By Joseph A. Curtatone 

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

Taking a closer look at notable city data – and interesting numbers.

39 percent of pipes over 100 years old: We’ve spent the year celebrating Somerville’s 175th birthday. Astonishingly, some of our water and sewer pipes aren’t far behind with 39 percent of them being more than 100 years old. But unlike our city, these pipes aren’t getting better with age. The expected lifespan of water and sewer mains is about 50 years, meaning roughly 40 percent of our system is more than a half-century overdue for an upgrade. And Somerville is not alone. The aging infrastructure crisis across the country – whether it’s bridges, roads or utilities like electric and water – just keeps mounting while much needed federal support just hasn’t kept up.

That’s why we’ve begun to find ways locally to more aggressively pursue our Water and Sewer Capital Improvement Plan and take on bigger infrastructure projects like the work in Union Square and on Cedar Street. By the time we get to our 200th birthday, the goal is to have a much younger water and sewer system.

$1.75 million City affordable housing contribution: Recently, we celebrated the Somerville Housing Authority’s transformation of the historic Mystic Water Works Pumping Station into 25 units designated for low-income seniors and persons with disabilities. All of the affordable housing projects in the City require many different agencies, organizations, and City departments to work together, and often City staff are working tirelessly to pull together needed funding support that can make or break a project. For the Waterworks, the City contributed $1.75 million (just over 13 percent of the total project cost) from a variety of sources including funds from the Community Preservation Act, Somerville Affordable Housing Trust, and grants from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development HOME initiative as well as the U.S. Community Development Block Grant program. The collaborative and creative work by all involved in the project delivered some much-needed affordable housing to our community.

4 days median permit application approval time: Although the number of building, electrical, and plumbing permits has increased over the past three fiscal years, average time from permit application to approval has remained low. The median approval time was just 4 days for permits issues in Fiscal Year 15 through Fiscal Year 17, and 91 percent of permits in those three categories plus gas fitting and demolition were approved within 34 days.

Of course there are outliers and exceptions particularly for larger projects and demolition permits that typically require many additional steps before approval. However, the approval time is an improvement over where we were several years ago and can be attributed to numerous factors like moving permit applications online and better communication and coordination between City departments like Inspectional Services, Planning and Zoning, Health and Human Services, and others.

31.6% of registered voters: Somerville’s voter turnout for the Nov. 7 municipal election was the highest in years. With 31.6% of registered voters taking part, it was more than twice the turnout seen in 2015. Somerville should be proud to have such an improved turnout.

One webmaster: Meanwhile, unofficial vote tallies were also posted for the public at record speed this year thanks to new reporting systems supported by the State. Several years ago we created VoteSomerville.com to share unofficial election results quickly in an easy-to-read format, but the system required staff to get the vote tallies in person from every precinct, run back to City Hall, work in teams to read the tallies off of paper printout and type them into a shared spread sheet, and then our webmaster entered the double-checked numbers into the site. Generally it took a couple dozen people a few hours to finish. Now, thanks to modernization efforts by the Elections Department, those results come quickly and digitally so our awesome webmaster can get this done in just about 30 minutes all by himself (results were up by about 8:30 p.m.). Official tallies still require a full official Elections Dept. crew and a good deal of procedure of course, and those final results can be found at Somervillema.gov/elections.

31.6 percent of the Halloween vote: Another election took place this month as well oddly with the same percentage (31.6%) being of note. At this year’s Haunted Hall Halloween event, the City’s SomerStat Office of Innovation and Analytics polled our pint-sized attendees for their favorite monster. It was a nail biter with just 14 votes separating the first through fourth place finisher. ‘Monsters, Inc.’ character Sully barely squeaked by Cookie Monster, earning 31.62 percent of the vote and a first place victory. Godzilla came in third and Frankenstein was fourth. In the spirit of clean elections, a full recount was administered to verify the numbers.

Data-based decision making is at the core of how the City of Somerville develops policy and sets priorities. Every day we check the latest 311 stats, and throughout the week we meet for in-depth review of departmental data and city trends. The monthly Data Download column shares some of the data we’ve been reviewing recently, as well as interesting updates. To see more Somerville Data, visit the online Somerville Data Farm at http://www.somervillema.gov/datafarm/.