By Mayor Joseph A. Curtatone

(The opinions and views expressed in the commentaries of The Somerville News belong solely to the authors of those commentaries and do not reflect the views or opinions of The Somerville News, its staff or publishers.)

  In city hall, one of the best aspects of summertime in Somerville is that the summer help arrives.  I‚Äôm not talking about the teens working in the Mayor‚Äôs Summer Jobs Program, although I appreciate their enthusiasm and the very real contributions they make while they‚Äôre here. But I‚Äôm thinking of the college and graduate students who come to us as summer interns to gain experience in the way city government works ‚Äì and, more specifically, how a community like Somerville undertakes major service improvements and policy innovations in an era of fiscal austerity.

After all, we spend fewer tax dollars per capita than any city in Massachusetts with a population of 50,000 or more, but we‚Äôve still been able to improve our schools, hire new police officers and firefighters, invest in basic infrastructure like roads and sewers, and provide new services like 311 and Connect CTY ‚Äì all at a time when many other communities across the state are struggling with Prop 2¬Ω overrides, budget cuts, reductions in service and layoffs.   

Of course, it would be more than a little ironic for an intern to ask the question:  ‚ÄúHow does Somerville do more with less?‚Äù because one of the answers is ‚ÄúWe get great interns and work them very, very hard.‚Äù   

Somerville has gained a reputation as a great place to gain insight into the challenges and possibilities of city government, so we get our pick of some of the best young people from the best schools in the country.  (And it doesn‚Äôt hurt that some of the best schools in the country are in the neighborhood.)  Our interns get to work on projects that enrich their education.  In return, they provide research, analytical skills and administrative support that allow us to make the most of our limited resources.  Together, they constitute a tremendous asset for the city and its residents.

This year, we have thirteen interns and two Rappaport fellows.  The interns are spread out across a wide range of city departments: four of them are working at the Office of Strategic Planning and Community Development (SPCD); three of them are at SomerStat; two are with the Police Department; and Health, Finance, Historic Preservation and Personnel have one each.  They come to us from Tufts, Harvard, MIT, Yale, Northeastern, U-Mass Boston, and Rutgers.   The undergrads are majoring in Political Science, Sociology & Health, Biochemistry & Public Health, and International Affairs.  The graduate students are earning masters or doctoral degrees in Public Policy, Public Administration, Urban Planning and Landscape Architecture. And it wasn‚Äôt easy for them to get here: we had ten applicants for every one of these internships so we could afford to be choosy.  (Ten to one is a ratio of applicants to positions that most colleges and universities would envy.)

Our two Rappaport fellows actually come from two different fellowship programs.  One comes to us courtesy of a Rappaport Foundation program designed to provide opportunities to work with public sector managers and organizations on major policy issues.  Participation in the Rappaport Fellows for Law and Public Policy is open to law students from BC, BU, Harvard, New England School of Law, Northeastern and Suffolk.  Somerville also draws heavily on the fellowship program that runs out of the Rappaport Institute at Harvard‚Äôs Kennedy School, which funds annual twelve area graduate students to work full-time over the summer for a state or local agency.  The competition is to get into both programs is intense.

Over the past three years, our Rappaport fellows have ended up having a direct, positive and enduring impact on the lives of our residents. In 2006, Rebecca Haessig of the Kennedy School did extremely important analytical work that provided the foundation for our current ACE customer service initiative.   Another past Rappaport fellow is Maria Ortiz Perez, who came to work with us in 2005 from Suffolk University‚Äôs Sawyer School of Management.  Many local business owners have gotten to know her quite well: as a summer fellow, she did such a good job helping to set up East Somerville Main Streets that she is currently working as the city‚Äôs Business Development Specialist (and co-host of ‚ÄúTalking Business‚Äù on City Cable).

All of which brings me to our 2007 Rappaport fellows.  We‚Äôre fortunate this summer to have Amanda Stout join us from MIT to work at SPCD on traffic planning issues. And we‚Äôre very happy to welcome back Tasha Bahal from Northeastern Law School.  Tasha is spending the summer in our Law Department working on the complex regulatory issues that affect our ability to control skyrocketing health insurance costs.  It‚Äôs important work, but we know Tasha‚Äôs up to the task because she‚Äôs no stranger: before she entered law school last fall, she worked as an analyst in our SomerStat program.

All in all, we get a lot from our summer help, and we like to think they get something valuable from us in return.  And taking advantage of this talent pool of young professionals is another way that we do more with less.