The fourth and final meeting of SomerVision came to the Armory, Thursday March 31. - Photo by Andrew Firestone

SomerVision plans for the future

By Andrew Firestone

The fourth and final meeting of SomerVision came to the Armory, Thursday March 31, and residents were able to discuss and make recommendations for the future of Somerville.

Discussing issues such as neighborhood safety, community development, transit and lifestyle, job development, housing and municipal financial self-sufficiency, SomerVision was a hotbed of American urban discourse. The meeting was run by OSPCD Director George Proakis, and saw the groups divided into tables in order to discuss pressing issues.

Issues ranged from concerns over gentrification to public safety, but there were many positive attributes the attendees discussed. Writing their concerns on specially designed issue sheets, and also monitoring their concerns on large table-charts with blue stickers, the meeting proved to be a milestone in discussing where the city was heading, and what needed to be done.

Barbara Mangum, who sent three of her children through the school system said that the only need there was to maintain and improve. “It’s been really, really good,” she said, “and I just hope we keep that up.”

“I just love living in Somerville, I think it gets better all the time, and I’d like that to be extended to more people,” said Lee Auspitz, a 45-year resident. “I just think that the golden thread of Somerville is to make it a nice place to live, and things follow from that.”

~Photo by Andrew Firestone

Auspitz said his main concern in SomerVision was the lack of identifying new growth in the city. “The obsession where everyone wants to be a real estate developer idea seems to me to be mistaken,” he said. “If you start looking for grand economic development projects, those are very iffy as they depend on the private sector.

“Over the last 10 years there as been incurrent dollars, about $1.2 billion of new growth in the residential sector, more than twice that in the business sector,” he said, “and the maximum you can expect from Assembly Square over 20 years is a billion dollars growth.”

“That is a massive blind spot in this planning process,” he said.

Another related concern involved the rising housing costs, and the continued burden on residential tax payers.

“What’s really important to me is the diversity of cultures here in Somerville and it is an area of concern to me and to a lot of people what’s going to happen in terms of quote-un-quote gentrification or rising real estate costs of living here,” said Karen Milloy. “People always point to Davis Square being both a success story and cautionary tale.”

“I like to have different things to do, variety coming into the squares,” said 8-year resident Kyann Anderson. “Variety of where I eat, and what I do. Cultural energy, I like that.”