:16:39):
because they don’t like it or it’s orange or whatever.
(00:16:41):
You know, it has to be done.
(00:16:43):
The correct process.
(00:16:44):
The three one one app should have an automatic response explaining this.
(00:16:48):
Yeah.
(00:16:49):
I, they were paying, I think they were paying the three on one people.
(00:16:51):
It was 26 or 27 bucks an hour.
(00:16:53):
They have some funky hours.
(00:16:55):
Um,
(00:16:57):
311 has been really inconsistent.
(00:17:00):
If you scroll through the website itself,
(00:17:03):
some of the work orders that get through,
(00:17:05):
people swear they’re not even relevant to what the work order is.
(00:17:08):
We had one where someone was talking about cheetahs in their yard,
(00:17:12):
and it had nothing to do with cars.
(00:17:14):
You go through them, and there’s tons of them like that.
(00:17:17):
People just ranting and raving,
(00:17:18):
people talking about George Santos,
(00:17:20):
Donald Trump,
(00:17:20):
whatever,
(00:17:21):
anything under the sun.
(00:17:22):
And it still gets filtered directly to you guys?
(00:17:24):
Yeah, it’ll go through.
(00:17:25):
And 311 doesn’t filter out the stuff.
(00:17:28):
I’m not sure how their program works, so I can’t speak on it.
(00:17:30):
But I know there’s humans there,
(00:17:32):
and I know when humans aren’t there,
(00:17:34):
they have a computer system that’ll take it,
(00:17:37):
and then it’ll pass it on to the department because it’ll show on the work orders
(00:17:41):
generated,
(00:17:42):
so on and so forth,
(00:17:43):
disperse.
(00:17:44):
But sometimes it’s like 20 minutes and sometimes it’s hours.
(00:17:48):
I don’t understand how it works because we’ll get them to like snow winter van and
(00:17:52):
they’re not working,
(00:17:53):
you know,
(00:17:53):
the overnight hours for the winter van and they’ll still come through.
(00:17:56):
Weird.
(00:17:58):
That is so weird.
(00:17:59):
Okay.
(00:18:00):
So it’s weird on the internal side too.
(00:18:01):
Not just, not just from what the constituents are saying.
(00:18:05):
Okay.
(00:18:05):
Okay.
(00:18:07):
um so you you seems like you guys work largely with the worcester police department
(00:18:12):
is there like a i don’t know a directive to generally do do what they say
(00:18:18):
overriding whatever you were doing previously like how are you otherwise told to
(00:18:21):
interact with them um for the most part i we do more enforcement than mr pd on the
(00:18:26):
parking side a lot of them i don’t know if they
(00:18:30):
know the parking regulations as well.
(00:18:32):
I get asked a lot of times,
(00:18:33):
you know,
(00:18:33):
how close do you have to be from an intersection,
(00:18:36):
crosswalk,
(00:18:36):
whatever.
(00:18:36):
So they treat you guys as the resource?
(00:18:39):
Yeah, for the most part.
(00:18:41):
The only time that they’re really doing our work is overnights,
(00:18:44):
but we do overtime shifts once in a while.
(00:18:49):
But in terms of parking stuff, for the most part, they’ll call us for consideration.
(00:18:53):
They’ll call us to enforce certain areas if they need to or whatnot.
(00:18:57):
But I think
(00:18:58):
For the most part, I think they can write every ticket that we can write.
(00:19:01):
And I think that they have the ability to.
(00:19:03):
It’s whether or not they do or not.
(00:19:06):
But they might also be stretched thin.
(00:19:07):
They might not have the guys who can go out and force the stuff that we find.
(00:19:12):
Okay.
(00:19:13):
So are you guys actively using license plate readers?
(00:19:16):
No, they’ve bounced back and forth on those.
(00:19:19):
They don’t necessarily work that well.
(00:19:21):
So if you have cars in a row, it can read the first car in the row.
(00:19:25):
and anything like sandwiched in between, it’s really tough for them.
(00:19:28):
Got it.
(00:19:28):
The other part is like,
(00:19:29):
if you have a handicap placard,
(00:19:31):
um,
(00:19:32):
I,
(00:19:32):
you know,
(00:19:33):
it’ll trigger that you didn’t pay or whatever you got to go through.
(00:19:36):
Um,
(00:19:37):
so it’ll say like 13 cars didn’t pay and then whatever reason,
(00:19:40):
you know,
(00:19:41):
the state is different than what the license plate reader thought it was.
(00:19:43):
They have a handicap placard, whatever reason.
(00:19:45):
Got it.
(00:19:46):
Um, so it comes up with other issues.
(00:19:47):
Okay.
(00:19:48):
I guess I’m relieved to hear that.
(00:19:49):
That makes sense.
(00:19:50):
Yeah.
(00:19:50):
I hope it doesn’t go that direction that we have phones and we have,
(00:19:54):
And they’re supposedly 5G phones if they say 5G, but I lose service on Grove Street.
(00:19:59):
I lose service on Shrewsbury Street.
(00:20:01):
I lose service all over the city.
(00:20:04):
The phones are slow.
(00:20:05):
They glitch out.
(00:20:08):
But I think they’re in the middle of like a contract bid with a couple of companies
(00:20:11):
at the moment.
(00:20:12):
So we might get new phones.
(00:20:14):
We might get a different company.
(00:20:15):
We might get new technology.
(00:20:16):
Yeah.
(00:20:17):
But we just got three new cars.
(00:20:21):
I think we’re getting two or three brand new cars.
(00:20:23):
We just got Chevy Equinoxes.
(00:20:26):
They’re okay cars, but I wouldn’t have personally picked them.
(00:20:29):
They definitely have a lot of issues.
(00:20:31):
Is that the same that I could be wrong.
(00:20:34):
Is that the same one?
(00:20:34):
The, the new police vehicles?
(00:20:36):
No, they’re using Dodges Dodge.
(00:20:38):
Okay.
(00:20:39):
Um, a lot of, a lot of the DPW people have them too.
(00:20:43):
I think quality of life has electric vehicles.
(00:20:45):
I think they have two or three.
(00:20:47):
Um, I know the city manager has an electric vehicle.
(00:20:51):
Um,
(00:20:52):
and I don’t think any other departments have any electric vehicles at the moment,
(00:20:56):
but they are slowly replacing the fleets.
(00:20:59):
Um,
(00:21:00):
But yeah, it all comes down to money, ultimately.
(00:21:03):
We’re one of the only departments that can generate revenue.
(00:21:07):
So there’s no incentive for us to write more or less tickets.
(00:21:12):
I get paid exactly the same regardless.
(00:21:17):
I guess the big push would be Polar Park, anything related to Polar Park.
(00:21:21):
And we get any tickets in like that Kelly Square area,
(00:21:25):
the financial district,
(00:21:27):
the special financing district,
(00:21:28):
all of those special financing district.
(00:21:30):
I forgot what the phrase they use is.
(00:21:31):
I mean, that sounds about right.
(00:21:33):
I don’t know.
(00:21:33):
You can look up the term.
(00:21:36):
It’s I think they referred it as that.
(00:21:40):
If you anyways, all of those tickets written in that area.
(00:21:44):
go towards the ballpark and paying for the ballpark.
(00:21:48):
When we do the overtimes... Oh, holy shit.
(00:21:52):
Okay, that makes so much sense.
(00:21:54):
Yeah,
(00:21:54):
so certain tickets we write,
(00:21:56):
so if we do street sweeping tickets,
(00:21:58):
that money goes to pay for that operation.
(00:22:00):
If we do winter ban tickets, that pays for winter ban.
(00:22:03):
Not all the meter tickets,
(00:22:04):
so a meter ticket written on Lincoln Street is not necessarily the same as one
(00:22:08):
written on Green Street or Harding Street.
(00:22:11):
They might go to different funds.
(00:22:14):
Okay.
(00:22:15):
But there’s a very big push for us to be in Kelly Square.
(00:22:19):
There’s a very big push for us to be downtown.
(00:22:21):
There’s always been a big push.
(00:22:24):
But it’s tough because if we’re down there enforcing
(00:22:27):
You know, it’s not necessarily bringing business to the areas.
(00:22:32):
Part of the issue for the city is they need to bring the people to the city before
(00:22:36):
you can start doing all of this.
(00:22:37):
And until they can figure out how to get people to actually come to the city and
(00:22:40):
spend money,
(00:22:41):
you know,
(00:22:42):
we’re tagging a lot of the same people,
(00:22:44):
the people that work down there,
(00:22:45):
the people that live there.
(00:22:46):
It’s not so much people that are coming for business.
(00:22:49):
It’s the people that are there because they have to be there for whatever reason.
(00:22:54):
Yeah, people that are trying to help generate business in downtown Worcester.
(00:22:58):
So the way the parking is set up is it’s a two-hour parking limit.
(00:23:03):
So if you park and you go to the baseball games, the baseball games are about three hours.
(00:23:07):
So you’re basically going to get a ticket if you park on the street.
(00:23:11):
And then if you park in the lots, depending on how close you park to the ballpark,
(00:23:16):
um it can be anywhere between five to twenty dollars um and plus you factor in
(00:23:22):
tickets and everything like that too yeah it’s it’s tough to you know bring a
(00:23:27):
family down there and you know spend money especially if you’re gonna get like a 30
(00:23:31):
ticket on top sundays are the worst because it’s free parking for two hours but
(00:23:35):
yeah that whole thing right where you wind up it’s free for two hours it’s free for
(00:23:39):
two hours and it’s kelly square is the only place in the city where the signage is
(00:23:43):
actually
(00:23:45):
It’s pretty adequate.
(00:23:46):
It tells you the time zones on there.
(00:23:48):
It tells you what the rates are and everything like that.
(00:23:50):
If you go downtown or you go to Grove Street or you go to any of the other meter
(00:23:54):
zones in the city,
(00:23:55):
it just has the zone number on it and it tells you the website to go to.
(00:23:58):
But if you go to that website, it’s not the website to pay.
(00:24:02):
It’s the wrong app.
(00:24:04):
Oh, my God.
(00:24:05):
So the app that they use is Passport.
(00:24:07):
And I think the signs say Park Worcester, Park Wiz.
(00:24:11):
You can use those, but the one that they’re moving to is Passport.
(00:24:15):
Oh, okay.
(00:24:15):
So they haven’t updated all the signage and people are still paying.
(00:24:18):
Yeah.
(00:24:19):
And there’s a lot of areas too where like the signage is just not, it’s really tough to enforce.
(00:24:24):
And if I tag a car on like Park App, here’s a great example.
(00:24:29):
From where Park Avenue intersects with Pleasant Street,
(00:24:33):
Albasha,
(00:24:34):
Blue Jeans,
(00:24:35):
to That’s Entertainment.
(00:24:37):
Yeah.
(00:24:37):
Okay.
(00:24:38):
So that’s entertainment.
(00:24:39):
There’s a sign directly in front of that’s entertainment and jelly CDs that says pay here.
(00:24:43):
Yep.
(00:24:44):
And then in front of the auto zone,
(00:24:46):
there’s nothing,
(00:24:48):
but then in front of Al Basha and two 58 and whatever all those other businesses
(00:24:53):
are over there,
(00:24:54):
they have a pay here sign.
(00:24:56):
So in theory,
(00:24:57):
the zone stretches from the comic book store to those restaurants,
(00:25:03):
but there’s no signs in the middle.
(00:25:05):
And then you go across the street, you have the breakfast place, you have the big 300 building.
(00:25:11):
And yeah,
(00:25:12):
same thing,
(00:25:13):
the signs are just too spread out and it’s tough because if you tag someone in
(00:25:16):
front of one,
(00:25:18):
you gotta tag all of them because you can’t,
(00:25:20):
So then you’re tagging these people and I encourage anyone that gets a ticket,
(00:25:23):
you can look up everything we do is photo based.
(00:25:25):
So if you think the tickets like unfair, you can go and look up the ticket and see what we do.
(00:25:31):
But I can’t, you know, I mean, I could, but morally speaking, right?
(00:25:34):
Like you can go back and see.
(00:25:35):
So I can’t necessarily make something up and say,
(00:25:37):
oh,
(00:25:37):
he’s blocking the fire hydrant and he’s really like 35 feet away.
(00:25:40):
That’s the difference between us and the police is the police don’t have the photos
(00:25:44):
where we have
(00:25:45):
Everything photo based.
(00:25:47):
But when the city doesn’t put up adequate signage for a lot of the things,
(00:25:51):
it’s tough to enforce.
(00:25:52):
And downtown,
(00:25:53):
you know,
(00:25:54):
they right in front of the Worcester Chamber of Commerce building,
(00:25:59):
I think that’s 361.
(00:26:04):
Anyways,
(00:26:04):
over there,
(00:26:07):
there’s five or six different signs where it says pay here,
(00:26:10):
then it says tow zone,
(00:26:11):
then there’s a bus stop,
(00:26:12):
and then there’s a 15-minute parking,
(00:26:14):
and then there’s a pay here thing.
(00:26:15):
And it’s impossible.
(00:26:17):
The city’s known about that for so long,
(00:26:19):
and we haven’t enforced it because of the conflict of signs.
(00:26:22):
But anyone that pulls in, what are you supposed to make of this jumbled mess?
(00:26:27):
And there’s so many areas in the city where it’s just a jumbled mess.
(00:26:30):
If they had someone who went around and like,
(00:26:33):
audited the signs.
(00:26:33):
They might,
(00:26:34):
I’m not sure,
(00:26:35):
but it doesn’t seem like they do because we report the signs and unless like a
(00:26:40):
citizen physically reports it,
(00:26:42):
you know,
(00:26:42):
it’s,
(00:26:43):
it’s really tough for things to get done.
(00:26:44):
We’ll report tons of issues.
(00:26:47):
And unless again, like a citizen goes and reports it.
(00:26:49):
They actually, I know they’re, so this is the second time I’m hearing this.
(00:26:53):
Stephen Roll,
(00:26:53):
when he did a presentation for the Worcester downtown business improvement district
(00:26:59):
at the library here,
(00:27:00):
he,
(00:27:01):
uh,
(00:27:03):
He showed, he had a picture of, it wasn’t, it wasn’t that block.
(00:27:05):
I think it was the other side where the owl shop used to be,
(00:27:08):
but he had a picture of main street signs saying,
(00:27:11):
and it’s apparently they have to update the ordinances.
(00:27:13):
So like those signs aren’t enforceable anyways,
(00:27:16):
because of the ordinances,
(00:27:17):
but they have to,
(00:27:18):
the problem is I thought they updated these ordinances like last year,
(00:27:22):
if I’m not mistaken.
(00:27:23):
Also at that meeting,
(00:27:24):
what he said was that he was going to be replacing the signs before the ordinances
(00:27:29):
were.
(00:27:30):
So I think actually the plan,
(00:27:32):
And it sounds like they didn’t follow through.
(00:27:34):
But it sounds like the plan was originally to implement the new signs before the
(00:27:39):
ordinances were in play.
(00:27:40):
And I’d have to double check my reporting from that meeting.
(00:27:44):
But it sounds like they didn’t even update the signs yet.
(00:27:47):
So the whole problem is still here.
(00:27:49):
Yeah.
(00:27:49):
So the signage thing is interesting, too, because it’s not only the city that puts up signage.
(00:27:53):
So you have the state that puts up their own signs if it’s a state road.
(00:27:57):
And then like the WRTA, right, if it’s a bus route, they put up their own signs.
(00:28:01):
So you have all of these people putting up their own signs who aren’t necessarily
(00:28:04):
communicating with each other.
(00:28:05):
So you’ll have like the pay meter sign here and then you have a bus stop.
(00:28:09):
And according to Massachusetts general law, you have to be 20 feet from a bus stop.
(00:28:15):
But yeah, it says you can actively park here and the arrows will point towards the location.
(00:28:20):
So if the person’s parked there and they don’t pay,
(00:28:22):
you’re supposed to give them the bus stop or you’re supposed to give them the
(00:28:24):
meter.
(00:28:24):
You know what I mean?
(00:28:25):
Right.
(00:28:26):
Ultimately speaking, for a lot of the... If the signage is unclear, we won’t tag it.
(00:28:33):
Usually report it or something like that.
(00:28:35):
That would be the process, the protocol.
(00:28:37):
That makes a lot of sense.
(00:28:38):
But if it’s...
(00:28:40):
There’s other times too where,
(00:28:41):
you know,
(00:28:42):
I’ve tagged things where it’s a little,
(00:28:46):
you know,
(00:28:47):
it could go,
(00:28:48):
it’s a 50-50 because it’s usually a work order,
(00:28:51):
right?
(00:28:53):
That’s where if the citizen appeals it,
(00:28:54):
the person who does the parking appeals,
(00:28:57):
if we’re wrong,
(00:28:58):
they’ll let us know.
(00:29:00):
And that’s the big thing is I think a lot of people are scared to appeal because
(00:29:03):
they think they’re going to lose.
(00:29:05):
But if they like put like a well-written case, you know, explaining the issues right,
(00:29:09):
Lack of signage is a great example.
(00:29:10):
The trees cover a lot of the signs downtown.
(00:29:13):
It just is what it is.
(00:29:15):
I was going to ask about that because I know that it used to be that the person who
(00:29:22):
handled all of those was someone named Elvira Guardiola,
(00:29:25):
who was the mother of Alex Guardiola on the school committee who ran uncontested
(00:29:30):
and previously worked for the Chamber of Commerce.
(00:29:34):
and um i kind of view this as one of the whole worcester uh not nepotism but like
(00:29:40):
anyways she was the only i had an appeal through her in which she decided against
(00:29:45):
me and effectively my main argument was failure to notice uh this wasn’t with
(00:29:50):
parking it was from inspectional services and they sent they’d effectively left a
(00:29:54):
letter at a vacant storefront that is my property
(00:29:57):
But I didn’t find out about it until after they issued me a fine when they mailed
(00:30:02):
it to the correct address,
(00:30:03):
which I had given them.
(00:30:04):
And you think and they didn’t fix this with the right.
(00:30:06):
They still don’t.
(00:30:07):
They still deliver things to that vacant.
(00:30:09):
I mean, now I don’t have an address.
(00:30:10):
So it’s a little more can’t blame them.
(00:30:13):
But but they have never.
(00:30:14):
Anyways, my argument was effectively you didn’t even notify me.
(00:30:17):
And also it says it was served at this time.
(00:30:19):
But I was across the street like I don’t know.
(00:30:22):
And then I have separately did confirm with the city law department that they can’t
(00:30:25):
actually serve me at a storefront.
(00:30:27):
So then I’m like,
(00:30:28):
okay guys,
(00:30:28):
but you did like,
(00:30:30):
because I was trying,
(00:30:31):
they were like,
(00:30:31):
we can’t serve you at the address you’re asking us to because it’s a storefront.
(00:30:35):
I’m like, okay, but guys, you use the storefront on my building.
(00:30:37):
So anyways,
(00:30:39):
my argument was that I didn’t get the notice in time because it was assessed a fine
(00:30:42):
and I did address it anyways.
(00:30:44):
And they, they were like, no, you did what you were accused of.
(00:30:47):
So we don’t care.
(00:30:48):
So I guess that my question is, is that that process now more, um,
(00:30:53):
Is there any oversight through the process?
(00:30:56):
I’ve heard different stories going both directions.
(00:30:58):
I’ve heard people appealing tickets.
(00:31:01):
And again, everything is just hearsay.
(00:31:03):
I can’t speak for other people.
(00:31:05):
But I’ve heard people,
(00:31:06):
they go to appeal tickets and they’re told they’re instantly shut down because X,
(00:31:11):
Y,
(00:31:11):
and Z.
(00:31:12):
Street sweeping is a great example.
(00:31:13):
When they do street sweeping,
(00:31:16):
if there’s a sign in the beginning of the street and there’s a sign at the end of
(00:31:19):
the street,
(00:31:19):
if you’re in the middle,
(00:31:20):
The argument is you saw the sign coming in from either direction.
(00:31:23):
They’re not that well placed all the time.
(00:31:25):
It’s difficult when it’s dark out.
(00:31:27):
Yeah, they fall down.
(00:31:29):
It’ll say a date on it,
(00:31:30):
but it’s hard to keep a date because for whatever reason,
(00:31:33):
you either have to tow more cars than expected,
(00:31:36):
weather.
(00:31:37):
It’s really tough for them to keep up a date, but there needs to be...
(00:31:42):
so if we do like the street we’ll drive up and down honk the horns you know the tow
(00:31:45):
truck driver honk the horns um give them a few minutes to come out and move the
(00:31:49):
cars once one person sees another person it’s usually pretty quick um but we’ll you
(00:31:54):
know i’ve tagged cars where you know they come out three minutes after and you know
(00:31:59):
unfortunately there’s nothing i can i can do yeah you can’t unpack your car it’s
(00:32:03):
all digital system it’s all digital and so um when these people appeal you know
(00:32:09):
we only see the ones that get kicked back.
(00:32:12):
So,
(00:32:12):
you know,
(00:32:13):
someone wrote a ticket,
(00:32:15):
the clerk didn’t think it was a valid ticket,
(00:32:17):
then they took it back.
(00:32:19):
But a lot of the tickets, I just wish more people would physically appeal.
(00:32:23):
I don’t know if they charge you money, I think.
(00:32:26):
I think it’s just a pain in the ass.
(00:32:27):
Yeah, so you can do it online, you can do it in person, or you can do it over the phone.
(00:32:31):
If you can just do it online,
(00:32:33):
you know,
(00:32:33):
I would see that to be the best way to probably do it because then you have
(00:32:36):
everything written.
(00:32:38):
um but yeah other people i’ve been told you know they’ve had no issues dealing with
(00:32:43):
the appeals process they said it’s easy good um but you know they they just alvira
(00:32:48):
retired within the last year or so so they’ve just changed people so i’m not sure
(00:32:54):
who the new clerk is you might be uh queen um mixing up deborah queen i’m gonna
(00:33:00):
guess cat i think her name is kathy
(00:33:03):
Oh, okay.
(00:33:03):
I might not know.
(00:33:04):
Either way, it’s good that it’s different people, and I’m glad that some get kicked back.
(00:33:09):
I did at one point file a public records request to see if there were any that they
(00:33:14):
found in favor,
(00:33:15):
and the number was significant.
(00:33:17):
I’d love to see.
(00:33:17):
They never tell us any of the data,
(00:33:19):
but the amount of tickets that we write,
(00:33:21):
I’d love to know how many come back because there’s a lot of them that...
(00:33:25):
a lot of people say they’re going to appeal and they’re going to do all this stuff.
(00:33:27):
And then you never hear anything about it.
(00:33:29):
And then if someone’s going to come and threaten you over a ticket,
(00:33:31):
I just want to know what their outcome is.
(00:33:33):
Yeah.
(00:33:33):
Like, what’s this person found to be the correct?
(00:33:35):
Like, should, do I owe them?
(00:33:37):
Not really an apology for you.
(00:33:38):
You’re right.
(00:33:39):
You’re doing your job.
(00:33:40):
Yeah.
(00:33:41):
And that,
(00:33:41):
and that’s the thing that’s tough too,
(00:33:42):
is like some of the stuff that we’ll do,
(00:33:46):
it’s part of like the city system.
(00:33:48):
So if someone pays at the meter and the meter expires, I don’t,
(00:33:52):
and I run the plate,
(00:33:53):
I have no way of knowing if they didn’t pay or it expired unless I see a receipt on
(00:33:59):
the dash.
(00:33:59):
But when you use the kiosk, it tells you you don’t have to display it, which is true.
(00:34:04):
You don’t.
(00:34:05):
But displaying it is by far the best option because if you ever keyed in the plate
(00:34:08):
wrong,
(00:34:08):
which is usually what the issue is,
(00:34:11):
or it expires,
(00:34:12):
you know,
(00:34:13):
We’re humans, too.
(00:34:14):
We’ll give you every single one of us will give you a break as long as it’s a
(00:34:18):
reasonable amount,
(00:34:19):
not like an hour.
(00:34:20):
But I think for the most part,
(00:34:21):
most of us will do between 15 to a half hour as long as we can see a receipt.
(00:34:28):
And most people, too, when they make a mistake and they see us on the street, they’ll come.
(00:34:31):
They’ll let us know.
(00:34:32):
um but i’m surprised when i talk to some people you know they’re in boston and
(00:34:36):
stuff like that they tell us that they get tagged you know one minute instantly um
(00:34:41):
over for even if they see the slip yeah i we’re a lot more lax compared to other
(00:34:45):
places and enforcement um again yeah you go to other places you leave a car on the
(00:34:50):
street no plates they’ll tow it here you can get away with it um you know cars
(00:34:56):
aren’t registered on the street you know
(00:34:57):
I think Worcester PD has the license plate readers.
(00:35:00):
I don’t know if they get hits when they’re driving,
(00:35:01):
doing other calls or if they do and they just get busy and don’t circle back,
(00:35:05):
but they must because the amount that we find just from people submitting our
(00:35:10):
requests,
(00:35:10):
not even us driving around looking for them,
(00:35:12):
you know,
(00:35:13):
there’s so many,
(00:35:14):
you know,
(00:35:15):
they must find them.
(00:35:16):
There’s no way they don’t.
(00:35:17):
Yeah.
(00:35:17):
I think,
(00:35:18):
I think there has been a point when inspectional services was like,
(00:35:23):
Hey,
(00:35:23):
you can only have one unregistered car in your driveway.
(00:35:25):
And I had to be like, shit, which one are they talking about?
(00:35:28):
it’s a problem but also like I don’t know it’s one of those you know bills that
(00:35:33):
adds up and is easy to forget about and all these things require a lot of fucking
(00:35:36):
executive function
(00:35:37):
Oh gosh.
(00:35:38):
And like some of these people too,
(00:35:39):
you get a ticket,
(00:35:40):
you forget about the ticket,
(00:35:42):
you know,
(00:35:42):
and then you go check and your registration is just not renewed,
(00:35:45):
non-renewable because you forgot about a $30 ticket.
(00:35:48):
It’s, it sucks.
(00:35:50):
Actually.
(00:35:50):
Yeah.
(00:35:51):
I just got my driver’s license in Washington and I,
(00:35:54):
to do that rather than,
(00:35:55):
uh,
(00:35:56):
because I,
(00:35:57):
uh,
(00:35:57):
it expires last in my birthday last year.
(00:35:59):
But,
(00:36:00):
um,
(00:36:00):
so I,
(00:36:00):
I didn’t have a valid one from,
(00:36:02):
from here and I could either renew it here,
(00:36:04):
which would renewing it here would require
(00:36:07):
resolving tickets that I actually did pay from prior to when I got this license.
(00:36:14):
And I don’t have the receipts from when I fucking paid that.
(00:36:16):
It was like literally four or five years ago at this point.
(00:36:20):
So there are other tickets that I haven’t paid in the past three years,
(00:36:24):
but those aren’t what come up when I search my name on the database.
(00:36:27):
So I’d have to resolve all this with the Massachusetts RMV and instead,
(00:36:30):
I took the driver’s permit and knowledge test again.
(00:36:34):
Because I figured that would be less of a pain in the ass.
(00:36:36):
It was.
(00:36:37):
Yeah.
(00:36:37):
You know, the digital realm is great, but for other things, it’s not so great, right?
(00:36:41):
When you need it to benefit you, you need a receipt, right?
(00:36:44):
Can’t find it.
(00:36:44):
But for them, oh, we have no record of you ever paying, sir.
(00:36:47):
You know, it’s interesting how technology works one way.
(00:36:50):
Yeah.
(00:36:51):
And then when you need it to work your way, it doesn’t always work.
(00:36:54):
That’s why you always need to keep copies of stuff, people.
(00:36:57):
Yeah, yeah.
(00:36:58):
I know someone getting audited on their taxes at the moment because they didn’t
(00:37:01):
save a return from seven years ago.
(00:37:03):
So, you know, you always have to keep that stuff.
(00:37:07):
And now I’m paranoid.
(00:37:08):
I’m going to have to go through my TurboTax and download every single one.
(00:37:11):
Yeah, that’s the other thing.
(00:37:12):
You know, everything’s subscription fucking base.
(00:37:14):
And if you lose like your login or some shit, I don’t know.
(00:37:17):
Yeah.
(00:37:18):
Well,
(00:37:18):
and like the part,
(00:37:19):
the city,
(00:37:20):
if the city did like a subscription based parking thing,
(00:37:22):
I mean,
(00:37:23):
that’s probably not the way to word it.
(00:37:24):
But a lot of these people that park on the streets with the two hour limit,
(00:37:27):
if you work an eight hour day,
(00:37:29):
most of the people are willing to pay.
(00:37:31):
eight hours worth of parking if they could.
(00:37:34):
But a lot of these lots,
(00:37:35):
right,
(00:37:35):
if you want to park in any of the city owned parking garages,
(00:37:39):
I think they start at like 160 a month for the five
(00:37:43):
five-day pass for a whole month right so you can park there 20 whatever 20 days out
(00:37:49):
of 30 um otherwise if you wanted the the 365 pass i think it’s they started like
(00:37:55):
200 bucks um if you live in kelly square the best place to go park is union station
(00:38:01):
or if not union station go park at the mbta lot it’s four dollars a day that’s the
(00:38:05):
cheapest and it’s 24 hours the other lots you have to leave
(00:38:08):
Between 3 a.m.
(00:38:09):
and 5 a.m., there’s an ordinance.
(00:38:11):
I think they’re supposed to street suite them.
(00:38:13):
When I work the overnights, I’ve never physically encountered it.
(00:38:16):
But for some reason, you can’t park in any of them between 3 and 5.
(00:38:21):
I think that’s probably to prevent anyone sleeping in their cards or something.
(00:38:24):
Yeah, the only spots that are in there are zip cars.
(00:38:28):
Interesting.
(00:38:29):
But yeah, those and then the other spot is if you live downtown, park at the library.
(00:38:33):
The library is by far the cheapest place to park.
(00:38:35):
It’s two or I think it’s $67 a month again.
(00:38:40):
But yeah, there’s so much free parking downtown if you’re willing to walk.
(00:38:44):
compared to other cities right you know people would walk seven blocks to save five
(00:38:49):
dollars here you know you walk four blocks and you don’t have to pay anything
(00:38:53):
there’s so many free parking spots i was just in seattle and uh there was a sign
(00:38:57):
for 70 parking for a game oh yeah it’s insane absolutely ridiculous now worcester
(00:39:03):
is relatively good as far as parking goes but it does sound like a lot of the
(00:39:06):
issues are the integrated systems and signage yeah it’s a lot of it is definitely
(00:39:11):
signage and then just getting mixed messages from what they want
(00:39:14):
enforced you know the bike lane thing back to i guess going back to that mill
(00:39:18):
street you know do they want that tag is obstruction of public travel do they want
(00:39:22):
it for a no parking zone because it’s hash mark um you know some of these people
(00:39:26):
are parking in like those hash marks because if they park any closer to the road
(00:39:30):
their car is going to get clipped and for like six or seven weeks in a row a car is
(00:39:33):
getting clipped almost once a week so you know you can get why the people are
(00:39:37):
apprehensive but you know the city hasn’t really addressed like the safety concerns
(00:39:42):
of of those people to my
(00:39:45):
of the belief.
(00:39:46):
No,
(00:39:46):
it’s I’m it’s frustrating because I think mill street,
(00:39:49):
I want to be like,
(00:39:50):
there’s nothing wrong with mill street.
(00:39:51):
That’s great because it’s been so highly politicized and like weaponized against
(00:39:56):
the district five representative.
(00:39:58):
And so I,
(00:39:58):
I kind of hate,
(00:40:00):
but like,
(00:40:00):
I hate,
(00:40:01):
I hate shit talking mill street,
(00:40:02):
but also it is so frankly,
(00:40:04):
I think the end result is great.
(00:40:06):
Uh,
(00:40:06):
the problem is,
(00:40:07):
is one lack of science,
(00:40:08):
like no one was informed about this as they,
(00:40:11):
they informed everyone it was happening.
(00:40:13):
tried to inform like they really should have done a direct mailing or yeah maybe
(00:40:17):
more meetings put it on broadcast on old on television i don’t there’s they could
(00:40:23):
have informed more people but also those bouillards like the that was a that makes
(00:40:28):
such a huge difference
(00:40:30):
And not having it for the first whatever made everything way worse.
(00:40:35):
Yeah.
(00:40:36):
The story I hear from the residents is they weren’t informed that Mill Street was
(00:40:40):
happening until they physically started digging up the road.
(00:40:43):
And then they were told that Mill Street was going to be this.
(00:40:46):
They had a meeting about it, but they were told no.
(00:40:50):
But again, this is all just hearsay from the people that live there.
(00:40:54):
But it really kind of sucks for the people that live there.
(00:40:58):
And then if you’re
(00:40:59):
You know, any of the schools and stuff, it just changes in and out how you can park.
(00:41:03):
The bike lane is inconsistent.
(00:41:05):
There’s no consistency anywhere in the city with it.
(00:41:08):
Part of it is, yeah, people just don’t want to adapt to the change.
(00:41:11):
But part of it,
(00:41:11):
too,
(00:41:11):
is,
(00:41:12):
you know,
(00:41:12):
just I feel like they could do a better outreach with getting people to understand.
(00:41:17):
And it’s not so much DTM.
(00:41:18):
I think that goes beyond DTM because they’re, you know, they’re making posters.
(00:41:22):
They come out to any of these events at the library.
(00:41:24):
They’re here all the time.
(00:41:26):
But it just doesn’t seem like the city will back them up on a lot of decisions.
(00:41:29):
And it kind of seems like the city doesn’t necessarily back their workers all the time.
(00:41:34):
It’s usually whatever helps the city at the current moment,
(00:41:39):
because they seem to flip flop on policy a lot for us.
(00:41:44):
And then everyone else that I seem to talk to from other departments,
(00:41:47):
they don’t necessarily get.
(00:41:49):
The support they need.
(00:41:50):
Obviously, we have the union that will back us up for any of our stuff.
(00:41:53):
But, you know, ultimately, when people are upset, they’re yelling at me.
(00:41:56):
They’re not yelling at, you know, Commissioner Rawley.
(00:41:59):
They’re not yelling at the people that work there.
(00:42:01):
They’re yelling at me for, you know, something I didn’t do.
(00:42:03):
I didn’t paint the road.
(00:42:05):
I didn’t design anything.
(00:42:07):
There just seems to be like a better channel for people to communicate what their problems are.
(00:42:11):
I’m not sure what the answer to that is,
(00:42:13):
but a lot of people have a lot of things to say and I don’t necessarily know how to
(00:42:18):
direct them.
(00:42:19):
And every time I ask,
(00:42:20):
I’m just given a general customer service answer that you can tell anyone,
(00:42:26):
which really isn’t benefiting people.
(00:42:29):
Yeah.
(00:42:31):
I’m not sure if it’s that there’s not a system for them to be heard or if they’re
(00:42:34):
not being listened to.
(00:42:35):
It might be,
(00:42:36):
you know,
(00:42:37):
everyone’s expecting the district representatives to advocate for them and they’re
(00:42:42):
advocating for developers.
(00:42:44):
It might be it’s going through 311 and getting closed out because there’s nothing,
(00:42:48):
they can’t assign it to someone immediately or I don’t know,
(00:42:51):
but you’re right.
(00:42:52):
I mean, they’ve had listening sessions, but they have listening sessions for the DTM, not
(00:42:59):
And that doesn’t really end up mattering if,
(00:43:02):
I don’t know if you’re right,
(00:43:03):
if the administration’s not on board with whatever the people are at looking for.
(00:43:06):
Yeah.
(00:43:07):
And I guess going back to the whole listening part of it,
(00:43:12):
you know,
(00:43:13):
going back to your city councilors,
(00:43:15):
a lot of these issues should be going to the city councilors and district to
(00:43:18):
anything that’s in Kelly square.
(00:43:20):
I have heard more complaints in Kelly square than I’ve heard anywhere else in the entire city.
(00:43:25):
And a lot of it is, you know, the people that live in these areas,
(00:43:28):
when on a Saturday or Sunday, when they have a baseball game, they have nowhere to park.
(00:43:32):
It’s been about four or five seasons now,
(00:43:34):
and there’s no resident parking signs there for these people.
(00:43:37):
And all of these people are willing to do it.
(00:43:39):
I’ve explained how to do the process of how to apply for the permit and everything like that.
(00:43:43):
But when they did their walk of,
(00:43:45):
you know,
(00:43:45):
Kelly square talking to the people,
(00:43:47):
talking to the businesses,
(00:43:48):
you know,
(00:43:49):
I just don’t understand why they’re not pushing for that stuff too.
(00:43:51):
You figured that they’d want their citizens to be, you know,
(00:43:55):
happy that they have a place to go, a place to park.
(00:43:57):
You know,
(00:43:57):
it seems like they’re physically working,
(00:43:59):
but the best that they can do is just,
(00:44:01):
there’s like a saw horse there,
(00:44:02):
but we can’t enforce that.
(00:44:03):
That’s not an enforceable sign.
(00:44:05):
It’s like residents only.
(00:44:06):
So as I understand it,
(00:44:07):
the plan to pay for Parlewood Park is the parking,
(00:44:11):
and that was going to be parking garages.
(00:44:13):
Yeah.
(00:44:13):
Between that, there was supposed to be a hotel built there.
(00:44:17):
I think there was supposed to be another apartment complex there,
(00:44:20):
and I think there was also supposed to be another
(00:44:23):
parking the parking garage itself was supposed to be bigger um but our tickets are
(00:44:28):
definitely a big contributing factor um and but after like baseball season ends you
(00:44:35):
go there november december it’s it’s dead so um you know going down there to write
(00:44:42):
tickets every day you’re sucking blood out of a stone and the some of the higher
(00:44:46):
ups they’ll drive down and they wonder why there’s not
(00:44:49):
tickets on cars they don’t have like the the lpr stuff so they don’t necessarily
(00:44:53):
run the plates or anything but they’re just wondering you know why there aren’t
(00:44:56):
tickets there and part of it is people just aren’t coming here you know people are
(00:44:59):
working remote people aren’t going to the courthouse compared to five years ago
(00:45:04):
downtown worcester is it’s it’s a ghost town spoodles just announced it’s not
(00:45:08):
reopening yep you know and they were supposed to be moving down to the dcu center
(00:45:13):
you know
(00:45:14):
Again, a lot of these places, you’re not getting the foot traffic.
(00:45:17):
There’s not really places for these people to park either, you know?
(00:45:22):
And then, yeah, there’s just nothing to bring you to Worcester at the moment, you know?
(00:45:26):
Yeah.
(00:45:27):
Yeah.
(00:45:28):
I’m,
(00:45:28):
um,
(00:45:28):
I’m in the process of leaving Worcester and it’s,
(00:45:33):
it’s for a lot of different reasons,
(00:45:34):
but it kind of,
(00:45:35):
it comes down to that is there’s Worcester has been prioritizing,
(00:45:39):
trying to be appealing to people who aren’t from here rather than making it good to
(00:45:44):
live here.
(00:45:44):
for i don’t know at least it’s a decade or so that i’ve been you know trying to to
(00:45:49):
pay that have been paying any level of attention and it’s i don’t know you know
(00:45:55):
polar worcester never had a crime problem it had a narrative problem it had a
(00:46:00):
public image problem of people thinking worcester was unsafe and dirty and so they
(00:46:04):
tried to fix that problem by giving it the narrative of worcester has a new
(00:46:08):
ballpark and that
(00:46:10):
worked with the narrative problem but it didn’t they didn’t actually ever address
(00:46:13):
any of our infrastructure issues they didn’t address the affordable housing the the
(00:46:16):
unaffordable housing sorry they didn’t address i mean the the trash we’re now
(00:46:20):
finally getting trash bins but like it’s way too little way too late and also like
(00:46:26):
it’s kind of being half-assed so they can claim it didn’t work yeah
(00:46:30):
Worcester’s not,
(00:46:31):
you know,
(00:46:31):
when I work the overnight shifts or anything like that,
(00:46:34):
it’s a pretty safe place.
(00:46:35):
There’s not really much that goes on here.
(00:46:38):
And when you read the newspaper of the people that get arrested here,
(00:46:41):
they’re not Worcester residents.
(00:46:43):
They’re from the towns coming to Worcester.
(00:46:45):
But why are they coming to Worcester?
(00:46:46):
Worcester has the services.
(00:46:47):
Worcester has everything that, you know, you need.
(00:46:50):
These towns don’t have the housing.
(00:46:51):
They don’t have the programs.
(00:46:53):
And, you know, the towns need to step up and take their people back.
(00:46:56):
You know, we shouldn’t be paying for everyone’s problems.
(00:46:59):
I feel bad, obviously, for the other people, but they’re not from Worcester.
(00:47:02):
They’re coming here because we have everything to offer.
(00:47:05):
Why isn’t Holden building housing for Holden’s people?
(00:47:08):
You know, why are drug addicts in Fishburg coming here and why aren’t they in Fishburg?
(00:47:12):
You know, like.
(00:47:14):
We’re taking care of all these other people,
(00:47:15):
which is awesome,
(00:47:16):
but we also need to take care of the people that live here too.
(00:47:19):
You talk to some of these people, what they’re paying in rent, $1,900, $2,000 a month.
(00:47:24):
You don’t get parking with your rent or anything like that.
(00:47:27):
And the wages here are not the same in Boston.
(00:47:30):
So you’re paying all of this money for this lifestyle creep that
(00:47:34):
there’s not really a lifestyle here to keep up you know you got to leave Worcester
(00:47:37):
to really kind of do anything yeah there’s it’s either Providence or Boston if you
(00:47:41):
want to go to anything worth going to it’s which is unfortunate and sad like I used
(00:47:46):
to be proud of Worcester and that is that is no longer the case yeah you know and
(00:47:51):
like again I guess going back to the campers you know all of these people they need
(00:47:55):
a place to go they need help but
(00:47:59):
You know,
(00:48:00):
there needs to be a different system to helping these people rather than giving
(00:48:04):
them parking tickets.
(00:48:05):
And then when it’s time to tow their car,
(00:48:06):
knocking on them with quality of life in Worcester PD and saying,
(00:48:09):
oh,
(00:48:09):
buddy,
(00:48:09):
you got to go.
(00:48:10):
You know, like, let’s address the problem of why they’re in the camper in the first place.
(00:48:14):
Why are they parked on Fremont Street?
(00:48:15):
Why are they parked on Gardner Street?
(00:48:17):
Whatever street they’re on, you know, they don’t want to be there.
(00:48:20):
And, you know, obviously the people whose house you’re parking in front of don’t want you there.
(00:48:24):
But, like, there needs to be some sort of solution for these people.
(00:48:27):
Somewhere they can go.
(00:48:28):
you know,
(00:48:29):
a lot of these camps and stuff like that,
(00:48:30):
especially at night,
(00:48:31):
you’ll see them coming in and out of the woods and then you’ll drive by during the
(00:48:35):
day and you’ll see people dismantling the camps.
(00:48:38):
You know, you either want the people here or you don’t.
(00:48:41):
And it’s like they only want them here to get the money for having the services
(00:48:45):
rather than providing the services itself.
(00:48:47):
Yeah,
(00:48:48):
that makes,
(00:48:48):
so I think,
(00:48:49):
you know,
(00:48:49):
on the list of things Worcester has done wrong,
(00:48:51):
we’ve prioritized smock.
(00:48:53):
And like, I think
(00:48:54):
you know,
(00:48:54):
not just all of the horror stories I’ve heard from people who’ve been in various
(00:48:57):
smock programs,
(00:48:58):
but just,
(00:48:59):
we,
(00:48:59):
we have been giving smock a lot of fucking money for a long time and we still have
(00:49:05):
so many of the,
(00:49:06):
so I,
(00:49:07):
I don’t want to complain about people coming here from other towns because it
(00:49:11):
should be that we have,
(00:49:13):
like,
(00:49:13):
we are the second largest city in New England.
(00:49:15):
We should have sufficient resources for Worcester and the surrounding towns.
(00:49:20):
Like,
(00:49:22):
You know,
(00:49:22):
while it would be great if Shrewsbury and Holden and Milbury took care of their
(00:49:27):
unhouse community and provided services,
(00:49:30):
Worcester should be offering...
(00:49:33):
There will never be enough beds.
(00:49:35):
There will never... You know, but that being said, there could be enough food.
(00:49:38):
Like,
(00:49:39):
Worcester could have a food redistribution process that ensured every...
(00:49:44):
Like,
(00:49:44):
you know,
(00:49:46):
Worcester fridges shouldn’t need to exist and also should not...
(00:49:50):
The city should be begging them to let them support them.
(00:49:55):
They probably don’t accept help from the city, and I love that for them and about them.
(00:50:00):
But there should be free fridges and free pantries,
(00:50:05):
and they should have a fucking garbage that is maintained by the city,
(00:50:09):
and they should be all over the fucking place.
(00:50:12):
You’re right.
(00:50:14):
Our city should not be criminalizing and fining people out of it.
(00:50:20):
I think the thing,
(00:50:20):
the thing about Worcester is that,
(00:50:22):
and I’m,
(00:50:23):
I’m unfortunately still demonstrating this to this fucking day.
(00:50:26):
They inconvenience people out of it.
(00:50:30):
I,
(00:50:30):
you know,
(00:50:30):
and the thing that’s weird to me too is like,
(00:50:32):
if you go anywhere else and they do like a street sweeping program,
(00:50:35):
typically Mondays or certain days you can park on one side of the street.
(00:50:38):
And then other days you can park on a different side of the street.
(00:50:41):
There’s like,
(00:50:43):
I don’t know why the city doesn’t do something like that where they could have
(00:50:46):
because you see the street sweepers at night,
(00:50:48):
they’ll go down Main Street and they’re just jagging in and out.
(00:50:51):
So they’re not really effectively cleaning.
(00:50:53):
But if they did,
(00:50:54):
you know,
(00:50:54):
alternating sides type of things,
(00:50:56):
there’s enough streets in the city that that would work for.
(00:50:59):
Obviously, some streets are a lot tighter than others.
(00:51:01):
Like the main arteries, right?
(00:51:02):
You know, if they alternated like that, you know, I think the city would be a cleaner place.
(00:51:05):
The trash cans are nice.
(00:51:08):
But some of them you go to, they’re facing different directions.
(00:51:11):
Some they’re facing towards the street where like the bin you can dump in.
(00:51:14):
And some of them, they’re on the sidewalk where you can dump in.
(00:51:17):
So I’m not sure what the rule is or how they’re implementing them, but it is nice to see.
(00:51:22):
I wish there were more of them.
(00:51:23):
I do see the people cleaning them out.
(00:51:25):
I do see like the Western ambassadors too.
(00:51:30):
They work for the city, but they’re not city employees.
(00:51:33):
the the downtown bid yeah the downtown people they’re nice they’re really nice um
(00:51:37):
i’ve got mixed feelings about about business improvement districts because like
(00:51:41):
they’re doing a great job and they have done any they they are the reason that
(00:51:46):
downtown worcester is even slightly appealing right now um which is saying a lot
(00:51:50):
they did a really good job that being said
(00:51:53):
uh effectively the city does redistribute funds to them to to do this job in this
(00:51:58):
down so in other words it is a model that ensures that’s that it is neighborhood
(00:52:03):
solutions instead of city-wide solutions so like instead of everywhere having clean
(00:52:07):
sidewalks downtown worcester has clean sidewalks yeah and you know i guess the
(00:52:12):
other argument is why isn’t that a job given to city workers you know why aren’t
(00:52:16):
city workers doing this why are they outsourcing right we could have crews
(00:52:19):
contracting hire people to be emptying garbage pans and
(00:52:23):
garbage pails and it would be keeping it entirely in the city and helping every
(00:52:28):
like yes why why are we contracting with firms from millbury and and hudson and
(00:52:33):
outside of worcester when there are so many good local businesses yeah absolutely
(00:52:38):
i’d love to see worcester you know do more with with hiring dpw workers and hiring
(00:52:43):
you know other types of workers they hire a lot of administration positions um
(00:52:49):
A lot of chiefs, not enough Indians to do the work.
(00:52:52):
It’s tough because you have all of these people collecting,
(00:52:55):
you know,
(00:52:56):
salaries that are two,
(00:52:57):
three times higher than what you’re making.
(00:52:59):
And they just don’t understand,
(00:53:01):
like,
(00:53:01):
what it’s like to live in the areas that they’re making decisions that are
(00:53:04):
affecting the people.
(00:53:06):
You know,
(00:53:06):
because living off of Salisbury Street is a lot different than living in Grafton
(00:53:10):
Hill,
(00:53:10):
Vernon Hill,
(00:53:11):
you know,
(00:53:12):
Lincoln Street.
(00:53:13):
That makes a huge difference.
(00:53:15):
And the type of responses that people get,
(00:53:18):
depending on where they live in the city,
(00:53:20):
they expect different types of service.
(00:53:21):
Someone will call you off of Flag Street and they’ll call you every name in the book.
(00:53:26):
The people in the nicer neighborhoods treat you way worse than the people in the
(00:53:31):
more tightly packed neighborhoods.
(00:53:32):
And that’s across the entire city.
(00:53:35):
I can see that.
(00:53:36):
Oh, gosh.
(00:53:37):
And they think that they’re entitled to an immediate solution.
(00:53:40):
A lot of them don’t understand that you can’t necessarily do something just because
(00:53:45):
they said so.
(00:53:46):
There’s a lot more to... You’re working within systems.
(00:53:50):
Yeah.
(00:53:50):
And unfortunately,
(00:53:52):
a lot of these people,
(00:53:53):
too,
(00:53:53):
they’ll say things to you and nothing happens to them.
(00:53:55):
You report it, it gets passed along, ultimately, right?
(00:53:58):
Water off the duck’s back.
(00:53:59):
But nothing happens to these people that yell at you, say things to you.
(00:54:03):
And a lot of these city workers...
(00:54:05):
you know, we just got name badges.
(00:54:07):
Now everyone has to wear name badges with their name,
(00:54:10):
the picture of themselves to be identified.
(00:54:13):
Now,
(00:54:14):
I think it’s,
(00:54:16):
there’s definitely pros and cons to it,
(00:54:17):
but part of it is right with your name on there,
(00:54:19):
you could easily be doxxed.
(00:54:21):
People can find where you live, find your family, whatever dating status, any of that.
(00:54:27):
But on the other hand too, I mean, it’s nice that there’s accountability.
(00:54:30):
If your name’s on your chest, you know, you’re probably not going to say anything, you know,
(00:54:33):
outlandish because now they’re really going to identify you versus someone just
(00:54:37):
filming you and then you know posting on the internet and people are guessing who
(00:54:41):
it is this way you know you know exactly who it is what department they work for
(00:54:44):
everything like that um there’s definitely the pros and cons to it um i think
(00:54:50):
overall it’s a good thing that being said you know you they are setting you you
(00:54:54):
know you’re you’re right you’re dealing with abusive people who are now going to be
(00:54:57):
able to look up your home address and it’s
(00:55:01):
Terrifying.
(00:55:02):
They just changed the policy.
(00:55:03):
So anyone that’s in an office has to wear one where they’re physically sitting down can be seen.
(00:55:09):
Anyone that’s out on the streets.
(00:55:12):
So this goes for the police,
(00:55:14):
the DPW workers,
(00:55:16):
anyone that works at the sewer department,
(00:55:17):
my department.
(00:55:18):
If you’re physically out there, you don’t have to wear it.
(00:55:22):
My argument was, I don’t know how much I had to do it.
(00:55:25):
I wrote an email immediately, CC’d the city manager, CC’d my department head.
(00:55:29):
Someone could grab it, choke you.
(00:55:31):
the doxing thing.
(00:55:34):
And just, I mean, comfortability, right?
(00:55:35):
You’re walking around, whatever.
(00:55:37):
If you have a drive route,
(00:55:37):
not so much,
(00:55:38):
but like,
(00:55:38):
yeah,
(00:55:38):
if you’re walking around downtown,
(00:55:39):
you have this thing rubbing against you all day.
(00:55:42):
That’s not comfortable.
(00:55:43):
And plus you have,
(00:55:43):
when you write the ticket,
(00:55:44):
your name is on the ticket,
(00:55:45):
your badge number is on the ticket.
(00:55:47):
And plus you’re wearing like a badge itself.
(00:55:49):
So, I mean, you have identifiable features.
(00:55:52):
Yeah.
(00:55:53):
I’ve always kind of had mixed feelings about like cops being the only ones who have
(00:55:56):
to identify themselves.
(00:55:57):
But also I do feel like having everyone having name badges is going to,
(00:56:01):
go more poorly the the problem is that you guys are doing are being asked are
(00:56:07):
effectively systematically harmful and like like systematically pissing people off
(00:56:13):
and by literally just doing your job so like they’re setting you up for problems
(00:56:17):
with this and like frankly i feel the same way to do about this as a firearms
(00:56:21):
registry
(00:56:21):
there should not be a legitimate reason to not to be against a firearms registry.
(00:56:25):
Like it would make a lot of sense.
(00:56:27):
I mean,
(00:56:27):
aside from the fact that it’s useless with the concept of 3D printing,
(00:56:30):
but like it would make,
(00:56:32):
I don’t think,
(00:56:33):
you know,
(00:56:33):
that the reason to not have a firearms registry is because you can’t really trust
(00:56:36):
the government,
(00:56:37):
which gets more and more valid by the headline.
(00:56:39):
So I guess I’m trying to say is,
(00:56:41):
you know,
(00:56:41):
this is a reasonable,
(00:56:43):
good,
(00:56:44):
positive,
(00:56:45):
valuable measure of accountability.
(00:56:47):
that will absolutely be abused and turn out poorly for everyone involved.
(00:56:52):
Well, yeah.
(00:56:53):
And you know,
(00:56:53):
there’s a lot of areas too,
(00:56:54):
where like their signs and they shouldn’t be their resident permit signs.
(00:57:00):
Holy cross is a great example in Holy cross.
(00:57:01):
There’s a lot of resident permit signs and a lot of these streets,
(00:57:05):
there’s one or two families that actually live on the street.
(00:57:07):
The rest of them are college students and there’s other streets.
(00:57:11):
I can’t think of it.
(00:57:11):
The one, not Carol, but the one immediately off of, off of the, between Boyden and, and,
(00:57:17):
um college street anyways yeah it’s a resident permit street there’s not a single
(00:57:22):
house on the street where people live in it it’s all college students and yet it’s
(00:57:26):
signed resident permit the city has it in the ordinance book resident permit um
(00:57:31):
city view drive another one which is off of holy cross again you know the person
(00:57:35):
who lives at the end of the street just sold their house now it’s only owned by
(00:57:38):
holy cross there’s just so many areas like where it’s like why are the signs even
(00:57:43):
there to you know enforce
(00:57:46):
So like those areas we try to stay away from.
(00:57:48):
We won’t enforce it.
(00:57:49):
Only like wrong direction and stuff.
(00:57:53):
But yeah,
(00:57:53):
there’s a lot of areas where Ormond Street right off of Highland Street,
(00:57:56):
you know,
(00:57:57):
people are going to the Boynton.
(00:58:00):
There’s a resident permit sign like for one house,
(00:58:04):
but they have a driveway and there’s five or six cars in the driveway.
(00:58:07):
There’s a lot of areas where,
(00:58:08):
like,
(00:58:08):
why do you need a permit to park in front of your own house?
(00:58:10):
And I can get why there is,
(00:58:12):
because,
(00:58:12):
you know,
(00:58:12):
you want to come to your house,
(00:58:13):
you want to find spots,
(00:58:15):
you want to be able to park.
(00:58:16):
But there’s a lot of other streets where it doesn’t work.
(00:58:19):
You know,
(00:58:19):
the city could encourage people to park alongside side streets of Highland so that
(00:58:23):
people would go to the small businesses right there.
(00:58:26):
Yeah.
(00:58:28):
And just the way,
(00:58:28):
yeah,
(00:58:29):
Highland Street’s another one too,
(00:58:30):
where like the meter,
(00:58:31):
the Hellfin’s Deli,
(00:58:32):
the cigar place,
(00:58:33):
there’s a sign.
(00:58:34):
And then you go up towards like Tech Pizza.
(00:58:37):
There’s only one.
(00:58:39):
And you’re supposed to enforce from Tech’s Pizza from West Street to Ormond Street.
(00:58:42):
You know, that’s about 120 foot gap here.
(00:58:43):
And there’s only...
(00:58:46):
think there’s only two signs there um you know just again you know if they want the
(00:58:50):
business and they want to collect the people physically paying which i think is
(00:58:54):
what most people want they don’t want the ticket um and i don’t think the city
(00:58:58):
necessarily will come out and say they want the ticket i think they want compliance
(00:59:01):
and they want people to pay but if you want the compliance you need to do a better
(00:59:05):
job with the signs and if they invested just a little bit more into the signs
(00:59:09):
and there’s so many areas that they can improve just one or two more signs would
(00:59:12):
make a huge difference you don’t need to add six but if you just put one in the
(00:59:16):
middle of each of these places you know you’d get a lot more compliance and that
(00:59:20):
compliance would pay for the cost of the sign you know and more people are being
(00:59:23):
sensible on their end yeah and more compliance you know we wouldn’t necessarily
(00:59:27):
write as many tickets you know people would be you know a lot happier you know i
(00:59:31):
could write
(00:59:32):
200 tickets in a day but that you know I don’t know if the city would necessarily
(00:59:36):
want that either you know they want the ticket revenue but they don’t want you to
(00:59:39):
slam the people either because then you’re giving them a poor rap so it’s kind of
(00:59:43):
like that you know you gotta you gotta weigh it because you you could easily walk
(00:59:48):
from like Highland Street to 600 Main Street which is one of the downtown walking
(00:59:55):
routes and then you go two streets hit the direction yeah you could easily get 100
(00:59:59):
tickets
(01:00:00):
That makes sense.
(01:00:01):
That’s a long – yeah, that’s Main Street.
(01:00:03):
Yeah,
(01:00:03):
but at the end of the day too,
(01:00:05):
the city wouldn’t necessarily want that either because then people are going to
(01:00:09):
come in and they’re going to complain,
(01:00:10):
you guys are enforcing too heavy.
(01:00:11):
I think that’s partly why they’re not hiring more people,
(01:00:14):
but there’s supposed to be a second shift,
(01:00:17):
12,
(01:00:18):
30 to 9.
(01:00:19):
So instead of fixing the systems, they’re just not hiring more people.
(01:00:24):
Yeah, we hired –
(01:00:26):
Oh, I don’t know if I should say that part.
(01:00:27):
That part will get me.
(01:00:28):
They’ll know exactly who I am if I say that.
(01:00:30):
We’ll skip it then.
(01:00:31):
We’ll skip it.
(01:00:33):
They hired two people.
(01:00:35):
They threatened to quit.
(01:00:37):
And then they moved them to the first shift.
(01:00:38):
They were supposed to work the second shift, 1230 to 9.
(01:00:41):
And originally it was going to be Tuesday to Saturday.
(01:00:43):
Then they moved it Monday to Friday.
(01:00:45):
Wait, are we skipping this?
(01:00:46):
I think I can pass.
(01:00:47):
Yeah, we can skip this.
(01:00:48):
This is the part I’m just gossiping now.
(01:00:50):
Okay, I can trim it out later.
(01:00:52):
Okay.
(01:00:53):
yeah i’ll trim that out later uh one oh oh perfect we’re at the one hour mark at
(01:00:57):
the i guess off the record yeah they so they hired these two people they threatened
(01:01:00):
to quit um and within within like a month and they just moved they just moved them
(01:01:06):
to the first shift and i i was there for three years and i never once got a chance
(01:01:11):
they were there for two months and then they immediately moved up because because
(01:01:15):
you threatened to quit yeah i mean because they threatened to quit yeah and i and i
(01:01:18):
feel like if
(01:01:19):
I had done that or any of the other people that have worked on longer threatened to quit.
(01:01:23):
I don’t think they would have.
(01:01:24):
I think part of it is they need the money.
(01:01:26):
They’re really, really desperate.
(01:01:27):
They’ve been pushing us to write more,
(01:01:30):
but obviously you can’t push us to write more because you can’t tell us to
(01:01:34):
outwardly write more tickets.
(01:01:36):
If I write seven, you have to pay me.
(01:01:38):
If I write 307, you still got to pay me.
(01:01:40):
I’m getting paid exactly the same.
(01:01:42):
right so yeah it’s not exactly commission based so no yeah the only like i guess
(01:01:47):
commission um wait i’m gonna start again after this like for the statement uh for
(01:01:53):
the commission i guess i guess it’s not really commission we get like boot pay so
(01:01:57):
like if a car so monday through thursday the city’s booting is 8 a.m to 5 p.m a car
(01:02:06):
can be
(01:02:07):
you can call the parking office and pay your tickets for the boot.
(01:02:10):
The car, like the cutoff time to be booted is three o’clock.
(01:02:16):
So there’s a 70.
(01:02:16):
So tell me what is booting?
(01:02:18):
Cause I don’t actually know, I didn’t know Worcester was doing this.
(01:02:20):
I’ve heard of this.
(01:02:21):
So depending on, so I guess it changes depending on what type of registration you have.
(01:02:26):
So if you have a Massachusetts registration in order to be bootable,
(01:02:31):
you have to have five unpaid parking tickets but the fifth unpaid parking ticket 28
(01:02:37):
days has to have elapsed so it’s 28 days after the fifth ticket um for out-of-state
(01:02:44):
plates it’s only three um okay so a lot of these cars too um yeah if you’re getting
(01:02:53):
the work orders right you’ll get six ten fifteen tickets in a span of god who knows
(01:02:59):
from a week
(01:03:00):
to two months you know depending on how long some of these cars are sitting there’s
(01:03:04):
cars that you know and i’m sure a lot of people can attest to you know they’re in
(01:03:07):
their neighborhoods just tickets get piled on and you know unfortunately again back
(01:03:12):
to the active registered thing not much you can do um for whatever reason the cars
(01:03:17):
that they broke down they don’t live there they’re storing it they’re in jail
(01:03:19):
whatever there’s a plethora of reasons i’ve heard them all um
(01:03:22):
So yeah,
(01:03:23):
eventually those cars,
(01:03:24):
you know,
(01:03:24):
they’re scofflawed and then they’re eligible to be booted.
(01:03:27):
Um, and so that’s like securing like a wheel so we can’t leave.
(01:03:31):
Yeah, that’s securing a wheel.
(01:03:32):
They have 24 hours to pay it.
(01:03:34):
Um, so that’s Monday through Thursday, Friday, we don’t boot.
(01:03:40):
So if we boot on a Thursday and it goes into Friday,
(01:03:45):
we get the boot pay because we have like an active boot out but you don’t get the
(01:03:50):
pay unless like you have a boot out so most people don’t get paid typically on
(01:03:55):
fridays unless you have like a boot out and it’s it’s it’s pretty tough there’s
(01:04:00):
definitely a lot of boots out there but there’s so many cars and you know by the
(01:04:03):
time you go to boot the car you got to run it in through the rmv system and
(01:04:07):
everything like that and then you have to find out if the car is registered which
(01:04:10):
is like another whole step of it because then you got to go to a different system
(01:04:12):
they’re not connected
(01:04:14):
and sometimes it can take 10 minutes and at that point the car’s gone sometimes
(01:04:17):
sometimes it’s not um some days you know today i got two um other days i’ll go two
(01:04:24):
weeks without getting one you know so it’s very it’s sporadic and it really is
(01:04:28):
depending on where you are some you just know you’re going to get certain areas
(01:04:32):
downtown like you might get one kelly swear you might get one vernon hill you might
(01:04:36):
get one that makes sense areas where there’s like heavy work orders you might get
(01:04:39):
one
(01:04:40):
But yeah, you go to like Fremont Street, right?
(01:04:42):
There’s cars that should be bootable.
(01:04:44):
And what they’ll do is,
(01:04:45):
you know,
(01:04:46):
once the car gets a bunch of tickets,
(01:04:47):
they’ll move it into their lot.
(01:04:48):
Then they’ll move new cars out.
(01:04:49):
Those will get tickets.
(01:04:50):
And then they move the other set of cars.
(01:04:52):
And they just keep moving them in and out.
(01:04:53):
And you’re playing this game here.
(01:04:55):
It’s kind of funny.
(01:04:57):
Well, that’s the thing is the shops know they can get away with it, right?
(01:04:59):
Go to Fremont Street, drive down Fremont Street.
(01:05:02):
And there’s anywhere between 10 and 50 cars there at any time with no place.
(01:05:06):
always noticed that at the corner of um park and uh may park and may yeah that’s
(01:05:11):
another one that we go to and you know you you talk to the business owners you go
(01:05:15):
to tag the cars and you know you try to be reasonable with them but there’s only so
(01:05:19):
much you can do if they’re just going to keep doing it then like i’m just going to
(01:05:22):
tag them because i i i personally have spoken to them i know other people have um
(01:05:27):
but they just and they just keep doing it because they know they can get away with
(01:05:29):
it yeah no i was a small business owner in worcester and i didn’t
(01:05:33):
I mean, my parking issues were on the other side.
(01:05:34):
I couldn’t get you guys to ticket people who were like taking out the parking
(01:05:37):
spots,
(01:05:38):
but the,
(01:05:39):
um,
(01:05:39):
I would totally do what they did,
(01:05:41):
what they’re doing.
(01:05:41):
So I can’t, I can’t blame you or them off of Hamilton.
(01:05:45):
They have, um, is it Hamilton?
(01:05:48):
Uh, I’m trying to remember what the numbers I’m trying to think of a specific number.
(01:05:53):
I know where your old business was.
(01:05:54):
I’m trying to think of what this one it’s nine.
(01:05:56):
I think it’s 90.
(01:05:58):
They just opened up a Dominican restaurant there.
(01:06:00):
And anyways, there’s no parking sign there.
(01:06:02):
And I’m not sure if it’s a resident who lives there or it’s the business next door.
(01:06:08):
But they keep calling specifically every day.
(01:06:10):
And you’ll talk to the people.
(01:06:12):
And I’ve explained to them multiple times, you can’t park here.
(01:06:15):
And they’re like, loading, loading.
(01:06:16):
And I get it.
(01:06:18):
But ultimately, and they just keep doing it.
(01:06:20):
And that’s the thing that’s frustrating is no matter how many times you talk to
(01:06:23):
them,
(01:06:23):
nine times out of 10,
(01:06:24):
you probably can get away with it.
(01:06:26):
It’s the one time where someone calls and I happen to be there and then you can’t.
(01:06:29):
But absolutely, you know, if you can get it, you know.
(01:06:33):
So that specific situation is it is both it is a small business owner and they live there.
(01:06:40):
But they’ve also been like harassing, not harassing.
(01:06:43):
This is actually legitimate because of how horrible and dangerous it is leaving that street.
(01:06:49):
Yeah.
(01:06:49):
So I understand why they put the sign there, the 20 feet in the intersection.
(01:06:52):
That’s fine.
(01:06:52):
Yeah.
(01:06:52):
Because before we were tagging the 20 feet,
(01:06:54):
they were complaining,
(01:06:55):
look,
(01:06:55):
you know,
(01:06:56):
it’s how do you determine that?
(01:06:57):
So they put up the sign appeased everyone.
(01:07:00):
Um,
(01:07:00):
but you know,
(01:07:01):
then they put it on the side street and the side street sign,
(01:07:04):
they’ll park underneath that if they’re not parking on the Hamilton street side.
(01:07:07):
Yeah.
(01:07:08):
And so,
(01:07:09):
and ultimately,
(01:07:10):
you know,
(01:07:11):
it was getting to a point where they were calling two or three times a day,
(01:07:14):
like on the same people.
(01:07:16):
And like, you go to explain the situation to them, you know,
(01:07:19):
I get, you know, they’re working, they’re trying to, you know, make a living.
(01:07:21):
But you also have to go across the city to do your job.
(01:07:24):
You know, and like if you’re getting, you know, depending on the situation, right?
(01:07:29):
Sometimes if people call it sick or whatever else, right?
(01:07:32):
You know,
(01:07:34):
if you’re covering the whole east side of the city,
(01:07:35):
you’re going from Lincoln Street to,
(01:07:38):
you know,
(01:07:38):
there,
(01:07:38):
you know,
(01:07:38):
it’s just so many,
(01:07:40):
so much time and resources just trying to,
(01:07:41):
you know,
(01:07:42):
please these people,
(01:07:43):
you know,
(01:07:44):
it’s tough,
(01:07:45):
but then the businesses don’t seem to,
(01:07:47):
you know,
(01:07:47):
want to cooperate either,
(01:07:48):
but you know,
(01:07:49):
part of that is if there was more enforcement,
(01:07:51):
they probably wouldn’t do it.
(01:07:52):
If we had the people to do it,
(01:07:54):
you know,
(01:07:55):
but part of it is to,
(01:07:56):
yeah,
(01:07:57):
they,
(01:07:57):
they just know that they’re kind of getting away with it.
(01:07:59):
Where’s that happens is it’s a $30 ticket.
(01:08:01):
You know,
(01:08:01):
that’s,
(01:08:01):
that’s not end all be all for,
(01:08:03):
for everyone,
(01:08:04):
you know,
(01:08:04):
and you know,
(01:08:05):
$30 is a lot easier than moving your car and then walking for whatever you have to
(01:08:09):
do and do your task.
(01:08:10):
I get it from both sides.
(01:08:13):
Um,
(01:08:14):
But yeah,
(01:08:14):
a lot of these people,
(01:08:16):
they know they can walk all over you because what’s going to happen,
(01:08:19):
right?
(01:08:19):
If they see you, they’re just going to, oh, hold on, I’m moving, I’m moving, I’m moving.
(01:08:22):
And most of us are going to be, okay.
(01:08:23):
And then they just leave.
(01:08:26):
It’s not worth the fight.
(01:08:27):
It’s not worth the aggression.
(01:08:28):
Right.
(01:08:30):
So apparently,
(01:08:32):
I don’t know exactly,
(01:08:32):
I don’t understand why,
(01:08:34):
but I know that you used to be able to,
(01:08:36):
you guys didn’t ticket commercial people in Worcester.
(01:08:40):
so the the way that we enforce commercial is commercial vehicles have 30 minutes
(01:08:45):
consideration for most situations right so if it’s like a meter zone 30 minutes
(01:08:52):
consideration but like if they’re actively loading unloading physically working on
(01:08:57):
a building like you can see them we’re going to be a lot more lenient than someone
(01:09:01):
who’s parking their car going to a restaurant you know if i don’t see any sort of
(01:09:05):
activity or anything like that
(01:09:07):
then yeah.
(01:09:08):
But then it also gets to the point where a lot of these people abuse it too.
(01:09:10):
They’re parking there eight hours a day doing a contracting job and they’re there
(01:09:14):
for two,
(01:09:14):
three weeks,
(01:09:15):
you know,
(01:09:16):
on stuff like that.
(01:09:17):
If I run into them and I’m able to,
(01:09:19):
you know,
(01:09:19):
I,
(01:09:19):
you try to explain them,
(01:09:20):
have the general contractor call the city for consideration and do something like
(01:09:23):
that.
(01:09:24):
But a lot of people,
(01:09:25):
they try to cut the corners and then that’s where the problems run is because,
(01:09:29):
you know,
(01:09:29):
if you’re not contacting the city,
(01:09:31):
I have no way of knowing that you’re doing whatever task.
(01:09:33):
And a lot of people,
(01:09:35):
Downtown, Mercantile Street’s a great example.
(01:09:37):
There’s a lot of cars that park on Mercantile Street.
(01:09:39):
They’re there all day.
(01:09:41):
And they’re taking up parking from people that want to either go to the restaurant
(01:09:45):
or the coffee place or the Jimmy John’s or anything like that.
(01:09:48):
Parking downtown is ridiculous these days.
(01:09:52):
Yeah.
(01:09:52):
And unfortunately, the way that the rules are set up, a lot of these commercial vehicles
(01:09:56):
You know, they can get away with it.
(01:09:58):
And then the way that like we,
(01:10:00):
I don’t want to give away trade secrets,
(01:10:02):
but the way that I know how long a vehicle has been there,
(01:10:04):
you know,
(01:10:04):
they figured it out.
(01:10:06):
So,
(01:10:07):
you know,
(01:10:07):
they’ve been able to game the system and be able to get around the loopholes that
(01:10:13):
we have for our current system.
(01:10:16):
But yeah, a lot of these cars, they’re parked there all day, every day.
(01:10:19):
And it’s cheaper to get a ticket once or twice a week than it is to go park in a
(01:10:22):
lot because it’s inconsistent if you’re going to get a ticket or not.
(01:10:26):
You know, because you don’t have the people, you don’t have consistent enforcement.
(01:10:31):
Then they get the additional dopamine boost of not getting a ticket three out of five days.
(01:10:35):
Oh, yeah.
(01:10:35):
And you know,
(01:10:36):
if I lived in the city,
(01:10:37):
or I shouldn’t say that,
(01:10:38):
if I worked downtown and I had to park in a spot like that,
(01:10:41):
I’d be willing to park in like a pay zone because
(01:10:44):
Odds are you’re not going to get caught more times than not.
(01:10:47):
And that’s just because we don’t have the people, the signage isn’t right.
(01:10:51):
If part of that is, yeah, if we had better signage, we’d be more apt to enforce.
(01:10:56):
Yeah.
(01:10:56):
Yeah, you’d be able to.
(01:10:58):
No,
(01:10:58):
I know people who tried to have businesses downtown and they never mind just get
(01:11:02):
the tickets they were getting themselves.
(01:11:03):
They couldn’t get employees because people, their employees kept getting ticketed.
(01:11:06):
Yep.
(01:11:07):
it was it was a problem and and so it’s good that you guys are it sounds like you
(01:11:11):
guys are kind of only doing it in situations where it’s like clear-cut and or there
(01:11:15):
was a recorder telling you to yeah that’s pretty good yeah we try you know and
(01:11:18):
because everything’s documented right so
(01:11:21):
It’s not like I can doctor something and make something up,
(01:11:23):
especially when you have the photos involved.
(01:11:24):
It’s different if it’s written documents.
(01:11:26):
But when you have photos physically attached to everything you’re doing,
(01:11:30):
you know,
(01:11:30):
you can’t make stuff up.
(01:11:32):
And if it doesn’t look good in a photo, then we’re not going to do it.
(01:11:36):
Right.
(01:11:36):
If it’s a meter thing and it doesn’t look like,
(01:11:38):
you know,
(01:11:39):
the signs,
(01:11:39):
you know,
(01:11:40):
50 feet away,
(01:11:41):
might as well be a mile away.
(01:11:42):
You know, it’s unless it looks like good in the photo, we’re not going to do it.
(01:11:47):
We’re not trying to be.
(01:11:49):
assholes ever you know and unfortunately the way the systems are set up with like
(01:11:53):
especially the payment system right if your things expired and i’ve tagged you one
(01:11:56):
minute after i’m sorry it doesn’t tell me and i don’t know and i feel awful every
(01:12:01):
time and i wish that like the kiosk they’re very touchy they just added a 15 minute
(01:12:06):
parking feature they i don’t think they advertised it it’s been out for like six or
(01:12:10):
seven months told me about it but i i it didn’t work the time we tried it what what
(01:12:14):
was it so when you go and you type in your plate
(01:12:17):
When you get to the payment screen,
(01:12:18):
if you just hit the green checkmark,
(01:12:20):
it automatically locks into the 15 minutes.
(01:12:23):
So the big issue is a lot of people go to that and they’re just thumbing through
(01:12:28):
and they hit the green button and lock themselves into the 15 minutes instead of
(01:12:31):
paying.
(01:12:32):
And then when they want to pay, you’re unable to until your 15 minute session is up.
(01:12:37):
okay and so you know they don’t tell you how to fix that how to do anything like
(01:12:41):
that so what i’ve been telling people is um if you do get one just change one of
(01:12:47):
the digits on your plate and make sure you put the receipt okay um because at least
(01:12:54):
if i see the thing we have like a list and we can scroll through but you know
(01:12:57):
sometimes in their 60 70 things plates you know they might get mixed in yeah um but
(01:13:02):
at least if i see a receipt
(01:13:05):
know it’s the greatest thing in the world but the kiosk too they have a print
(01:13:07):
button and the print button doesn’t print you know see so anyone that has like any
(01:13:12):
sort of you know english isn’t their first language and they’re using the kiosk you
(01:13:15):
know the print button is useless and so why even have it you know if you’re if
(01:13:20):
you’re quickly thumbing through it’s raining you know snowing you don’t want to get
(01:13:24):
wet you know you’re going to mistake something and and do it if you pay on the
(01:13:28):
phone app too not only does the phone app charge you a fee but like again if it
(01:13:32):
expires there’s no
(01:13:34):
print receipt.
(01:13:35):
So I have zero idea.
(01:13:37):
And so those people wind up getting ticketed, even though they paid, even though they paid.
(01:13:42):
And sometimes the system will be down and it’s raining and I’m using the phone and
(01:13:46):
it doesn’t necessarily update in time.
(01:13:48):
And,
(01:13:48):
you know,
(01:13:48):
I’ve definitely tagged people where they paid and I didn’t know that because it
(01:13:52):
doesn’t show up.
(01:13:53):
You’re just doing what your system tells you to.
(01:13:55):
Yeah.
(01:13:56):
And,
(01:13:56):
you know,
(01:13:57):
you can complain a million times over,
(01:13:59):
but until the contracts are done and whoever does the bidding process,
(01:14:03):
It means nothing.
(01:14:04):
And the people who maintain the machines,
(01:14:06):
they’re not going to necessarily give you new equipment unless they know that
(01:14:08):
they’re going to get a bid.
(01:14:10):
So, you know, it’s a catch 22, you know?
(01:14:13):
Yeah.
(01:14:14):
We’re at the, this goes back to the city management and infrastructure.
(01:14:18):
Yeah.
(01:14:19):
And it sucks for the city manager and the place he’s in,
(01:14:21):
you know,
(01:14:22):
no matter what he does,
(01:14:23):
he’s damned if he does,
(01:14:23):
he damns if he doesn’t,
(01:14:24):
but ultimately,
(01:14:25):
you know,
(01:14:26):
he’s the scapegoat for everything that happens.
(01:14:27):
So, I mean, that’s why he gets nine months of severance and the
(01:14:32):
that electric car and 315,000 a year.
(01:14:34):
Yeah.
(01:14:35):
It’s insane that they can make that kind of money.
(01:14:37):
And then, you know, the average worker, I think, you know, they’re paying them 20 bucks an hour.
(01:14:41):
So I think that’s the, I mean, that, yeah, agreed.
(01:14:44):
Like,
(01:14:44):
so I mean,
(01:14:45):
my,
(01:14:45):
my big thing is we should get rid of him and then split his pay 11 ways and make
(01:14:49):
our city councilor positions full time.
(01:14:51):
Um,
(01:14:51):
because then they could actually,
(01:14:53):
you know,
(01:14:53):
it wouldn’t have to be retired people and lawyers and landlords.
(01:14:56):
We could have
(01:14:57):
People who need a full-time job to exist could be city councilors.
(01:15:02):
When I read how much 2N was making when they took their break, it floored me.
(01:15:08):
They make more than me.
(01:15:10):
And they’re city councilor part-time.
(01:15:13):
And I’m a full-time and benefited employee.
(01:15:16):
So look at the calendar.
(01:15:18):
Look at how few nights they’re actually meeting this year.
(01:15:20):
I think it’s something like 31.
(01:15:22):
So like the,
(01:15:23):
the people who are just showing up there and campaigning are,
(01:15:26):
are working for 31 evenings.
(01:15:28):
Two is doing a fuck ton behind the scenes for what it’s worth.
(01:15:31):
I know that they’re not voting,
(01:15:33):
but also their vote was being ignored and every,
(01:15:38):
I understand where the,
(01:15:39):
I mean,
(01:15:39):
I,
(01:15:40):
they shut me out of city hall,
(01:15:41):
but like,
(01:15:42):
I,
(01:15:42):
I understand where they’re coming from with not showing up.
(01:15:45):
Yeah.
(01:15:46):
Also, you know, the, the place was on fucking safe, like entirely.
(01:15:50):
I have all people know that.
(01:15:51):
And,
(01:15:52):
you know,
(01:15:52):
there’s zero chance that the police would do anything about it if they were
(01:15:55):
attacked there.
(01:15:56):
And the trans hate was getting ramped up.
(01:15:59):
So,
(01:15:59):
like,
(01:15:59):
I entirely understand where they’re coming from and frankly would have supported
(01:16:04):
them doing it earlier.
(01:16:05):
Yeah,
(01:16:06):
no,
(01:16:06):
it’s,
(01:16:07):
it’s,
(01:16:07):
it was just astonishing to me to see how much,
(01:16:09):
you know,
(01:16:10):
all of these people are making and you know,
(01:16:12):
we’re,
(01:16:12):
we’re full-time benefited employees and we’re,
(01:16:14):
we’re keeping the city alive.
(01:16:16):
But, but you’re working every fucking day and they’re, don’t get me wrong.
(01:16:20):
There’s a lot more to like, I’ve considered being a city counselor.
(01:16:22):
I’ve considered that whole, like, nevermind the running.
(01:16:24):
I understand how much there is like day ideas.
(01:16:28):
It is a full-time job in the aspect of you can’t go anywhere without
(01:16:31):
people having expectations and also then being entitled, like everyone is a fucking customer.
(01:16:36):
Yeah.
(01:16:37):
That being said, the problem is that the city manager then doesn’t have to listen to them.
(01:16:41):
So like,
(01:16:41):
even if we like,
(01:16:42):
that was that,
(01:16:43):
that was kind of part of what’s one of the things to establish at the end was that
(01:16:47):
the same manager did not do anything about the,
(01:16:50):
their motion about crisis pregnancy centers and he didn’t have to.
(01:16:55):
And we’ve seen since,
(01:16:56):
you know,
(01:16:56):
I’ve,
(01:16:56):
I’ve filed things that like review the law department for it to anyways,
(01:17:00):
The city manager doesn’t actually have to do anything the city council asks him to.
(01:17:05):
And so there’s this weird complete lack of accountability between these divisions
(01:17:12):
of power that it seems to be screws over the city employees at the bottom while
(01:17:23):
maintaining a complete avoidance of accountability for everyone at the top.
(01:17:28):
You know,
(01:17:28):
and I joined originally because like I thought moving around the city would be easy
(01:17:33):
and I’m not,
(01:17:36):
you know,
(01:17:37):
I recently changed my resume.
(01:17:38):
I talked to a lady who does some hiring stuff for the city.
(01:17:43):
I’m not sure if they use AI or what they’re doing,
(01:17:46):
but once I started,
(01:17:47):
I used AI to change my resume.
(01:17:49):
I started getting a lot more responses,
(01:17:52):
but just like I couldn’t even get entry level clerk responses.
(01:17:56):
Like I couldn’t even get an interview back having the experience doing the work.
(01:18:01):
I have a lot of jobs too.
(01:18:04):
other people have applied to.
(01:18:06):
We don’t get interviews for as internal hires.
(01:18:08):
A lot of things we get turned down for.
(01:18:11):
Our union president,
(01:18:12):
I don’t know how much I can speak on that,
(01:18:14):
but we were talking about that and he wanted a list because I guess other people
(01:18:18):
have expressed similar problems,
(01:18:20):
applied for jobs,
(01:18:22):
never hear back.
(01:18:23):
William Bagley is the head of HR for the city.
(01:18:28):
I’ve only met him once or twice.
(01:18:29):
I met him at orientation.
(01:18:32):
But every time I talk to
(01:18:34):
anyone who does like the hiring there, they’re usually the ones that read it.
(01:18:37):
So I don’t know if when they send out the exit email,
(01:18:39):
he’s just the one that stamps the name or he’s making the final push,
(01:18:44):
but other people I’ve talked to seem to make decisions.
(01:18:48):
Um,
(01:18:49):
but yeah,
(01:18:50):
a lot of other people have expressed concerns that mobility isn’t necessarily easy.
(01:18:55):
And then a lot of positions they’ll post get deleted.
(01:18:59):
Um, never filled.
(01:19:00):
They just like the clerk department in my position or in my department,
(01:19:03):
they posted it in January.
(01:19:05):
Um, it was up for about three or four weeks and then they deleted it.
(01:19:08):
And then there was no mention of the position again.
(01:19:10):
Then they just reposted it maybe two or three weeks ago.
(01:19:13):
Um, weird.
(01:19:13):
So like, as if they were going to hire someone and then it didn’t go through.
(01:19:16):
Yeah.
(01:19:17):
Almost like a private company, right.
(01:19:18):
Where they post it to look like they’re,
(01:19:19):
they’re expanding,
(01:19:20):
but I mean,
(01:19:20):
obviously we’re not,
(01:19:21):
you know,
(01:19:21):
in that business.
(01:19:23):
Um,
(01:19:24):
but yeah,
(01:19:24):
you know,
(01:19:25):
how much of that is,
(01:19:26):
is money disappearing,
(01:19:27):
you know,
(01:19:27):
federal funds,
(01:19:28):
you know,
(01:19:28):
that definitely plays into it.
(01:19:30):
Um,
(01:19:32):
but yeah,
(01:19:32):
a lot of these positions too,
(01:19:34):
it,
(01:19:34):
you know,
(01:19:35):
it,
(01:19:35):
I don’t know where they pull numbers out of because like the customer service at
(01:19:38):
three on one,
(01:19:39):
is $26 an hour.
(01:19:40):
You’re in an office on starting pay for my department is $21 an hour.
(01:19:43):
DPW, the tree climbers, the tree climbers get started at $19 an hour.
(01:19:47):
And those guys are doing bull work,
(01:19:48):
you know,
(01:19:49):
like they’re physically climbing trees and the CDL pays a dollar more.
(01:19:53):
If the DPW, I think general labors are 19 or 20 bucks an hour.
(01:19:58):
And you know, any of these like office jobs, they’re paying pretty well.
(01:20:03):
The security guards that they hired into city hall,
(01:20:06):
I think they were starting between 26 and 28.
(01:20:08):
Yeah.
(01:20:08):
Yeah.
(01:20:09):
So looking at that and you know, there’s, I think there’s three of them down three or four.
(01:20:15):
Um, city hall is definitely different.
(01:20:18):
Um,
(01:20:18):
I don’t have to like,
(01:20:20):
when I walk in,
(01:20:20):
in the uniform,
(01:20:21):
I don’t have to do the sign and stuff,
(01:20:22):
but obviously like if I’m off the clock,
(01:20:24):
I gotta do all of that.
(01:20:26):
Um,
(01:20:27):
I can see the pros of it,
(01:20:28):
but it definitely is very confusing for anyone that hasn’t been in the Worcester
(01:20:33):
ecosphere for a decent amount of time,
(01:20:35):
doesn’t have social media,
(01:20:35):
has no idea the city hall is closed underneath.
(01:20:39):
It sucks for those people.
(01:20:40):
And then the fact that you have to have all of your data collected once you walk
(01:20:44):
in,
(01:20:44):
you know,
(01:20:44):
what are they doing with the data?
(01:20:46):
You know, that’s the big question.
(01:20:47):
They’ll probably say nothing,
(01:20:48):
but,
(01:20:49):
you know,
(01:20:50):
someone’s doing something with the data,
(01:20:51):
whether it’s being stored or deleted or whatever is happening to it.
(01:20:55):
It sounds like one of the process is making sure everyone agrees to the new,
(01:21:01):
not the terms of service,
(01:21:02):
but the rules of engagement.
(01:21:05):
I can’t remember what it’s called, but the rules of city hall.
(01:21:11):
Well, that’s kind of where it gets weird too with the parking downtown using the kiosk.
(01:21:17):
You know,
(01:21:17):
a couple of years ago,
(01:21:17):
they had the card reader ones where you just stick your card and you didn’t have to
(01:21:20):
put your plate in or anything like that.
(01:21:22):
And now you have to put in your plate, whether you’re parking for free or paying or whatever.
(01:21:27):
And, you know, Worcester’s outsourcing that to another company.
(01:21:31):
Laz, they’re the ones that drive around.
(01:21:32):
They’re the ones that maintain it.
(01:21:33):
They also maintain the parking lots.
(01:21:35):
You know, what are they doing with the data?
(01:21:38):
You know, it’s not the city collecting the data.
(01:21:40):
This is someone else collecting the data.
(01:21:42):
And so.
(01:21:43):
know you’re running in for free for 15 minutes why do you need my license plate why
(01:21:47):
couldn’t we just use the other ones these terminals they’re like 15 grand a piece
(01:21:50):
is what we were told wow you know i don’t know how much the the other ones were and
(01:21:54):
i don’t know how much the coin based turn dial ones were obviously there’s more
(01:21:57):
maintenance with those but like the privacy aspect of it you know i’m not i’m not
(01:22:02):
implying laz has nefarious intentions but like you know they’ve never been
(01:22:06):
transparent about what they’re doing with it
(01:22:08):
So they must be doing something with it.
(01:22:10):
There’s Flock cameras in Worcester.
(01:22:12):
And I know that Flock is on record as having sold to ICE.
(01:22:16):
So for all we know,
(01:22:17):
this data is also being resold through a third party to the government to be used
(01:22:23):
against immigrant.
(01:22:24):
So that,
(01:22:25):
you know,
(01:22:25):
what is this information being used for is absolutely a fucking good question.
(01:22:29):
But then there’s also the, you know, you’re right.
(01:22:33):
It just, there should not be, there’s no reason to actually require this.
(01:22:38):
No.
(01:22:38):
And then there’s the data retention of effectively.
(01:22:41):
So Worcester is now on the hook for a subscription.
(01:22:44):
I hate software as a service as a, you know, like every app is three to seven bucks a month.
(01:22:50):
But when you’re your company, this is like hundreds of thousands a year.
(01:22:54):
And I’m pretty sure,
(01:22:56):
you know,
(01:22:56):
is there there’s not going to be an export option as I guess what I’m coming out
(01:22:59):
and coming to is like the,
(01:23:01):
you know,
(01:23:01):
we’re signed up for this now.
(01:23:02):
Worcester is locked in forever.
(01:23:05):
to continue using this company service because we need,
(01:23:11):
because we need the data that has been logged in with this company.
(01:23:14):
And so, I don’t know.
(01:23:16):
I’m, that’s upsetting on a, like, you know, infrastructure level.
(01:23:20):
Yeah.
(01:23:20):
And I mean,
(01:23:21):
we’ve heard,
(01:23:21):
we’ve heard murmurs that they want to go like private with like the parking
(01:23:25):
enforcement stuff,
(01:23:26):
which I mean,
(01:23:26):
sucks for us because I mean,
(01:23:28):
one,
(01:23:28):
the loss of job,
(01:23:29):
but then two,
(01:23:29):
and then if they’re private,
(01:23:30):
right,
(01:23:30):
then obviously you have way more incentive for,
(01:23:33):
for specifically writing tickets or anything like that.
(01:23:35):
I don’t know what the legalities are of what they can and can’t do.
(01:23:39):
Obviously, I mean, we have the union.
(01:23:41):
The union would fight pretty hard against any decision like that.
(01:23:45):
But even still,
(01:23:46):
just the fact that there’s been rumors of it and they haven’t squashed those rumors
(01:23:51):
isn’t necessarily the best thing to hear.
(01:23:54):
Yeah, that’s concerning a stock.
(01:23:56):
You know,
(01:23:56):
but the Laz people in general,
(01:23:58):
I mean,
(01:23:58):
they’re all over,
(01:23:59):
but you use the kiosk,
(01:24:00):
they’re dirty.
(01:24:01):
Some of them are scratched.
(01:24:02):
You know, they say they do the maintenance stuff, but
(01:24:05):
On our end, we’re not doing the maintenance.
(01:24:06):
We’re verifying the machine’s work.
(01:24:08):
They turn on whatever.
(01:24:08):
That’s the extent of what we can do.
(01:24:10):
LAS has the equipment to fix everything.
(01:24:12):
They have the replacement parts.
(01:24:13):
They’re the ones supposed to do it.
(01:24:15):
You go downtown, there’s screens that have been scratched forever.
(01:24:17):
You report it.
(01:24:18):
They just slap a screen protector on top of it.
(01:24:22):
It’s all done.
(01:24:23):
It’s all fixed.
(01:24:24):
But people will complain that the system’s down and...
(01:24:28):
we report the systems down and it takes you know sometimes it takes las you know an
(01:24:32):
hour or two to get back to you and you know that’s that’s big you know whether you
(01:24:36):
should be enforcing whether you shouldn’t be enforcing should you put the people on
(01:24:39):
time for the two hour limit like you know this is i mean it’s it’s mundane stuff
(01:24:44):
but like it makes a difference it makes a difference and for the one person that
(01:24:47):
does get a ticket you know it’s it’s the world of difference for them you know
(01:24:53):
Cause they’re the ones that have to deal with it.
(01:24:54):
There’s so many cars a day that could get a ticket, but only a select amount do.
(01:24:58):
And it’s not, you know, we’re not picking and choosing which ones we do and don’t do.
(01:25:02):
Um, if we do, we have to do all of them.
(01:25:05):
Unfortunately, you know, there’s cameras everywhere.
(01:25:07):
People are always watching.
(01:25:08):
You never know, you know, who’s out there, what’s there.
(01:25:11):
So yeah,
(01:25:12):
as long as you’re doing your work,
(01:25:14):
you know,
(01:25:14):
correctly,
(01:25:15):
you know,
(01:25:15):
as long as you’re doing it to what you believe is,
(01:25:17):
is ethical,
(01:25:18):
then I mean,
(01:25:19):
you shouldn’t really have anything to worry about.
(01:25:21):
Um,
(01:25:21):
People will be upset, but we’re unfortunately needed service.
(01:25:27):
It’s not so much meters.
(01:25:29):
A lot of it’s safety stuff too.
(01:25:30):
We do so much safety stuff.
(01:25:32):
The fire hydrants, the crosswalks, the intersections, especially schools and stuff like that.
(01:25:37):
Every single school, especially this year,
(01:25:40):
since parents are dropping their kids off instead of taking the bus a lot of kids
(01:25:43):
aren’t walking um for various reasons whether it’s not safe you know limited
(01:25:48):
sidewalks you know not enough time in the morning whatever you know they’re they’re
(01:25:53):
unfortunately disturbing the people that live in the neighborhoods because now
(01:25:56):
they’re encroaching into the residential streets when they’re parking um you know
(01:25:59):
grafton street school you know there’s cars that go christ a mile down the road and
(01:26:06):
you know, what are you supposed to do?
(01:26:08):
You can’t tag them.
(01:26:09):
They’re in the car.
(01:26:09):
The police can’t tag them.
(01:26:10):
They’re in the car, but you know, it’s creating safety obstructions.
(01:26:13):
You know,
(01:26:14):
I,
(01:26:14):
unfortunately I,
(01:26:15):
you know,
(01:26:16):
I don’t know what the solution is,
(01:26:17):
but all of these schools are just,
(01:26:19):
there needs to be something done because these schools are,
(01:26:21):
if there was ever an emergency in any of these school areas,
(01:26:24):
you know,
(01:26:24):
a fire truck or any of these things are going to be a very difficult time,
(01:26:27):
you know,
(01:26:27):
and I’m,
(01:26:28):
you know,
(01:26:28):
I don’t get why,
(01:26:30):
we’re not pushing more for the kids to walk.
(01:26:32):
I only graduated high school, you know, 10 years ago and oh, that’ll get me clipped.
(01:26:38):
They’ll know that.
(01:26:41):
Yeah.
(01:26:42):
The age thing though.
(01:26:43):
I’m by far the youngest one.
(01:26:45):
But yeah, even still, you know, they’re not walking to school.
(01:26:49):
A lot of these kids, you know, they’re either not taking the bus.
(01:26:53):
You know, a lot of kids aren’t taking the bus.
(01:26:54):
They’re getting dropped off and it’s just,
(01:26:57):
they’re just filling up these neighborhoods with the residential cars
(01:27:01):
Crowning Shield Road is a good one.
(01:27:03):
65 Crowning Shield Road, there’s a guy.
(01:27:04):
Is that next to the middle?
(01:27:09):
Yes.
(01:27:09):
Roosevelt?
(01:27:11):
Roosevelt, right at Massachusetts.
(01:27:12):
Yep.
(01:27:13):
So he calls every single day their school twice a day.
(01:27:18):
Again,
(01:27:19):
yeah,
(01:27:20):
it’s tough because the parents need to pick up their kids,
(01:27:22):
but the schools need to also tell the parents that they need to be more respectful
(01:27:27):
of the people that live there.
(01:27:29):
you know,
(01:27:29):
and there’s only so much that we can do,
(01:27:32):
but if,
(01:27:32):
you know,
(01:27:33):
I tell someone to move or,
(01:27:34):
well,
(01:27:35):
I can’t tell someone to move.
(01:27:35):
That’s, I have to, um, how would I wear this?
(01:27:40):
Ask them if they’re able to move because if they’re impaired or whatever else, right.
(01:27:43):
And then I tell them to move and they crash and whatever, then it all comes back to me.
(01:27:45):
Right.
(01:27:46):
Um,
(01:27:47):
So, you know, if they’re able to move, ask them to move.
(01:27:49):
And then,
(01:27:49):
you know,
(01:27:50):
the people,
(01:27:50):
the people get mad at you,
(01:27:51):
but you know,
(01:27:52):
it wasn’t my choice to drive up to,
(01:27:54):
you know,
(01:27:54):
crowning shield road and tell you,
(01:27:56):
Hey,
(01:27:56):
no,
(01:27:57):
you’re doing this because someone else is filing complaints.
(01:28:00):
And,
(01:28:00):
and unfortunately too,
(01:28:01):
you know,
(01:28:01):
I wish the city would,
(01:28:02):
would kind of step up and release,
(01:28:04):
you know,
(01:28:04):
some sort of a memo for,
(01:28:06):
you know,
(01:28:06):
the guidelines for a lot of these areas.
(01:28:08):
And it’s not just so much schools,
(01:28:09):
apartment building,
(01:28:10):
anything else,
(01:28:11):
you know,
(01:28:11):
this is what’s got to change.
(01:28:13):
We were flyering stuff for a little bit for sidewalks and wrong direction, but like,
(01:28:17):
We haven’t done that in a bit.
(01:28:18):
We haven’t done any sort of newsletters and notifications like that.
(01:28:22):
And that would go a long way.
(01:28:23):
I recently,
(01:28:23):
I mean,
(01:28:25):
Batista could use the buzz for this to let everyone know the podcast thing he does
(01:28:32):
with coffee.
(01:28:33):
I recently found through a public records request that there is no employee handbook.
(01:28:38):
And it took like five clarifications.
(01:28:40):
They tried to be like, oh, the policies and procedures are online at this link.
(01:28:44):
I’m like, okay, so there’s no handbook.
(01:28:45):
And they’re like, oh, yeah, these blah, blah, blah, serve as the employee handbook.
(01:28:49):
And then I Googled it and gave the AI description of a handbook to them being like,
(01:28:53):
this is what a handbook is.
(01:28:54):
Do you have a responsive record?
(01:28:56):
And they’re like, there’s no employee handbook.
(01:28:58):
So I finally confirmed that.
(01:29:00):
And this sounds like the kind of thing that would go in your employee handbook.
(01:29:03):
Yeah, I don’t, we don’t have an employee specific handbook.
(01:29:06):
When I got hired,
(01:29:07):
we had like a department specific packet that,
(01:29:10):
you know,
(01:29:10):
the department made up.
(01:29:11):
And then,
(01:29:12):
you know,
(01:29:12):
we had our union booklet,
(01:29:14):
which has all the union policies and rules,
(01:29:16):
but we never got one specific for our department.
(01:29:20):
And some of the rules too,
(01:29:21):
you know,
(01:29:22):
they keep changing and it’s tough without contacting our union president.
(01:29:25):
And,
(01:29:26):
you know,
(01:29:26):
you don’t want to contact them and sound like you’re bitching and complaining and
(01:29:28):
all that too.
(01:29:28):
You know, you kind of have to pick and choose your battles.
(01:29:31):
But one that they just changed was we used to be able to text to call out,
(01:29:36):
and now they want us to do it in email.
(01:29:38):
They want it CC’d and sent to everyone who’s a higher up in our department.
(01:29:42):
Just micromanaging stuff.
(01:29:44):
When we clock in, have to do a radio check.
(01:29:48):
When you turn on the radio, the radio either works or doesn’t work.
(01:29:53):
Just micromanaging like that.
(01:29:56):
Yeah,
(01:29:56):
little weird procedural things that would make sense as part of a larger checklist,
(01:30:00):
but they don’t give you that larger checklist.
(01:30:01):
Yeah.
(01:30:02):
And the rules keep changing and they keep moving the goalposts, right?
(01:30:06):
When I first got hired, they made a huge deal about the color socks you wore.
(01:30:10):
If you weren’t wearing white or black, you couldn’t wear them.
(01:30:13):
Under shirts,
(01:30:14):
if you didn’t have a gray,
(01:30:16):
a black,
(01:30:17):
or like a blue shirt,
(01:30:18):
you know,
(01:30:18):
it was a big,
(01:30:19):
huge deal.
(01:30:19):
And then they went lax on it.
(01:30:21):
And then they, you know, started hammering us again.
(01:30:23):
Oh, you need this, this, this, this, and this, this.
(01:30:25):
And it’s like when they don’t have anything being pressured on them, they need to create like
(01:30:29):
an artificial pressure to at least have something to, to gripe about.
(01:30:32):
Oh my God.
(01:30:33):
That feels like being a constituent in the city,
(01:30:35):
all the manufactured urgency and that like,
(01:30:37):
it’s,
(01:30:37):
you know,
(01:30:37):
that they need to get back to business and then they don’t have any business to,
(01:30:40):
but you’re right.
(01:30:41):
They, that, that strikes so hard.
(01:30:44):
It’s such a Worcester thing.
(01:30:45):
Yeah.
(01:30:45):
And it just kind of sucks that we have so many people who are like in charge in our
(01:30:50):
department,
(01:30:50):
but like they’re,
(01:30:53):
I don’t know why we need,
(01:30:54):
Some of the positions seem kind of redundant.
(01:30:56):
Obviously, the commissioner is doing a great job.
(01:30:59):
He’s fine,
(01:31:00):
but the person who’s below him,
(01:31:04):
there’s two people that do kind of similar overlapping tasks.
(01:31:08):
One’s more like a customer service,
(01:31:09):
one’s more like a planning,
(01:31:10):
but you can essentially combine them.
(01:31:14):
And then they would actually hear what the customer service wants.
(01:31:16):
Yeah.
(01:31:17):
I think that’s just the systematic accountability avoidance.
(01:31:21):
The person who is responsible...
(01:31:23):
for making the decisions and the person who is responsible for making the people
(01:31:27):
feel heard don’t overlap so that they can both do their job effectively.
(01:31:32):
And you know,
(01:31:32):
like when people want to complain about a ticket,
(01:31:34):
right on the back of the ticket,
(01:31:35):
it has my department’s phone number instead of the city halls,
(01:31:39):
like customer service to complain and to appeal the ticket.
(01:31:42):
So a lot of people will call that number first because it’s the one they see
(01:31:46):
instead of the one on the front.
(01:31:47):
yeah and so just just the fact that you know simple things like that people aren’t
(01:31:52):
necessarily knowing where to express their concerns and then you pass the buck on
(01:31:57):
to someone else oh well you need to speak to this person then you need to speak to
(01:32:00):
this that like i tried to do the tuition um they’ll pay for you to go to school to
(01:32:05):
get a master’s or a bachelor’s i i don’t know if they do an associates one but
(01:32:10):
trying to find out
(01:32:11):
In order to qualify, you had to find out what majors your department could use.
(01:32:16):
It has to be a major that’s beneficial for where you work.
(01:32:20):
And so,
(01:32:21):
you know,
(01:32:21):
the commissioner was new,
(01:32:22):
but even still asking like what,
(01:32:25):
you know,
(01:32:25):
degrees I could get,
(01:32:26):
basically it was all engineering stuff.
(01:32:27):
They didn’t offer engineering related stuff,
(01:32:30):
unable to participate,
(01:32:32):
but then just trying to find out who to contact,
(01:32:34):
you know,
(01:32:35):
going to HR,
(01:32:36):
HR tells you to go to the commissioner and the commissioner tells you,
(01:32:39):
oh,
(01:32:39):
hold on,
(01:32:40):
I emailed this person,
(01:32:41):
go talk to
(01:32:42):
Sally, so-and-so, whatever, in floor two.
(01:32:44):
Then you go to floor two in City Hall,
(01:32:45):
and then the lady’s like,
(01:32:46):
well,
(01:32:46):
actually,
(01:32:47):
maybe you should contact the institution and find out this.
(01:32:49):
And then you’re just being bounced back and forth.
(01:32:51):
by the time you get the answer you know the deadlines pass and it’s like that with
(01:32:55):
everything in the city you know you want to find out anything in the city trying to
(01:32:58):
get a direct answer is impossible you have to jump through so many hoops you need
(01:33:03):
to know exactly who to talk to and if you don’t they’re just going to keep passing
(01:33:07):
you around because they either don’t know or you know they’re withholding
(01:33:11):
information i’d like to think it’s because they don’t know um but you know you just
(01:33:16):
get passed around no matter where you go and unfortunately it sucks
(01:33:19):
Yeah.
(01:33:20):
No one’s connected.
(01:33:21):
None of the departments,
(01:33:21):
they’re all separate departments instead of being one like cohesive unit.
(01:33:25):
It’s like 37 different retail stores running in one retail store instead of one
(01:33:29):
retail store altogether.
(01:33:31):
You know, I’d like to see some sort of like cohesion between all of this stuff.
(01:33:35):
Um, yeah, I’m not allowed to, in my position.
(01:33:38):
Um,
(01:33:39):
I’m not allowed to be on any sort of board or committee unless I get permission
(01:33:42):
from the city manager.
(01:33:45):
And I’d emailed back and forth a couple of times to try to find out, um,
(01:33:50):
You’re not basically what I got from it is I’m only allowed to be on like one of
(01:33:54):
like the 15 committees that are available.
(01:33:57):
And if it met on anything that I’m related to, I’m not allowed to do it.
(01:34:01):
But the person who’s second in charge of my department is a town councilman in Auburn.
(01:34:06):
And he’s allowed to be a town councilman in Auburn while working for the city full time.
(01:34:10):
So the decisions that he’s making in Auburn influence what happens in Worcester.
(01:34:14):
And then while working in this position in Worcester, you know, they can turn that back around.
(01:34:19):
Hey, look at this is what Worcester is doing.
(01:34:20):
Maybe Auburn should implement this.
(01:34:22):
And then that’s not a conflict of interest,
(01:34:23):
but I work for the physical city,
(01:34:25):
want the betterment of the city.
(01:34:27):
And I’m not allowed to work for the city in a political position because it’s a
(01:34:31):
conflict of interest.
(01:34:32):
Where was it determined?
(01:34:34):
Is it written in a policy somewhere that you have to go through the city manager?
(01:34:38):
Let me see if I can find the email.
(01:34:40):
I emailed my district rep, which was Jenny Pasillo, and then she led me to the mayor.
(01:34:49):
who then the mayor didn’t necessarily know,
(01:34:52):
who then led me to the city manager,
(01:34:54):
which led me to the city manager’s staff assistant,
(01:34:57):
who led me to a list of what I can and can’t do.
(01:35:01):
And if I wanted to do anything, I had to get a permission slip from.
(01:35:04):
That sounds like, okay.
(01:35:06):
So there’s something called gray tape, which is like not red tape.
(01:35:09):
It’s because red tape is clearly identifiable.
(01:35:11):
Gray tape is they just make shit inaccessible.
(01:35:14):
This is where all of these conversations about Worcester end is,
(01:35:17):
getting bounced it forward back,
(01:35:19):
but all of the gray tape is effectively,
(01:35:21):
they don’t say no,
(01:35:23):
they just make it incredibly prohibitive to do whatever you’re asking to do.
(01:35:26):
Yeah,
(01:35:27):
and unfortunately,
(01:35:28):
a lot of the people that I talk to who are having issues and they sign petitions
(01:35:32):
and try to do all of this stuff,
(01:35:34):
They tell me,
(01:35:34):
you know,
(01:35:35):
and I’m only going up what people tell me,
(01:35:36):
you know,
(01:35:37):
they say the position gets approved and,
(01:35:39):
you know,
(01:35:40):
they’ve been waiting four months for someone to come out and put up a sign or
(01:35:43):
they’ve been waiting four months for someone to come and,
(01:35:46):
you know,
(01:35:46):
repaint something or anything of those nature.
(01:35:49):
And, you know, it seems like they’re just kind of left in limbo.
(01:35:52):
Oh, yeah, we’re sending someone out.
(01:35:53):
We’re sending someone out.
(01:35:54):
Well, when, you know, how are you going to accomplish this goal?
(01:35:58):
And just trying to find out, you know, just a simple committee, right?
(01:36:01):
It didn’t even have to be like a political thing.
(01:36:04):
You know, just like, you know, and that, you know, trying to find out the answer.
(01:36:08):
You got to go through all of these people to find out,
(01:36:10):
you know,
(01:36:11):
I can get why Jenny didn’t know the answer.
(01:36:13):
I mean, she’s newer to the city.
(01:36:14):
The mayor, I mean, that’s probably not a question he gets asked very often.
(01:36:18):
I mean, he’s been around.
(01:36:19):
But he has been around a long time.
(01:36:21):
But,
(01:36:21):
you know,
(01:36:21):
I don’t know how many people would express interest in doing something like that,
(01:36:25):
too.
(01:36:25):
You know what I mean?
(01:36:26):
Yeah.
(01:36:26):
But like, I don’t know.
(01:36:28):
There should be clear cut.
(01:36:29):
Conflict of interest is a really clear cut thing that should be very thoroughly
(01:36:32):
defined in a way that they’re able to be consistent about.
(01:36:35):
I don’t really necessarily even still know what conflict of interest is.
(01:36:38):
I think I’m more confused now than I was before.
(01:36:41):
Because, yeah, he can literally work.
(01:36:44):
for the city making,
(01:36:46):
you know,
(01:36:46):
helping influence decisions here,
(01:36:48):
which then you can use and strong arm in your other position.
(01:36:50):
Hey, look at this is what this place is doing.
(01:36:52):
They’re directly next door and you’re in a power position in a different place.
(01:36:56):
And that’s, you know, that’s kosher.
(01:36:59):
But if you try to help out in the city, you work, you’re not allowed to.
(01:37:04):
So, and I could get not taking money.
(01:37:05):
I don’t think any of the committee positions are paid.
(01:37:08):
I think the only ones that are paid are like when you’re like a chairhead.
(01:37:11):
And I think most of the chairheads are city council members.
(01:37:13):
members if i’m not mistaken um that would make sense um yeah the chairs are the yes
(01:37:19):
so yeah i you know i i’d be down to to do all of this kind of work i think i’m just
(01:37:24):
i want to get into like volunteering and working at the homeless shelter just
(01:37:28):
volunteering unrelated because a lot of the people that i talk to i talk to i talk
(01:37:34):
to a decent amount of homeless people and just the issues that they see in the city
(01:37:36):
and the way that they get treated um
(01:37:39):
It’s really eye opening when you’re not necessarily in that position.
(01:37:42):
And obviously you have to take people what they say,
(01:37:45):
you know,
(01:37:45):
at face value,
(01:37:46):
but it’s really heartbreaking to see how the city is receptive to certain people
(01:37:54):
and demographics.
(01:37:54):
And if you have money or influence,
(01:37:58):
you know, you absolutely can be heard.
(01:38:00):
A lot of us bottom peons for the workers, you know, they don’t want us to complain.
(01:38:03):
They want the citizens to complain.
(01:38:05):
They want the citizens to express their concerns.
(01:38:07):
If we express our concerns, I mean, it is what it is.
(01:38:10):
Yeah.
(01:38:10):
You know, if it’s, if it’s an issue, a citizen will, will make it an issue.
(01:38:15):
You know,
(01:38:15):
why are we trying to start things that aren’t,
(01:38:18):
you know,
(01:38:19):
you know,
(01:38:19):
an issue at that point.
(01:38:21):
And I can see where they’re coming from on both sides.
(01:38:25):
Um,
(01:38:25):
No,
(01:38:25):
I entirely agree with the unhoused community in Worcester has consistently grown
(01:38:29):
over the past like decade.
(01:38:31):
And I think this is a combination of the,
(01:38:34):
you know,
(01:38:35):
the fact that none of the services we like,
(01:38:37):
there is almost no dual diagnosis,
(01:38:39):
like mental health and,
(01:38:40):
uh,
(01:38:41):
and addiction services in the same place.
(01:38:43):
Like people have to go to two places and frankly,
(01:38:45):
maintaining appointments is fucking hard,
(01:38:47):
whether you’re unhoused or not.
(01:38:48):
Um, but also we have a quality of life task force that,
(01:38:52):
effectively their job is to prevent tent cities rather than helping anyone and then
(01:38:57):
they go under the guise of offering services but the service they offer is queen
(01:39:01):
street which everyone knows is horrible and traumatizing yeah we um we work with
(01:39:05):
quality of life with like the campers and a lot of the stuff they do you know i
(01:39:09):
mean they’re just knocking on the door asking the people can you please move are
(01:39:13):
you able to leave like and you know it’s not really like effective stuff um we see
(01:39:20):
driving through a lot of these neighborhoods, you’ll see trash that’s there.
(01:39:22):
And it’s there from the last time we were there, two, three weeks ago.
(01:39:26):
These people are supposed to be coming and cleaning up and improving the city.
(01:39:30):
And unless someone reports it, they’re not driving around and doing that.
(01:39:34):
And talking to a lot of the people who work for Quality of Life,
(01:39:38):
Again, they’re mostly work order, too.
(01:39:39):
At least we drive around and are able to enforce stuff on our own,
(01:39:42):
but it doesn’t seem like they’re able to.
(01:39:44):
And they have a much larger workforce than we do.
(01:39:47):
That building is massive, and they have a lot of vehicles.
(01:39:51):
Granted, there’s multiple departments in there.
(01:39:54):
You have the fire people.
(01:39:57):
um or like the code enforcement you know health inspectors yeah but you know they
(01:40:01):
have they have so many people and you’d figure at least if they saw an issue
(01:40:06):
communicating in their department at least their department’s all in one building
(01:40:10):
you know i think they’re unfortunately an interdepartmental scapegoat they they
(01:40:14):
exist so they can handle things so that the police so that you guys so that
(01:40:17):
inspectional services and health department doesn’t have
(01:40:20):
Yeah.
(01:40:21):
And like they, you know, I don’t think they’re stretched as thin.
(01:40:24):
They’re always hiring people.
(01:40:27):
But it would be nice to see some sort of,
(01:40:29):
you know,
(01:40:29):
improvement in some sort of quality of life for these people.
(01:40:33):
Right.
(01:40:33):
You know,
(01:40:34):
I wouldn’t be opposed to paying millions of dollars a year in payroll for a
(01:40:38):
so-called quality of life team if the quality of life in Worcester had actually
(01:40:41):
fucking improved.
(01:40:42):
You know,
(01:40:43):
you talk to a lot of these people and they say that most of the city workers are
(01:40:46):
rude to them.
(01:40:47):
They, you know,
(01:40:48):
telling them they have to move along, stuff like that.
(01:40:50):
But,
(01:40:50):
you know,
(01:40:50):
their big issues are when they outsource the stuff and they have private security,
(01:40:54):
especially at the homeless shelter,
(01:40:55):
you know,
(01:40:56):
their bigger issues are with the people that they’re outsourcing because,
(01:40:58):
you know,
(01:40:59):
if they tell you to fuck off,
(01:41:00):
you know,
(01:41:00):
who cares?
(01:41:01):
You know, it’s not like it’s a city worker.
(01:41:03):
They’re not able to be traced right now.
(01:41:05):
They’re protected by, you know, another company.
(01:41:07):
So SMAC actually has a particularly problematic system of hiring from within.
(01:41:11):
They hire people who were previously in their shelter.
(01:41:14):
So effectively, that’s their recruitment model.
(01:41:18):
I interacted with the security guard who told me I was going to be arrested for recording.
(01:41:21):
And I was like, oh, really?
(01:41:23):
Yeah, in a public place?
(01:41:24):
Yeah, I was on a sidewalk.
(01:41:26):
And I understand how it was.
(01:41:28):
It was disruptive.
(01:41:29):
Someone mooned me because I was recording.
(01:41:31):
I pointed my camera the other way.
(01:41:32):
But even so, you’re in a public place.
(01:41:34):
100% of public place.
(01:41:35):
And I ended up interviewing a few of the people at this was at the shelter in six months.
(01:41:39):
One minute.
(01:41:39):
I ended up interviewing a few people on the conditions there and some of the issues.
(01:41:43):
And it ended up being a box report where they that the police officer inside came
(01:41:47):
out and did threaten to arrest me.
(01:41:50):
And I got an investigation, which.
(01:41:52):
they didn’t find any wrongdoing despite what happened but it was an investigation
(01:41:56):
um anyways yeah i i the hiring from within and then the security guards have like
(01:42:02):
an ego complex on top of uh all of the so like they’re like there’s already a i’m
(01:42:08):
better than you because i got through the system that you’re part of attitude that
(01:42:11):
that creates a horrible dynamic at these shelters yeah you know and unfortunately
(01:42:17):
Where are they going to go?
(01:42:18):
They used to have an encampment by the Greendale Mall.
(01:42:20):
They closed that.
(01:42:21):
The one by the Walmart, they closed it.
(01:42:23):
You know, and they weren’t bothering anyone over there.
(01:42:25):
They were peaceful, whatever.
(01:42:27):
And now they’re splurging out.
(01:42:28):
They don’t want them on Green Street.
(01:42:30):
But, you know, again, that’s where the food services are.
(01:42:32):
That’s where everything is, you know.
(01:42:33):
Yes.
(01:42:34):
Yeah.
(01:42:34):
And then you put up this.
(01:42:35):
I don’t even know what they call it.
(01:42:37):
Like,
(01:42:38):
like the same thing they have at the 7-Eleven,
(01:42:39):
that little noise machine with the blue lights on it.
(01:42:41):
Oh, my fucking God.
(01:42:42):
Yeah.
(01:42:43):
I worked an overnight once and I heard the music and I was confused.
(01:42:47):
But they have something not.
(01:42:49):
They just have speakers.
(01:42:50):
I’m one of the businesses on Green Street that does the same thing.
(01:42:52):
Blast classical music.
(01:42:54):
But this is flashing lights and the music.
(01:42:56):
It was horrible.
(01:42:56):
I saw a video.
(01:42:57):
You know, and like, how can these people, you know, you want these people to get better.
(01:43:02):
You’re going to drive these people up a fucking wall.
(01:43:04):
You know, so then they’re going to get sleep.
(01:43:05):
What happened where I was sleeping.
(01:43:07):
Yeah.
(01:43:07):
You know, and it all, you know, what comes first, the chicken or the egg?
(01:43:10):
Are they on drugs because they’re mentally ill?
(01:43:12):
Are they mentally ill because they’re on drugs?
(01:43:13):
Or is it, you know, a mixture of both?
(01:43:14):
You know, there’s so many different things here that need to be addressed.
(01:43:17):
And they’re not getting the support that they need.
(01:43:20):
I don’t know if canvassing is the right word.
(01:43:22):
I went to St.
(01:43:23):
John’s a few mornings in a row to try and get,
(01:43:27):
people from the N house community to come speak at city,
(01:43:29):
city hall,
(01:43:30):
um,
(01:43:30):
uh,
(01:43:31):
about this was,
(01:43:32):
um,
(01:43:33):
I kind of remember what this might’ve been the bathroom petition.
(01:43:35):
Anyways,
(01:43:36):
there was something,
(01:43:36):
there was a petition that I tried,
(01:43:38):
I was trying to get them to come speak.
(01:43:39):
And I talked to a bunch of different people and I realized these people are,
(01:43:44):
are ADHD as fuck,
(01:43:45):
like autistic and ADHD.
(01:43:46):
And, um,
(01:43:48):
So I think the real answer is these people are mentally ill,
(01:43:52):
traumatized,
(01:43:54):
then homeless,
(01:43:55):
and then end up becoming addicts.
(01:43:58):
And I don’t know,
(01:44:00):
like,
(01:44:01):
there’s such,
(01:44:02):
but I have to say,
(01:44:03):
like,
(01:44:03):
I think there must be like 85% of them that are just neurodivergent as fuck.
(01:44:09):
And in a really,
(01:44:10):
I don’t know,
(01:44:11):
paying your bills and getting ready everywhere on time is not easy.
(01:44:15):
And without a good support system, I think many of us would be in a very similar situation.
(01:44:19):
Yeah, absolutely.
(01:44:20):
Someone in my family trying to help them and just navigating the resources.
(01:44:23):
There’s so many of them.
(01:44:24):
And then trying to figure out what they actually can and can’t do.
(01:44:28):
is hard and then trying to get passed along to what you actually need is even more
(01:44:33):
difficult if they i you know i haven’t figured out an advocacy system there might
(01:44:37):
there probably is one but just trying to figure out like what you need to actually
(01:44:42):
do what the correct steps are for what you your physical ailment is or your mental
(01:44:46):
element or whatever just trying to find the steps that you physically need for your
(01:44:49):
specific issues is very difficult and if you don’t have access to a computer or
(01:44:53):
know how to use a computer or anything like that or know how to search on the
(01:44:56):
internet you know you’re screwed
(01:44:58):
um you know it would be nice you know if these people had a place that they could
(01:45:02):
go where someone would just show them the physical steps you know more caseworker
(01:45:05):
type of thing i mean that’s obviously a state thing and you know a federal thing
(01:45:09):
but it doesn’t have to be you’re like worcester has a really clear like worcester
(01:45:13):
could have social workers instead of quality of life like worcester could have
(01:45:16):
people whose job it is is to know what places what individual organizations are
(01:45:21):
available for all of these different things and to help connect people with all
(01:45:25):
these services yeah
(01:45:26):
Like this could instead of instead of going places,
(01:45:29):
people to be like,
(01:45:29):
hey,
(01:45:29):
we’re going to get rid of all your stuff sooner or later.
(01:45:32):
Slash.
(01:45:32):
Do you want to go to Queen Street?
(01:45:34):
Instead of doing that,
(01:45:35):
they could they could encourage people to they could introduce people to services
(01:45:40):
for their actual issues.
(01:45:42):
Yeah.
(01:45:42):
And also we could be creating housing for them like this.
(01:45:45):
It’s kind of asinine that we we have this much construction and none of it is
(01:45:49):
here’s permanent housing for habitually,
(01:45:52):
not habitually.
(01:45:55):
Chronological.
(01:45:57):
Perpetually unhoused, not the right word.
(01:45:59):
There’s chronological... Consistently.
(01:46:05):
Well,
(01:46:06):
I guess the argument for those people would be,
(01:46:07):
you know,
(01:46:09):
why do I want Section 8 housing in my neighborhood too?
(01:46:12):
So you have all these people who are going to argue that,
(01:46:15):
look it,
(01:46:15):
you know,
(01:46:15):
we don’t want them here.
(01:46:16):
But, you know, if they at least have a stable place to go, you know...
(01:46:21):
You’re going to cut down on the people using drugs.
(01:46:23):
You’re going to cut down on the people causing issues because then they’re going to
(01:46:25):
at least have a place to go.
(01:46:27):
And that’s a solid foundation to get started.
(01:46:29):
Yeah.
(01:46:29):
It’s also a place that all those social workers can go.
(01:46:32):
Like you give them free housing and then send social workers into that housing.
(01:46:36):
Yeah.
(01:46:36):
And maybe not, you know, group them all together.
(01:46:39):
But,
(01:46:39):
you know,
(01:46:39):
if you were able to...
(01:46:40):
But if you were able to create a couple different housing complexes,
(01:46:43):
you spread out the people across the city,
(01:46:45):
you know,
(01:46:46):
that’s huge.
(01:46:47):
And getting rid...
(01:46:48):
You know,
(01:46:48):
I don’t want to say scrap the Quality of Life Department,
(01:46:50):
you know,
(01:46:50):
because I can’t speak for everyone that works in the Quality of Life Department.
(01:46:53):
But if you, you know, you could probably...
(01:46:57):
condense a few departments.
(01:46:59):
You know, the DPW people, they can clean up pretty much anything.
(01:47:03):
Yeah, this is a matter of union contracts and priorities.
(01:47:06):
Yeah.
(01:47:07):
But also, like, are city managers afraid to, like, shuttered apartments?
(01:47:13):
Our union contract that we just pre-negotiated, I’m surprised people even voted for a lot.
(01:47:21):
when they dangle a raise in front of you,
(01:47:22):
I mean,
(01:47:23):
you kind of have to take it,
(01:47:24):
but we could have fought for a lot more than what we got.
(01:47:27):
I think a lot of people are worried about just being told no.
(01:47:30):
And also no one wants to be the squeaky wheel.
(01:47:33):
No,
(01:47:33):
but you know,
(01:47:34):
and their argument was when we had all the union meetings was it took 18 months to
(01:47:38):
negotiate the contract,
(01:47:39):
but the way the contract is set up,
(01:47:42):
um,
(01:47:43):
when the raise goes through,
(01:47:44):
you get back pay for everything from when the negotiation started to whatever.
(01:47:48):
So even if it took two years,
(01:47:50):
you know,
(01:47:51):
if that got us an extra percent and a half per,
(01:47:54):
per year,
(01:47:55):
I think it was worth it.
(01:47:57):
Unfortunately, my union mates didn’t agree with me.
(01:48:01):
But there was a couple of things that we could have worked on.
(01:48:03):
They restructured the vacation.
(01:48:05):
They changed our vacation and they changed our sick time.
(01:48:07):
It’s better in the short term, but if you’re,
(01:48:11):
The people who got shafted were the people that worked between five to 10 years.
(01:48:14):
But if you worked over 10 years, you benefited.
(01:48:16):
And if you worked under five years, you benefited.
(01:48:18):
It was kind of the people in the middle got shafted.
(01:48:21):
They changed their earning rates.
(01:48:23):
But now we’re not capped with – we don’t have to use our vacation.
(01:48:27):
It rolls over now, which is nice.
(01:48:29):
The vacation rolls – or the sick time rolls over too, which is nice.
(01:48:33):
That is nice.
(01:48:34):
The cap is ridiculous.
(01:48:35):
It’s like 2,000 hours.
(01:48:36):
Oh, wow.
(01:48:38):
There are people,
(01:48:39):
I’ve worked with a bunch of people,
(01:48:41):
not specifically in my department too,
(01:48:42):
but just like the other departments who have already reached the cap of 2,000
(01:48:46):
hours.
(01:48:47):
You know, they’ve worked there 20 years.
(01:48:48):
You don’t take any sick time pride in their work.
(01:48:52):
But we have a lot of guys that have been there 20, 25 years who have never used a sick day.
(01:48:58):
Is it discouraged?
(01:49:00):
No, no.
(01:49:01):
I think now it kind of, well, now that we have to email and send everything in,
(01:49:06):
Beforehand,
(01:49:07):
if I wanted to call out sick or text out sick,
(01:49:10):
I could literally text just my supervisor be like 80 and then leave it at that.
(01:49:15):
And that was it.
(01:49:16):
Now they want all this paperwork and the record that we’re doing it.
(01:49:19):
You know, it’s kind of a hassle for me to take.
(01:49:22):
I can’t sign into my work email outside of home.
(01:49:24):
For some reason it doesn’t work and nor would I really want to.
(01:49:29):
But I’m not allowed to.
(01:49:30):
So I have to send it for my personal email and because they have city emails,
(01:49:35):
It doesn’t always go through.
(01:49:36):
And I don’t, I use ProtonMail, so I’m paying for a service and it,
(01:49:40):
I think it flies at a spam sometimes.
(01:49:42):
Fascinating.
(01:49:45):
I’ve only had to call out 1-6 since they’ve changed this.
(01:49:48):
But that’s a whole list of concerns you didn’t used to have.
(01:49:51):
Yeah.
(01:49:51):
Versus just sending the guy a two-second text.
(01:49:54):
Now I’ve got to CC five different people in an email for something that took me...
(01:49:58):
When I do that,
(01:49:58):
they accuse me of criminal harassment.
(01:50:02):
In the last few minutes,
(01:50:03):
because I actually need to get to the forum that’s going to happen shortly at
(01:50:06):
Mechanics Hall.
(01:50:07):
Do you have anything else you’d like to make sure people know about what it’s like
(01:50:11):
working for the city of Western?
(01:50:12):
You know,
(01:50:13):
I think the city has a lot to offer if you can get your foot in the door and you’re
(01:50:19):
able to network.
(01:50:20):
But the big thing is you have to be able to network.
(01:50:22):
If you’re not good at social skills and you’re not good at making friends with
(01:50:25):
other people,
(01:50:27):
it’s kind of difficult to move around.
(01:50:29):
And now,
(01:50:29):
obviously,
(01:50:30):
with,
(01:50:30):
you know,
(01:50:31):
federal regulations changing,
(01:50:32):
DEI kind of disappearing,
(01:50:35):
you know,
(01:50:35):
it’s going to be
(01:50:36):
different the landscaping or for the landscaping the hiring landscape um but you
(01:50:41):
know it’s still kind of difficult to get in but once you’re in you know you can
(01:50:47):
move around i don’t have to stay in worcester i can go to holden i can go to
(01:50:50):
fitchburg my pension carries over everything carries over um you do get kind of i’m
(01:50:56):
we don’t get paid as much as obviously public or private workers but what we pay in
(01:51:00):
health insurance what i get in retirement what i get in benefits far outweighs you
(01:51:06):
know
(01:51:06):
all the other stuff what what some of my friends are paying for health insurance
(01:51:10):
for you know for per paycheck i pay that per month you know so it still makes sense
(01:51:15):
as a career choice it’s a good it’s a good career um if you can and just if you can
(01:51:21):
keep your nose to the grindstone do physical work um it’s not bad if you try to
(01:51:28):
fight against
(01:51:29):
what your department’s doing or you try to cause or raise any questions or anything
(01:51:33):
like that,
(01:51:35):
that can cause a conflict.
(01:51:37):
And conflicts obviously aren’t fun.
(01:51:40):
The city doesn’t really like to handle conflict.
(01:51:44):
But like certain things like with DTM, I’ve questioned some of their engineering choices.
(01:51:48):
Obviously, I’m not an engineer.
(01:51:50):
I’m a person who drives a car.
(01:51:51):
I’m a person that runs in the city.
(01:51:53):
I’m a person that bikes in the city.
(01:51:55):
So I mean, their changes affect me as a citizen.
(01:51:59):
They’re kind of receptive.
(01:52:02):
They’re very receptive to public feedback.
(01:52:04):
They’re very receptive to what the public wants to hear.
(01:52:08):
They don’t want to admit that they’re, you know, no one wants to admit that they’re wrong.
(01:52:12):
for anything, obviously.
(01:52:13):
So that’s the problem with Worcester,
(01:52:15):
is if they were to admit,
(01:52:17):
if they were to take any accountability for all the shit we’ve been discussing,
(01:52:21):
that would require admitting how many different ways and how many different people
(01:52:25):
they’ve been fucking over in the exact same way.
(01:52:28):
And they literally cannot afford the financial cost of
(01:52:32):
of what that would look like no and that’s and i think that’s kind of why we don’t
(01:52:36):
tow cars i think that’s why we don’t do a lot of the things i i think it’s a fear
(01:52:42):
that you make one misstep you open up the case of a lawsuit and you know no one
(01:52:47):
wants to deal with that no one wants to deal with all the paperwork no one wants to
(01:52:50):
deal with the headaches the bad press any of that that goes along with it so
(01:52:54):
worcester tries to be um
(01:52:57):
I’d say we’re very passive in terms of how anything is enforced.
(01:53:00):
You know,
(01:53:01):
it sucks for the people that do have stuff that gets ledged against them,
(01:53:04):
whether it’s neighbor against neighbor,
(01:53:05):
your grass is too high,
(01:53:06):
you have an unregistered car on your drive or whatever,
(01:53:08):
you know,
(01:53:08):
that’s quality of life.
(01:53:10):
But,
(01:53:10):
you know,
(01:53:11):
it sucks if you have a neighbor that complains,
(01:53:12):
but if you live in a nicer part of the,
(01:53:14):
or I shouldn’t say,
(01:53:15):
if you have nicer neighbors who aren’t going to complain,
(01:53:19):
you know,
(01:53:20):
you’re going to get along fine.
(01:53:22):
A lot of it’s just who makes the most noise.
(01:53:26):
And they get what they want, regardless if it’s correct or not.
(01:53:30):
You know,
(01:53:31):
if someone complains about something in front of their house,
(01:53:33):
they’re going to get more attention than someone who doesn’t.
(01:53:36):
If they complain that the system is rigged in their favor or not in their favor,
(01:53:41):
They’re going to get what they want.
(01:53:42):
And,
(01:53:42):
you know,
(01:53:43):
all of these people who live in District 2,
(01:53:46):
who live in Kelly Square,
(01:53:47):
who live in the ballpark area,
(01:53:49):
I wish you would write your city rep.
(01:53:52):
I just feel so bad tagging the people that live there.
(01:53:55):
I feel so bad tagging the people that work there.
(01:53:58):
The city needs to do more for the people that work there, right?
(01:54:01):
If you work on Green Street and you’re a bartender, you know, and you need long-term parking,
(01:54:08):
if you can’t park on the green street lot, you have to go park at union station.
(01:54:12):
Now walking from green street to union station two in the morning,
(01:54:15):
you know,
(01:54:16):
downtown Worcester,
(01:54:16):
if you’re a female,
(01:54:17):
you know,
(01:54:18):
you probably don’t want to do that.
(01:54:19):
You know, you know, it’s a security thing, a safety thing.
(01:54:22):
If the city did something to,
(01:54:24):
to benefit,
(01:54:24):
you know,
(01:54:26):
the people are willing to pay,
(01:54:27):
the people are willing to put in the money in the system.
(01:54:29):
If they’re,
(01:54:29):
you know,
(01:54:30):
if they gave them long-term parking options,
(01:54:32):
they would take it,
(01:54:33):
you know,
(01:54:33):
and Pawn street,
(01:54:34):
right,
(01:54:34):
right off of green street.
(01:54:35):
If you drive down Pawn street,
(01:54:37):
starting from the harding street side there’s meters and then in front of the the
(01:54:42):
one house that’s there it says no parking between the hours of 7am to 5pm and then
(01:54:51):
it says resident parking 5pm to 7am so you know essentially if you have the
(01:54:58):
resident permit there and if you follow what the sign says
(01:55:01):
You’re not allowed to park in front of your house,
(01:55:03):
you know,
(01:55:04):
and there’s there’s tons and tons and tons and tons of areas in the city where like
(01:55:08):
the signage is conflicting.
(01:55:09):
And,
(01:55:10):
you know,
(01:55:10):
until the city does a better job of stalling up bus stops or putting signs with
(01:55:17):
intersections.
(01:55:17):
I went to Woonsocket,
(01:55:18):
Rhode Island out of all places and driving down their residential streets,
(01:55:23):
every single side street,
(01:55:24):
they stalled out.
(01:55:25):
exactly 20 feet of the intersections.
(01:55:27):
They stalled out the fire hydrants.
(01:55:29):
They saw that stalling out is like, Oh, they painted it.
(01:55:31):
So you knew exactly how close you could or couldn’t be,
(01:55:33):
you know,
(01:55:34):
and obviously Worcester is a much bigger place.
(01:55:36):
Pain is very expensive.
(01:55:37):
They’re not using the stuff that loads.
(01:55:38):
They have to use stuff that’s highly reflective.
(01:55:39):
It has to be weather resistant has to be all of this,
(01:55:42):
but you know,
(01:55:43):
repainting in front of city hall versus,
(01:55:44):
you know,
(01:55:45):
stalling out a few intersections,
(01:55:46):
right.
(01:55:47):
You know, the city halls changed.
(01:55:49):
Oh gosh, probably four times in 10 years.
(01:55:51):
You know, they need to pick a design and stick with it.
(01:55:54):
You know, you have,
(01:55:55):
Another conflicting thing,
(01:55:56):
right on Franklin Street,
(01:55:57):
they put up these handicap signs,
(01:55:59):
but then it says commercial loading right on top of it.
(01:56:01):
And,
(01:56:01):
you know,
(01:56:02):
there’s all of these weird spots where,
(01:56:04):
like,
(01:56:05):
someone just...
(01:56:06):
Yeah,
(01:56:06):
you know,
(01:56:07):
and,
(01:56:07):
like,
(01:56:07):
the WRTA people,
(01:56:08):
I’ve had...
(01:56:10):
They park on Foster Street,
(01:56:13):
the bus drivers themselves.
(01:56:14):
I don’t know if they have a lot to park in, but a lot of them will park on Foster Street.
(01:56:18):
I wind up tagging them.
(01:56:19):
They were on strike, oh, gosh, I don’t know, a year or two ago.
(01:56:24):
So I tagged them.
(01:56:26):
I tagged a couple and I walked up and I saw them.
(01:56:28):
They were on strike and they started screaming at me about how we don’t tag for the
(01:56:31):
bus stops and all of this.
(01:56:33):
And unfortunately,
(01:56:34):
like...
(01:56:34):
I wish that Worcester communicated with the WRTA on so many different levels.
(01:56:38):
Yeah, you know, if we could communicate with the WRTA and we can change some of the signs.
(01:56:44):
119 Belmont Street says resident parking and then it says bus stop, right?
(01:56:46):
If we could like get the WRTA to put signs in like better spots or,
(01:56:51):
you know,
(01:56:52):
some sort of stalling because they have money to...
(01:56:54):
They could just communicate ahead of time.
(01:56:55):
Yeah, you know, and like these signs are on top of each other.
(01:56:59):
We won’t tag the bus stop unless they’re like directly under the sign or within five feet.
(01:57:04):
Makes sense.
(01:57:06):
20 feet again,
(01:57:06):
you might as well be a mile unless it’s painted installed at which they’re not,
(01:57:09):
unless you’re around City Hall.
(01:57:11):
Right.
(01:57:12):
You know, just stuff like that.
(01:57:14):
And I wish more people would complain.
(01:57:16):
I wish more people would contact the city.
(01:57:18):
You know, any sort of concerns, people should reach out to DTM.
(01:57:21):
They’re very receptive.
(01:57:23):
I can’t speak for City Hall themselves.
(01:57:26):
But DTM is receptive.
(01:57:27):
DTM themselves is very receptive.
(01:57:30):
All of the people that work there,
(01:57:31):
you know,
(01:57:32):
it’s tough because they get told one thing from the city council.
(01:57:36):
And then they go to implement it.
(01:57:37):
And then,
(01:57:37):
you know,
(01:57:37):
there’s obviously challenges between state,
(01:57:39):
federal,
(01:57:40):
you know,
(01:57:40):
local regulations.
(01:57:41):
Whereas the people are still expecting what they saw at city council.
(01:57:44):
Correct.
(01:57:44):
And, you know, things have changed 15 times over.
(01:57:47):
Now what they’re proposing for Chandler Street.
(01:57:51):
That’s a whole other episode.
(01:57:52):
Yeah, that’s a whole other episode in itself.
(01:57:54):
But we, you know, we’re going to be the ones that are going to have to enforce it.
(01:57:57):
And just the way that’s not, you know, business friendly, the way they’re going to set that up.
(01:58:00):
Supposedly too, Maine South is going to get a similar redesign.
(01:58:05):
Good.
(01:58:06):
I mean, it’s long overdue.
(01:58:07):
Yeah, but again, where are the cars going to go?
(01:58:09):
And Chandler is very different than Main South.
(01:58:11):
No, absolutely.
(01:58:12):
So, you know, you can’t treat the two places the same.
(01:58:14):
And obviously, Main South, you know, people can’t really park on side streets.
(01:58:17):
A lot of the side streets are major arteries, again.
(01:58:19):
So you park off of Main Street, you’re on May Street.
(01:58:22):
I don’t envy Batista, but I still wish she did a better job for how much she was paid.
(01:58:27):
I’m going to thank you so much for taking the time to meet today.
(01:58:31):
Yeah, absolutely.
(01:58:32):
And I will...
