Election Day Scenes at Brookline’s Coolidge Corner

By Gabrielle Miller
BU News Service

College Student Traverses Brookline to Support Candidate

Starting at 5 a.m. Election Day, Malcolm Kelly began crisscrossing Brookline to campaign at every polling place he could for Curt Meyers, a candidate for state representative.

Kelly, originally from Quincy, had driven to Brookline from Schenectady, N.Y., where he’s a senior at Union College. He has been running Meyers’ campaign since the summer. Meyers, a Republican, ran against incumbent Democrat Frank Smizik, who had not faced a challenger for more than a decade. Kelly became involved because he and Meyers were close friends.

 “It’s a very small race that not many people know about,” said Kelly, who was handing out flyers and standing near Curt Meyers for Brookline signs at one of his stops, the Coolidge Corner Public Library. The race is for the 15th Norfolk District in Brookline.

 His goal was to reach all 16 precincts before voting ended Tuesday.

“I’m just trying to get people last minute, put his name in their heads,” said Kelly.

  When asked if he planned to vote, Kelly said he would if he had time.

“If I make it back to Quincy yeah, but I am actually have to go back to school tonight,” he said.

But he cannot vote for Meyers, given he is not from Brookline.

Clinician Hopes Support for Public Programs Continue

Sandra Maislen is concerned about the condition of Massachusetts.

“There’s a lot of people in the state that go to bed hungry, there’s a lot of people in the state that are homeless, there’s a lot of people in the state still without jobs,” said Maislen, who picked Democrat Martha Coakley over Republican Charlie Baker in the gubernatorial race.

Maislen, a Democrat, supports public programs and wants to protect programs that help those in need. She is no stranger to health care and public policy as the division director for developmental medicine at Boston Children’s Hospital.

“I’ve been in Massachusetts under Republican administrations where I felt like programs were cut for poorer people…we have to support everyone. For those of us who are fortunate, we have to help the less fortunate,” she said.

She was concerned that Baker would cut public programs. “I worry if we have a Republican hard line that programs for people that are having trouble making it won’t exist any longer,” she said.

Maislen planned on staying up late Tuesday to hear the results as part of her Election Day ritual.

“I don’t think it’s a sure thing,” she said.

Former and Future BU Terriers at the Polls

A Brookline father tried a different form of entertainment for his 4-year-old son Tuesday morning. Instead of playtime at the playground, he took his son on an excursion to the polls. After Albert L’Etoile voted, his son Charlie ran around the flagpole outside of the Coolidge Corner Public Library

“We’re going to wear our ‘I Voted’ stickers,” said Charlie’s father, Albert, when asked about their Election Day rituals.

Even though Charlie is too young for school, he’s already a Boston University Terrier at heart. His parents are BU alumni and met in college.

“We go to BU and see our friend Rhett. Have you ever seen Rhett?” asked Charlie.

His father voted for Charlie Baker.

“I liked a lot of the points he made. I thought they were stronger, and more aligned with my thoughts,” said L’Etoile.

Election Day Scenes from Allston

By Jun Tsuboike
BU News Service

 Couple Votes for First Time as US Citizens

Abdul Kader and Farhana Safi voted for the first time as United States citizens on Tuesday and noticed a big difference from their native Bangladesh. They did not have to sign their names on the ballot.

 “They don’t know who’s voting for who,” said Kader. “That’s a good thing.”

 In Bangladesh, until reforms in 2008, the government required voters to write their names on their ballot. Both Kader and Safi, who live in Allston, became American citizens in July.

Their first time as voters, they just checked off the Democratic candidates’ names.

 “We believe that a lot of them are for the middle class,” said Kader

 “Same as him,” said Safi.

 Kader and Safi watched the televised gubernatorial debates. Although they thought Republican candidate Charlie Baker was “nice,” Democrat Martha Coakley won their support.

 “Nobody’s perfect, but her thinking is better,” said Kader. “Martha Coakley can do better for both the city and the state.”

“Same as him,” said Safi.

 Custodian Stumps for Coakley

 Chris Daly is not a die-hard Martha Coakley fan, but that didn’t stop him from holding up a Coakley-Kerrigan sign at the Jackson Mann School on Tuesday.

 “Charlie Baker scares me,” said Daly. “He will wipe out the middle class.”

 Daly, a custodian, said he feared Baker would mimic the moves of former Republican Gov. Mitt Romney. Daly said Romney made cuts to social services during his tenure.

 Coakley  isn’t his favorite person, but he’s “on her side for now,” Daly said.

He predicted Coakley would win Boston, but he wasn’t sure about the rest of the state.

By John-Michael Sedor
BU News Service

Mindy Dobrow, owner of the Brookline Grooming and Pet Supplies store, talks about being in business for 40 years and what her store has to offer to the pet community Brookline, MA.

By Maysie Childs
BU News Service

Increasing sustainability is a goal in many towns and communities, but in Brookline it is a reality. According to a Brookline Solid Waste Advisory Committee meeting on Feb.11 at the Health And Human Services Department, more and more of Brookline’s “stuff” is recycled each year.

According to reports from the town Department of Public Works, the SWAC’s efforts to cut costs of waste removal, which are calculated per pound, are working. There is a slight and steady decrease in solid waste of about seven tons per year, board members said, and the recycling weight is up about 14 tons this year.

“We’re talking trash here,” Ed Gilbert, a representative from the Brookline DPW, said. In the 10 years Gilbert has been in Brookline, he has seen a yearly decrease in trash weight.

“There is a point to which you can get people to recycle,” Gilbert said, “And we have gotten to this point, you can’t get much lower.”

SWAC members promote recycling through community participation and encouragement.

Meeting chairman John Dempsey said the members helped to get single-stream recycling implemented with 65-gallon blue carts and automatic collection.

But SWAC members want to get the total weight of solid waste and the costs of trash pick-up even lower. Starting this May, Brookline officials plan to implement a program in which residents will drop off kitchen waste at a transfer station to cut trash pick-up costs.

A potential problem for residents is that the transfer station is accessible only by car.

“We’d do much better if we had drop-off sites in the denser neighborhoods of North Brookline,” Dempsey said.

Local drop-offs are more costly though, and would mean residents near the site have to worry about pests, rodents and odors that accompany heaps of kitchen waste.

Cambridge has implemented a program for curbside collection of kitchen waste.

“We are letting Cambridge be the guinea pigs on curbside collection,” Dempsey said. “We’ll see how their program goes before trying to institute a similar program in Brookline.”

Cambridge has a bigger budget for waste removal than Brookline.

SWAC members said they are cautious about taking the same leap because the program will increase labor costs.

“They [Cambridge] still have two guys on the back of a truck,” Gilbert said. “Their labor costs are through the roof.”

Another area of focus and measureable success for SWAC members are the organized Styrofoam drop-offs. SWAC members say they realize the drop-offs locations are costly, at $250 per drop-off, and time-consuming.

However, according to Susan Rittling, a SWAC member, what started as a “publicity gimmick” is keeping Styrofoam out of residents’ blue carts or recycling bins.

At the last meeting in late January, Rittling and Cynthia Snow, another committee member, were among the volunteers who gave their weekend to host the event. They recall hours of standing in the cold stripping pieces of tape off Styrofoam materials so over 400 pounds of it could be disposed of properly.

“By making a big deal about the drop-off, we were trying to emphasize the message, ‘Don’t put it in your cart,’” Dempsey said. “People got so jazzed by the idea of us properly recycling expanded polystyrene [Styrofoam] they started to expect drop-offs every few months, or at least once a year.”

Dempsey said they have helped create a culture of recycling in town.

Brookline residents recently got all local businesses to switch from plastic to paper bags, and paper cups have replaced Styrofoam.

“As far as I can see, people have adapted pretty well,” Dempsey said.

While waiting to see how the curbside collection goes in Cambridge, the SWAC will also continue efforts to start a program for swap shops to get reusable clothes and furniture out of the waste stream and into the hands of those in need.

By Angelo Verzoni
BU News Service

BROOKLINE, Mass. – Whole Foods is one step closer to opening its latest Massachusetts store here on Beacon St. next month thanks to a prepared food license granted by the town last week, and local businesses say they do not fear the grocery chain will poach customers.

“It’s probably going to generate more business for me,” Nassib Lutfi, co-owner of Temptations Cafe, which sits on the block of Beacon St. between St. Mary’s St. and Carlton St. where Whole Foods will open its first Brookline location, said in an interview last Wednesday.

“I think it’s going to generate more traffic to the area. More people are going to come here because Whole Foods is here,” said Lutfi, who owns another Temptations location in Coolidge Corner and a third on Huntington Avenue in Boston. “We’ve been needing something like this for a really long time.”

The Brookline Board of Selectmen issued Whole Foods Market Inc. a license to sell prepared food items at the soon-to-open Beacon St. location last Tuesday at its regular weekly meeting.

Whole Foods announced in October its purchase of six locations from Johnnie’s Foodmaster, a Massachusetts-based chain founded in 1947. Foodmaster closed all 10 of its locations in November. Its Brookline location, called Johnnie’s Fresh Market, will re-open its doors as a Whole Foods on April 15, according to an executive present at Tuesday’s meeting. It will boast outdoor seating for 35 people and about 80 employees.

Chris Takis, who owns Busy Bee Restaurant, also on Beacon St., seconded Lutfi’s opinion. Whole Foods moving in next door will be “good for business,” he said quickly and confidently.

“The Whole Foods demographic is a higher-income demographic,” Sam Fitzpatrick, manager of Japonaise Bakery and Cafe, which also neighbors the soon-to-be Whole Foods on Beacon St., said in an interview last Thursday. “That demographic we feel we do better with … because our products are high-end, high-quality. We feel that the Whole Foods customers will appreciate that, and the traffic going there will also come here and help our business.”

Japonaise has another location in Cambridge and a third near Boston University’s West Campus on Commonwealth Ave.

Alevtina Guseva, who teaches the sociology of markets at Boston University, said in a telephone interview last Wednesday that grocery stores do not generally drive out small businesses, as, for example, the mega-chain Wal-Mart has been accused of doing.

“I think the whole area needs some revitalization. [Whole Foods is] going to spruce everything up and bring more people to that particular area,” predicted Guseva, who is also a Brookline resident.

An attorney representing Whole Foods and executives from the company appeared at Tuesday’s selectmen’s meeting, requesting a common victualler license, which allows a business to sell prepared food items, and outdoor seating. Both requests were approved by the selectmen in a unanimous vote. There are currently 22 Whole Foods in Massachusetts with similar licensing, Whole Foods’ attorney Michael Scott said at the meeting.

“Whole Foods at this location is going to be great for the neighborhood,” said Robert Allen, who has a law office in Brookline Village and spoke at the meeting, representing the owners of land adjacent to Whole Foods’ property. “We’re very happy that Whole Foods is there.”

“We hope that the outdoor seating doesn’t create a nuisance but just adds to the vibrancy of that block,” said Sean Lynn-Jones, a Brookline Town Meeting member and resident, during Tuesday’s meeting. “There are wide sidewalks [there], and this brings people to them.”

Just before leaving the podium, Lynn-Jones called Whole Foods “a great addition to the area.”

BROOKLINE – Thirty inches of snow and whipping, freezing winds are not ideal weather conditions for running an open-air restaurant on wheels.  Foot traffic halts and parking spaces become snow mounds, making the food truck business a tough one during the cold winter months in Massachusetts.  However, the food trucks in Brookline aren’t ready to close their doors, or windows, just yet.

“Storms are typical here in Mass.,” said Bryan Peugh, owner of the Baja Taco Truck, “But we love our customers and love the business, so we stick it out.”

The Baja Taco Truck is one of the five trucks taking part in the Brookline Mobile Food Vendor Pilot Program.  Of the nine trucks that applied for the program, the Pennypacker’s Food Truck, the Paris Creperie, the Compliments Food Truck, Renula’s Greek Kitchen, and the Baja Taco Truck were chosen.  The program, which began on April 27, 2012, was granted an extension on October 16, when the Board of Selectmen unanimously voted to continue the pilot program for an additional six months. However, those six months are flying by for the owners who have seen drastically slowed sales during the winter months.

“Every day is different,” said Peugh, “On a typical winter day we maybe sell 60% of what we would in the fall or spring.”

The past few weeks in Brookline, however, have not been “typical winter days”.  With a 24-hour driving ban and a four-day parking ban caused by a major snowstorm, the food trucks in Brookline were at a standstill.

“When its really cold or extremely stormy, sales are down upwards of 75%, occasionally reaching nearly 100%,” said Peugh,  “Its really tricky, because at the beginning of each week we look at the forecast and try to plan orders based on what we see.  If we are off in our predictions, though, we can suffer big losses.”

On top of the storms, a large sewer separation project on the corner of Commonwealth Ave. and St. Mary’s St. has forced the trucks that are normally permitted to park there to shut down their grills and close their doors.  The project began in the beginning of January and is expected to continue through March.

“We were closed for seven weeks.  Between truck problems, then BU’s break, then the road construction which was pushed back even more because of the storm,” said Peugh.  “We lost two of our seven employees, but who can go seven weeks without a job? Not many.”

The Baja Taco Truck was able to reopen its doors on February 19 and is training new employees to help run the busy restaurant.

The Pennypacker’s Food truck, which also parks on St. Mary’s St., faced the same problem.

“The town basically told us sorry but you’re out of luck,” said Kevin McGuire, co-owner of the Pennypacker’s Truck sighing, “We were told two days before Christmas about the construction and we are still waiting for the second spot on the corner to be ready for our truck.”

Pennypacker’s, which also has a second truck that is located on Tide St. in South Boston, was able to open their doors a few days in various suburban towns in Massachusetts during the displacement. However, the revenue earned while open a few days a month is not comparable to the potential revenue of being open daily on the busy streets of the BU campus.

Many customers are also annoyed with the inability of the trucks to be at their usual spots around the BU campus.  Gemma Vardy, a Boston University student who often stops at the trucks to grab a “quick lunch”, was unhappy to learn about the displacement of the St. Mary’s St. vendors.

“Food trucks are such easy, on-the-go lunch spots,” said Vardy walking through campus, “So it’s unfortunate they haven’t been around because of the construction. I’m hoping once the warmer weather comes around so do the rest of the trucks.”

The extension of the pilot food vendor program ends in April of this year, but the food trucks are not ready to give up yet.

“There certainly are some challenges that we continue to face everyday,” said Peugh,” But its an awesome adventure and we love running the truck.”

BOSTON – No more Styrofoam coffee cups or containers, starting next year in Brookline.

Aubrey Jackson reports that residents attending Town Meeting banned the plastic foam, due to environmental concerns.