THE LAB RATS ARE US

 

If you’ve been calmly or uncalmly ignoring the economic alarm bells that now ring on what seems like a daily basis, this might be a good time for you to sit up and take notice.

If you thought the president’s warning that “there will be short-term pain” wasn’t meant for you, Walmart’s announcement that, due to the tariffs, they will be forced to raise their prices should serve as a much-needed reality check – even if you’ve never set foot in a Walmart.

Walmart’s claim to fame is price stability. The world’s largest retailer famously leans on its suppliers to accommodate its promise of “Everyday Low Prices” – a phrase that will soon take on a different meaning.

The president is now leaning on Walmart to eat those price increases. (Do you remember free-market, pro-business conservatism?) So far Walmart has shown no interest in complying with his demand.

So, how high will Walmart’s low prices go if they don’t cave to the president?  How could Walmart possibly know in today’s climate of certain uncertainty caused by on-again, off-again, up-again, down-again tariffs?

How will their customers respond to higher prices than they are used to − higher prices than many of them can afford?

We will soon find out. Think of it as an accidental experiment.

Whether they like it or not, the world’s largest retailer, with over 100 million weekly shoppers across the U.S. is now a giant economic laboratory with 100 million budget-conscious lab rats and a lot of economy-watchers peering through their windows.

For consumers, small business owners, and municipal governments (you know, like the one that governs the still somewhat townish city of Watertown), Walmart’s price hikes and how its customers respond might be exactly the kind of economic indicator that makes more and more people ask:

How much pain will there be?

And how long will it last?

Speaking of economic indicators…

Those of you who rely mostly on the stock market to predict the near-term economy may have reached the point when you’re ready to tune out the noisy rollercoaster and tune in to more reliable predictors.

And, since I have only the vaguest notion of what they would be, I asked ChatGBT to give me a list of all the economic indicators that experts use to take the temperature of the U.S. economy.

I expected my AI friend to give me 12 to 15, which would be a reasonable number for me to list in this blog post. Unfortunately, my AI friend handed me an unwieldy list of 90 (Walmart not included). You can see the list here.

What exactly was I supposed to do with 90 economic indicators? Sure, they would make me better prepared to follow the short or long-term wreckage resulting from the chaotic tariff uncertainties and might make me the center of attention at a future cocktail party, if I could figure out how to make sense of the mountain of information.

I thought about dropping the 90 indicators into a spreadsheet, so I could monitor each of them weekly monthly, or quarterly, depending on their update schedules.

I thought about it. But not for long.

Like many of you, I simply want to know:

Are we on the road to recession?

Or stagflation?

Or will we soon discover that we are already there?

Or does it even matter what the experts call it if we can feel it?

My somewhat reliable gut instinct tells me that for millions of Americans and thousands of Watertown residents, it’s all about the “Can’t Factor.”

The trip they can’t take, the car they can’t buy, the business they can’t start or maintain, the house they can’t buy, the apartment they can’t rent, the night out they can no longer afford, and the small indulgences that made life a little easier or more pleasant that they can’t continue to enjoy.

I wondered: Could there be a simple economic indicator that the average person, like me, can examine and follow that will give us a reading on the economic pain that many people are already experiencing? One that we don’t need a degree in economics to understand.

Something like the Walmart factor.

While the nearest Walmarts are about 10 miles away, it turns out that there’s another economic laboratory within walking distance from my house, where we can peer through the windows and observe the part of the economy.

It’s located at 197 California Street. Chances are you’ve been there.

It’s called McDonalds. 

This May 1, 2025 headline did not get nearly the attention it deserved:

IN THE FIRST QUARTER OF 2025, MCDONALD'S REPORTED A 3.6% DECLINE IN U.S. SALES—THE STEEPEST DROP SINCE 2020

This headline speaks volumes. And so do the details that go with it.

CEO Chris Kempczinski attributed this downturn to broader economic uncertainty (there’s that word again) and inflation (there’s that other word again), noting that even middle-income Americans are feeling the squeeze.

CFO Ian Borden highlighted that middle-income traffic dropped nearly double digits year-over-year, indicating that economic pressures are expanding beyond low-income households.

How does McDonald’s define low-income and middle-income?

McDonald’s doesn’t publicly publish those definitions, but based on marketing research practices and industry standards, their definitions typically align with national income brackets. Here's a general breakdown based on U.S. Census Bureau and Pew Research Center benchmarks:

Income Tier Annual Household Income

Low Income            Less than $50,000

Middle Income      $50,000 to $149,999

High Income           $150,000 and above

As an amateur economy watcher, It would be valuable to know if a growing number of customers with a household income of $100,000 to $150,000 have cut back on their Big Macs and fries due to the economy.

The headline also serves as an important reminder that the COVID-19 Recession was only five years ago and that we have absolutely no idea how many Americans nationally and locally, who lost their jobs, careers, businesses, and maybe their health, are still treading water.

 

For individuals, already struggling to stay afloat, an economy that delivers even short-term pain is about as tolerable as a sudden riptide.

In the category of small indulgences that make life a little easier or a little more pleasant, being able to spontaneously pull into a  McDonald’s drive-thru, without worrying about the cost of the meal might be high on the list of a lot of local lab rats.

But today, low and medium-income customers have to contend with the ever-rising costs of water and sewer rates, energy bills, property taxes, rent, insurance, food, clothing, and other necessities, all adding up to a skyrocketing cost of living, turning those small indulgences into unjustifiable luxuries.

In 2015, the average cost of a Big Mac Meal (which includes a medium-sized drink and medium fries) in the Watertown area was $5.99. In 2020, the price remained unchanged. By 2025 the average price of a Big Mac Meal reached $12.09. 

McDonald's knew that to win back their customers, they would need a rescue plan, designed for a tough economy that will likely get a lot tougher before it gets better.

They knew It would have to be value-driven. The plan is now in place. And so is the experiment. Whether it succeeds or fails will tell us a lot about where we are headed.

I will of course be checking their updates. In the meantime, whenever I find myself driving down California Street, usually around lunchtime, I make it a point to pull into the McDonald’s parking lot and count the number of cars in line at the drive-thru and the cars in parking spaces.

It’s obvious to me that business, compared to even a few months ago, is way off. (Try it yourself. We can compare notes)

Like the McDonald’s mucky mucks told us: People are feeling the squeeze. Locally, this is an election year. If I were a candidate for City Council, I would take that line and run with it.

And run with it. And run with it. And run with it.

 

Bruce Coltin, The Battle For Watertown 

IS WATERTOWN WHISTLING PAST AN ECONOMIC GRAVEYARD?

 

When you think back to the days of the pandemic, what comes to mind first? For many, it would of course be the staggering death toll (over 1 million in the U.S. alone), especially if someone you know died from the disease. For others, it might be the vaccines, the school closings, or the isolation.

Or, it might be the recession.

If you were a worker between the ages of 18 and 24, the recession that most affected your life was the COVID-19 Recession of 2020. Members of that age group, especially those who worked in hospitality, retail, or food service were most likely to lose their jobs. Young workers in other sectors were likely to have their careers placed on hold.

I have lived through seven recessions in my adult life. To some extent, I remember all of them. But it was the recession that took place from December 2007 to June 2009 − aptly dubbed the Great Recession − that I remember most vividly.

On the eve of that recession, the 2007 U.S. unemployment rate was 4.4%. At the peak of that recession, in October 2009, it had skyrocketed to 10%, and over 8.7 million U.S. jobs, including mine, had vanished. With massive government intervention, the unemployment rate gradually declined to 5% in 2015. The employment disruption lasted eight long years.

The Great Recession began when the housing market collapsed and the construction sector lost over 2.3 million jobs. It took 10 years for that sector to return to pre-recession employment levels.

The housing stories featured in the news were not about building more units and creating density, they were about loan defaults and foreclosures. There were reports from across the country of homeowners so upside-down on their mortgages they walked out their front doors and never looked back.

At its low point, the Dow lost 50% of its value. Prominent psychologists advised the public not to look at their 401ks. For therapists and other mental health professionals, business was booming.

Bankruptcies and layoffs were the dominant business news stories. More than 30,000 businesses filed for Chapter 11. Had it not been for a federal bailout, General Motors and Chrysler would have ceased to exist.

Looking back at the Great Recession and the COVID-19 Recession, we can see the number of jobs that were lost, but we can’t see the number of careers that ended prematurely with those jobs. We can see the number of business bankruptcies, but we can’t see the number of middle-class families that descended into poverty.

Statistics take us only so far. The human damage from any recession can never be adequately quantified. The number of Americans who never recovered is incalculable and remains an untold story.

With all of my vivid memories of the Great Recession, there was a highly relevant fact that I could not immediately recall.

Who was the President of the United States?

It happened under the watch of George W. Bush, but it never became known as the Bush Recession. The causes were too numerous and complex to assign total blame to that president. And, we could say the same of every other past recession of my adult life. The causes were too numerous and complex to assign total blame to any of those presidents.

Fast forward to March 2025.

The President of the United States has declared a trade war on our neighbors and our allies. His weapon of choice: tariffs.

Here’s a summary of Trump’s war so far: He tariffs them. They respond by threatening to tariff us. He responds by tariffing them more. He delays, he threatens, he exempts, he reinstates. He doubles down. Intentional or unintentional, it is economic chaos and the markets and investors don’t like it. And neither do employers. And neither do consumers.

Once again, it might be advisable not to check your 401k. Once again, mental health professionals should consider canceling their vacations.

President Trump, who presided over the COVID-19 Recession, explained that a future recession might be a necessary part of a “transition” to a much stronger U.S. economy.

He is fine with having his weapon of choice referred to as the Trump Tariffs, in fact, he practically insists on it. Why share the credit?

For the first time in our lives, a President of the United States considers a recession an acceptable component of his economic policies. But has he really thought it through?

Is he too comfortable with the prospect of a recession?

There are tens of millions of voters who believe that Donald Trump is a genius − a master strategist who is playing chess while his opponents are playing checkers. They believe the United States has foolishly allowed other nations to take unfair advantage of our generosity, making them richer and us poorer.

There are tens of millions of voters who believe that Donald Trump is a malicious sociopath who has become America’s mad king. They believe that we and the rest of the free world have become helpless passengers in a vehicle being driven erratically by a drunk driver.

The question as to whether he is a chess master or a mad king should start becoming clearer as the trade war continues to develop.

(Sorry for my blatant metaphor-mixing. I try my best to keep it in check, but…)

Most economists agree that if the tariff war continues, there will be pain. The question is: How much and for how long? The answer is anyone’s guess. No economic guru has a crystal ball.

One possible outcome of the tariff war is stagflation − an economy suffering simultaneously from recession and inflation.

My immediate question is: What should Watertown do to prepare for the economic fallout?

Municipalities were hard hit during the Great Recession. Several filed for bankruptcy protection under Chapter 9. Others were forced to cut services and slash their payrolls.

Watertown was well-positioned under the stewardship of Town/City Manager Mike Driscoll and we emerged from the recession intact. That was so yesterday.

How vulnerable is today’s Watertown to a sharp economic downturn? The life-science boom that had been filling the city’s coffers is now barely a whimper. Developers have been cautiously playing wait-and-see while an already uncertain market decides to declare itself.

With tariffs, they will soon face higher costs of lumber, steel, and other building materials that were already high and already getting higher.

Meanwhile, residents have had to contend with the ever-rising costs of living: water and sewer rates, energy bills, property taxes, insurance, and the current cost of food, clothing, and other necessities.

Has Watertown’s economy become more fragile than most of us realized, making us less able to handle the load that tariffs will pile on the shoulders of struggling residents?

Our city government seems to be in a business-as-usual mode, taking for granted that the storm clouds will pass, sparing us the pain that other municipalities will suffer if the tariff war continues.

Maybe Watertown will be spared. Maybe.

But, maybe it’s time to hit the pause button and focus on emergency preparedness.

Maybe it’s time to turn our rainy day fund into a tsunami fund.

Maybe it’s time to tighten our belts and halt our government’s hiring spree.

Maybe it’s time for some tough, honest conversations.

 

Bruce Coltin, The Battle For Watertown

WHEN DEI GOT HIGH ON ITS OWN SUPPLY

 

Drug lord, Frank Lopez (Robert Loggia) gives important business advice to Tony Montana (Al Pacino) in the 1983 film, Scarface. His most memorable pearl of wisdom: Don’t get high on your own supply.

Jason Kilborn is not a character in a Robert Ludlum spy novel. He’s a professor at the University of Illinois Chicago Law School. While he is not a household name, he is more famous than he would like to be.

He would not be at all famous had it not been for the final exam he gave his students in December 2020 on the unsexy topic of civil procedure. Kilborn is a tenured professor who has taught at the university since 2010.

The exam included a hypothetical question that had been included in his previous final exams. This question presented a real-life scenario that essentially asked: What would you do if you were a lawyer in this situation?

This real-life scenario contained two real-life words that are not used in civil conversation. The first word is one I never use and never did use.  

One student’s reaction to those two words set off a cascade of events that placed Jason Kilborn’s reputation and career squarely on the DEI chopping block.

The hypothetical question had to do with a Black woman who quit her job and was suing her employer for fostering a hostile work environment. As the plaintiff in the case, she alleged that, in a meeting, other managers in the company had called her a “n _ _ _ _ _ _” (racial slur) and a “b __ _ _ _”. (rhymes with witch). Those words were intentionally not spelled out on the exam.

I can’t use the female student’s name because her identity has been kept anonymous. We only know that she was a member of the UIC Law School chapter of the Black Law Student Association (BLSA).

BLSA issued this statement about “the inexcusable usage of ‘n_____’ and ‘b_____’ words on the exam: “The slur shocked students, created a momentous distraction, and caused unnecessary distress and anxiety for those taking the exam.”

According to BLSA, one of their student members complained that seeing the two words on the exam had given her “heart palpitations.” We don’t know if this student had taken the exam or if she heard about it from another student. Did she suffer first-hand palpitations or second-hand palpitations?

BLSA jumped into action by circulating a petition with a list of demands, which included suspending the professor from teaching his classes. He was then summoned to meet with the law school dean where he learned that the dean sided with BLSA.

To put it mildly, Professor Kilborn was caught off-guard by the student response and by the dean’s reaction to that response.

He immediately issued a public apology for using the “offensive language" that he had previously used without incident and with the knowledge of the school’s administration.

Believing that there was a huge misunderstanding, Kilborn agreed to meet with a BLSA leader to try to clear the air. It was a Zoom meeting that lasted for about four hours. Kilborn’s impression of the meeting was that it was amicable and had gone fairly well. He breathed a sigh of relief.

And then he learned that the meeting had resulted in a new allegation against him that would get him suspended from his teaching duties and would cost him a scheduled annual pay raise.

About 90 minutes into the Zoom meeting, the BLSA leader asked Kilborn if the dean had shown him the written BLSA statement. Kilborn said the dean had not, and added that “maybe she’s afraid if I saw the horrible things said about me. I might become homicidal.”

The law professor, having been lulled into a false sense of mutual understanding, was joking. Big mistake! You don’t joke around with a DEI cop – even an unofficial, self-appointed DEI cop. Dropping his guard was a serious rookie mistake.

BLSA reported the “homicidal” comment to the university administration which determined that Professor Kilborn was a “safety threat,” barred him from setting foot on campus, and ordered him to meet with mental health professionals for an assessment.

When he was allowed to return to campus, his courses had been either canceled or reassigned and he learned that he was under investigation by the university’s Office of Access and Equity (OAE) – the official DEI cops.

The investigation uncovered an even more damning slur uttered by the professor. The allegation was made that a year before the exam question had generated the uproar, Kilborn referred to Black students as “cockroaches”.

Now BLSA had all the ammunition they needed to demand that the tenured professor be fired. Meanwhile, Kilborn left on a long-planned sabbatical, which I imagine he needed more than ever. In his absence,  BLSA conducted three campus rallies to pressure the administration to drop the ax on their undeniably racist professor.

One of the rallies featured a guest appearance from none other than the 80-year-old Reverand Jesse Jackson who, standing in solidarity with the protestors, proudly proclaimed: “Students deserve an environment that’s not hostile. We must act! We will act!”

Before being allowed to return to his classes, Kilborn had to agree to the satisfactory completion of a battery of required training courses that included eight weeks of diversity and sensitivity training, weekly 90-minute sessions with a diversity trainer, and submission of “self-reflection” papers.

 Self-reflection papers? Seriously?

Meanwhile, the cockroach allegation got legs. The allegation was covered by the local press and played up on social media. And without a shred of evidence, the university’s Office of Access and Equity verified that it was true.

And then, aha!

A recording of the incident surfaced. Kilborn had indeed used the word cockroaches. He used it in a class to describe plaintiffs seeking to profit by filing frivolous lawsuits. Race had absolutely nothing to do with it.

So, was the Office of Access and Equity embarrassed? Were they apologetic? Of course not. Did BLSA back off from the false allegation? Why would they? It gave them gotcha! material for their next grievance.

Professor Kilborn had not hidden his feelings about his persecution. He was angry and upset. And because he didn’t hide being angry and upset, he of course presented a threat to the university because he of course made some students feel unsafe.

Imagine how different it would have been had the university’s Office of Access and Equity guided the heart-palpitating student to the counseling she obviously needed instead of driving the professor to diversity and sensitivity training.

As a teacher and mentor, Kilborn’s objective was to send her and her fellow students into the world as mentally tough, savvy lawyers, prepared to defend their clients against the real-world ugliness that confronts real-world victims. Instead, he, himself, was portrayed as the ugliness that needed to be confronted.

Why did OAE and BLSA do it? The simple answer is: Because they could. They were flexing their muscles and they were riding a high.

After two years of being a DEI punching bag, Professor Kilborn sued five members of the UIC Law School administration in federal court, claiming violations of his First, Fifth, and 14th Amendment rights. The case is currently working its way through the courts.

Jason Kilborn continues to teach law at UIC.

And now I have two questions.

First, who is the primary victim in this story? Second, given the executive order of January 20, 2025, and the federal government's ongoing process of eradicating DEI, does the first question even matter?

I think it matters a lot and I will tell you why.

It was in a state of semi-horror that I watched the Watertown School Committee Meeting of March 21, 2022, on Zoom, at which a consulting company made a presentation, inspired by antiracist guru, Ibram X. Kendi, whose books were recommended on Watertown Public School’s website.

The consulting company used slides to highlight its “equity action plan.” Two sentences that popped out and permanently lodged themselves in my brain were:

“Adopt an equity decision-making framework through which all decisions are reviewed. In order to end individual, institutional, and structural racism and bias in the district, all leaders must consistently and intentionally apply an equity lens to every decision made.” (The highlighting is mine) The presenter acknowledged that this policy was already in place at WPS.

From my disbelief, this blog post was born.

WHEN IT COMES TO RACE, SHOULD OUR SCHOOLS BE TEACHING KIDS WHAT TO THINK INSTEAD OF HOW TO THINK?

I just reread that blog post and it nearly gave me heart palpitations. The title of that post is of course a statement thinly disguised as a question.

When kids are educated in a DEI cocoon, and then land in an institution of higher learning where, as a direct result of Trump’s executive order, DEI has now been wiped from their websites and mission statements − like Northeastern and UMass − and DEI offices have been closed or renamed, some of those students will experience culture shock.

How will they cope when they feel “unsafe” and realize there is no cavalry galloping to their rescue?

The law school student who experienced heart palpitations and all the students who were so shocked and upset by seeing the redacted words that it impaired their ability to take the exam were the real victims in the Jason Kilborn story, but not for the reasons they claimed.

Though battered and bruised, Jason Kilborn, like the true professional he is, will continue to do his job at a high level and prepare his students for real-world lawyering.

Students who, early in their educational journey, should have been taught the skills of critical thinking and media literacy to enable them to determine for themselves how to separate fact from fiction, make better decisions, solve problems, communicate effectively, and adapt to change are equipped for life.

Critical thinkers are more likely to be lifelong learners, who are more likely to be independent thinkers.

I would argue that these attributes make for real open-mindedness, which is the opposite of “Kendi-ish” single-lens indoctrination.

Is there a future for DEI? Will it be a rebranded, new and improved DEI with a fresh coat of paint, and maybe a new set of initials?

The last national election highlighted a widespread anger across racial and ethnic groups − white, black, and brown − making it painfully clear that many Americans feel undervalued, underrepresented, and underserved by their government.

Their anger is fueled by the dominance of progressive voices that claim to champion equality but often dismiss or overlook the struggles of working-class Americans of all races who don’t fit their ideological narrative.

This is an election year in the still somewhat townish and very diverse city of Watertown. How encouraging it would be to hear the voices of candidates for City Council and School Committee who believe that any future DEI should be colorblind and that the best answer to prejudice, born of ignorance, begins with teaching our children how to think and not what to think.

We should all be proud and grateful to the local leaders (along with the taxpayers) who gifted this community with shiny new schools. But if well-intentioned educators persist in their futile efforts to prepare the road for the child instead of the child for the road, those shiny new buildings will become symbols of a false promise.

Because, as many of us already know, there are times, when out of nowhere life blows up in your face – a phone call delivering terrible news, a sudden devastating job loss, a life-altering diagnosis, a tragic something that was nowhere on your radar screen. Perhaps all of the above.

 When life does blow up in your face, it just might require all the resourcefulness, resilience, and fortitude you can summon.

Most of you know this all too well, and you have the mental scar tissue as a reminder. 

You know first-hand what others have yet to discover.

That life is not for the faint of heart.

 

Bruce Coltin, The Battle For Watertown

MY CASE FOR MORE COPS

I am driving down Galen Street, and have come to a stop at the traffic light on Main Street. I am in the outside left turn lane. The inside left turn lane is the one closest to the delta.

I am sixth in line to take the turn onto Main Street, once the traffic arrow turns green.

I never want to be sixth or even fifth. I want to be first, second, third, fourth, or seventh, or eighth.

Because I am sixth, I will have an important decision to make in the next two minutes and only a few seconds to make that decision.

If each of the five drivers in front of me proceeds through the intersection onto Main Street at a normal speed, and I decide to follow them, I will be driving through a yellow traffic arrow that will turn red before I land on Main Street, which I would prefer not to do.

On several occasions, a sudden jam-up of cars and/or pedestrians crossing Main or Spring Street has left me stalled and blocking traffic coming into the Square from Mt. Auburn Street.

So as the driver of car number six, facing a yellow traffic arrow, and having a strong preference for stopping at the intersection, there is only one question on my mind:

What is the intention of the man or woman behind the wheel of car number seven? How determined is that driver to make it through that light? I check my rearview mirror and assess the odds of getting rear-ended if I don’t go through the light.

Should I stop at the yellow traffic arrow or should I go for it to avoid a collision? For me, it’s a fifty-fifty proposition.

When I’m further back in line, in the seventh or eighth position, I have the luxury of not having to make that decision and the additional advantage of being able to count the number of vehicles that take the left turn onto Main Street when the traffic arrow is a solid red.

I confess that I have become a compulsive counter of red-light runners.

During peak hours, which is most of any weekday, that number is rarely fewer than four and sometimes as high as eight. The number of red-light runners in the past few years seems to be higher than ever and it’s by no means confined to Watertown Square, but the Square has become my laboratory.

I would love to know the daily number of red-light runners in Watertown Square and city-wide, especially during peak driving hours. It could easily be 100. Could it be closer to 500?

And, why do they do it?

Should we just chalk it up to frustration with the increasing time it takes to drive from one place to another? Should we give in to those who preach to us drivers that we should all be riding bicycles and therefore deserve the cowboy drivers we are forced to deal with on our streets, especially at intersections?

I don’t think so.

I don’t think we have to accept the unacceptable even when the unacceptable is allowed to become the new normal.

The reason that drivers, frustrated or otherwise, ignore red lights is simple. It’s the extremely low probability of getting pulled over and ticketed. The only times I’ve seen absolute compliance with the traffic lights in Watertown Square were the few times a police patrol car was parked on the sidewalk in front of the medical building that sits between Mt. Auburn and Arsenal Streets.

But, currently, there are not enough cops to park one of them in Watertown Square for hours at a time. That condition can and should change.

Here’s my no-brainer of the day: There is no better prevention of unlawful behavior than the conspicuous presence of a cop.

Law and order are basic to a civilized society. How civilized we want to be is largely up to us. Running red lights, cutting in front of the driver in the next lane without ample warning, making illegal U-turns, and passing cars on streets where there is no passing lane (Church, Orchard, Pleasant, to name a few) have become bad habits for too many drivers.

As we all know, bad habits can be tough to break without an adequate incentive. In this case, police presence is exactly what the doctor would order. The visibility of the blue uniform sends a preventive message that is universally understood.

Yes, the gang, from a few years ago, that warned us that all police are inherently racist and that the presence of blue uniforms is traumatizing to racial minorities, and that Watertown cops have historically preyed on non-white drivers is still around. Thankfully, they are a lot quieter now that they have their Human Rights Commission to protect the many invisible victims who live among us.

For those who advocate for twenty-four cameras on every street corner, I would argue that spying on everyone is not a satisfactory solution in a free society. Spy cameras may be cost-effective, but they take from us a basic freedom and they send a lousy message.

Speaking of lousy messages, what message does it send that certain individuals routinely steal merchandise at Target, Best Buy, Home Depot, and several retail stores at Arsenal Yards?

Check out the police reports over the past few years and you will see that they have one thing in common. They are dominated by incidents of shoplifting. A fraction of those incidents mention the arrest of the perpetrator. And it’s little comfort when they do because we know that they will soon be back in business.

From the police reports, we know that some brazen thieves have repeatedly stolen hundreds of dollars of merchandise from the same store. It’s like having their very own ATM.

So, who are the victims? The easy answer would be that it’s just the retailers and they should be doing more to protect their merchandise. Should we, the general public, even care? After all, isn’t rampant shoplifting a fact of life everywhere these days – essentially the new normal?

Shouldn’t we all be happy that these are nonviolent crimes and that they are crimes against businesses and not individuals?

Or, should we consider these crimes to be crimes against the community? Many of us feel a sense of outrage when we read those reports in Watertown News, especially when the culprits who are caught are shown to have out-of-town addresses. Our tolerance must be sending a loud and clear message that Watertown is easy prey.

There is of course an argument, coming from a certain political sector, meant to quiet our outrage. It goes like this: Those who steal are victims, themselves. They have been driven to steal because they are unhoused or under-housed and food insecure. And if they are stealing to support a drug habit, it is because they have been deprived of mental health services.

Translation: It’s not their fault. It’s our fault.

Are you a hard-hearted S.O.B. if you believe that these petty crimes undermine our natural desire for law and order and erode our confidence in our local government? I can think of several Watertown city councilors who might think so.

There’s a solution for that. We are now at the beginning of an election year.

In the meantime, my solution for the new-normal level of shoplifting is once again police presence.

A great experiment would be to ramp up police presence at the malls where career shoplifters freely ply their trade. If that experiment were successful, which it of course would be, some of our residents and councilors would then argue that we are irresponsibly forcing our thieves to up their looting in other nearby communities, where police presence is lacking.

Truthfully, that works for me.

Our success can become a shining example for other communities to follow.

And one more thing.

Watertown is conveniently situated between Boston, Cambridge, Waltham, and Newton, close to Somerville, and right off the Mass Pike. This convenience serves residents, visitors, employers, and commuters. It also serves criminal enterprises.

 Unlike several of our neighboring communities, we do not have violent street gangs occupying neighborhoods within our city limits. But we do have them traveling through. Thankfully, our police have interrupted drug deals being conducted in our mall parking lots.

But how many drug deals, including those that involve fentanyl, go undetected? I doubt that anyone has any idea. What we don’t know can hurt us, especially as we are on track to become a lot more urbanized than we already are.

For those intent on radically reshaping Watertown, the rallying cry is: Density! Density! Density! Super-density has a hidden price tag that is conspicuously absent from public conversation.

For the moment, crimes that follow drug trafficking, such as armed robberies, muggings, carjackings, and gun violence, are not in our police reports. But that can change before we know it.

At what point will we realize that we are under-policed? As Watertown’s population growth takes a giant leap thanks to the steroidal rezoning of Watertown Square, how soon will we find that our 70-something department of sworn police officers is not just inadequate, but dangerously inadequate?

Those of us who pay attention to the police reports are aware of the success stories when drug traffickers were caught by the WPD and when the cooperative efforts of local, regional, and federal law enforcement agencies have resulted in momentarily disrupting the drug trafficking pipeline. These were undeniable wins for the community.

But the public safety questions of the day should begin with: How much criminal activity is flying under the radar? How many counterfeit painkillers spiked with fentanyl are being delivered from or to middlemen in our private and public parking lots and garages on any given day?

And how much of that supply ends up in the hands of Watertown teenagers? Those numbers are almost certainly unknowable.

Would dramatically enhanced police presence prompt traffickers to move their business operations to locations outside of our borders?

And if so, are we being irresponsible or simply setting an example for other communities to follow?

Some “experts” want us to believe that increased police presence does not prevent crime from happening. Common sense should tell us that those experts are wrong.

The time has arrived to find out for ourselves.

But there are two big problems.

Watertown, like police departments across the country, is struggling to recruit new cops. For a variety of reasons, too lengthy to delve into in this already lengthy blog post, the pipeline of applicants has dried up. Chief Hanrahan has shown exceptional resourcefulness in finding qualified candidates to replace his retiring police officers.

But, it will take more.

For over a year, our city government has been on an unprecedented hiring spree of high-paid middle managers. Some of us in the community, as well as some seasoned city employees, wonder if this bureaucratic expansion is both necessary and fiscally sustainable.

This election year brings us to a crossroads. We have the option of continuing business as usual or making a course correction that places public safety at the top of the city’s to-do list, where it belongs.

 Watertown’s current city council has a few common-sense pragmatists valiantly fighting to keep our legislative body from falling over the ideological cliff. Making a course correction would require the addition of one or two new like-minded councilors to join the fight.

How do we expand the WPD and send a loud, clear, and constant message of what Watertown will not tolerate? And how do we hang out the welcome sign for more good cops to come to Watertown and be a central part of that message?

It begins with us.

In our last city election, all city councilors, district and at-large, ran unopposed. Only the council president had a challenger. That sent a message that Watertown voters were happy with the status quo.

Were they? I don’t think so.     

Since that election, change has been happening at a dizzying pace. How happy are voters with what they’ve seen so far? It’s time to find out.

In advance of next November, Watertown needs a common-sense, roll-up-their-sleeves hero, or two, or three to step up and make the personal sacrifices necessary to run for city council and help turn this ship in the right direction, while the ship is still somewhat turnable.

Despite cynical claims to the contrary, I know that those potential candidates really do exist. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to help find them, encourage them, and commit to supporting them through their campaigns and throughout their public service on the council.

If you accept this mission, then one day, when your children, grandchildren, nieces, or nephews ask you what you did to save Watertown from the dangerous gang of invading wackadoodles, you can go into your basement, attic, or closet, pull out your weather-beaten 2025 campaign sign, smile, and tell them:

I DID THIS!  

 

Bruce Coltin, The Battle For Watertown 

A DEEPER DIVE INTO THE IDEOLOGICAL JIVE BEHIND QUESTION FIVE

Question 5 on the Massachusetts ballot contains two provisions.

The first provision would gradually increase the minimum hourly wage that an employer must pay a tipped worker over five years, reaching 100% of the state minimum wage in 2029.

The second provision would permit an employer to pool tips for distribution among all workers, including kitchen staff.

For any of you who have not listened to the debates and commentary or have read the pros and cons of this ballot question, it is designed to radically change the traditional tip-based compensation system for waitstaff and bartenders.

This ballot question is the brainchild of a national organization called One Fair Wage. Their mission statement is summarized in this blurb for a book written by their president:

“These stories, paired with facts from years of research, advance the narrative of racial capitalism and the idea that all of the subminimum wages in different sectors are a reflection of America’s devaluation of people of color, workers with disabilities, youth, and immigrants as subhuman. The book also reveals the solution to addressing racial capitalism which is paying everyone a full minimum wage.”

I know of no restaurant in Watertown where employees are treated as “subhuman.”  There was a recent case where the owner of a pizzeria chain, with locations in Boston and a few other towns, was arrested, tried, and convicted for enslaving and brutalizing his immigrant employees. He’s now in prison where he belongs because we have federal laws, state laws, and enforcement agencies to address employment abuse, including racial discrimination.

And, because we are now living in the new Watertown, with a new Human Rights Commission, any sub-humanized server working within our city limits can simply grab their phone, dial 311, and send the HRC into action. I think the commissioners will appreciate the call. Currently, it doesn’t look like they have enough to do to justify their existence.

According to the National Restaurant Association, women make up a majority of tipped positions in the restaurant industry. 69% of waitstaff and 56% of bartenders are women.

And, it is the comments predominately from waitresses, former and present, that best make the case for not tampering with the status quo. I’ve plucked a few typical comments from callers to radio shows and from social media.

“As a single mother, it was my tips from waitressing that enabled me to put two kids through college. They weren’t tipping the restaurant. They were tipping me.”

“I always made the most tips because I had the most repeat customers and I worked hard to get them.”

“During my career, I dealt with more problem customers than my managers did. Making me share my tips with people who did less would be unfair.”

“Go into any restaurant during peak times and you’ll spot the ones [servers] who hustle and the ones who don’t.”

Among the many comments, the word hustle was prominent. It was even used in a comment from the state’s most prominent ex-waitress.

The ex-waitress/governor makes some awfully good points, which are hard for any longtime restaurant goer, including me, to disagree with. I would only take issue with her statement that the ballot question is “a well-intentioned effort…”

Grace McGovern, of One Fair Wage’s local chapter, who participated in some of the debates, has a message for restaurant owners:

"If you can't afford to pay your employees the minimum wage, you can't afford to run your business. It's as simple as that."

That’s a pretty tough statement which doesn’t sound well-intentioned to me. But Grace McGovern certainly sounds like she knows what she is talking about. In fact, she must have owned a restaurant at some point in her life, although she neglected to mention it.

As an owner (?), she must have succeeded in keeping her restaurant in business through the pandemic, while so many longtime restaurant owners were forced to close their doors forever.

As an owner (?), She must have excelled at attracting waitstaff and bartenders, post-covid, when many industries, including the hospitality industry, were facing crippling labor shortages.

She must have dealt nimbly with supply chain disruptions and the constantly fluctuating costs of ingredients.

She must have figured out how to keep prices under control, while not sacrificing quality, during steadily rising inflation.

Come to think of it, she probably would have mentioned surviving those personal trials if she actually had to walk that walk before making such an arrogant and insulting statement, which bears repeating.

"If you can't afford to pay your employees the minimum wage, you can't afford to run your business. It's as simple as that."

Here are some "simple" arguments used by proponents of Question 5 that they can't possibly substantiate:

Restaurant owners will not have to raise menu prices.

If they do raise menu prices, the increase will not reduce customer visits.

When customers become aware that their waitress is making a higher minimum wage, they will not decrease the amount of their tips.

The hardest-working and most engaging servers (like the ex-waitress/governor) will not make less money than they currently do.

Owners will not have to reduce their staff if the ballot question passes.

Some restaurants will not have to close if the ballot question passes.

Waiters, waitresses, and bartenders will not end up with fewer places to work if the ballot question passes.

Does common sense tell you otherwise?

I will be taking Maura Healy’s advice, rather than Grace McGovern’s. What about you?

Just to make the message sticky, I’ll end this post with this little ditty:

If you want your favorite restaurants to survive

And your favorite servers to thrive

Ignore all the jive and

Vote HELL NO on Question Five 

Thank you for stopping by. Please feel free to hit my tip jar on the way out.

 

Bruce Coltin, The Battle For Watertown

 

EIGHT TROUBLING TAKEAWAYS FROM THE LATEST WATERTOWN SQUARE AREA PLAN MEETING

The latest assault on the community took place on Thursday, June 13 at the Middle School, before a joint meeting of the City Council and the Planning Board. Call me crazy, but I had foolishly held out hope for an announcement of a course correction that would introduce nuggets of sane moderation into the current plan.

You can find a detailed and objective description of the meeting on Watertown News. Nothing written on this blog post pretends to be objective. In all honesty, I might describe this particular blog post as an all-out rant. 

My troubling takeaways begin here. They are not listed in the order of my perceived importance. They simply leaped from my agitated brain onto my keyboard like passengers off a sinking ship.

TROUBLING TAKEAWAY NUMBER ONE: Attendance at These Meetings Continues to be Poor.

By my count, the meeting at the Middle School that brought us one step closer to the ruination of Watertown drew about 150 people, which appeared to be about half of the auditorium’s capacity. Another 100 people watched the meeting on Zoom. Attendance at these meetings does not grow because no conscientious effort is made to cause it to grow.

TROUBLING TAKEAWAY NUMBER TWO: Low Participation Shall Continue to Be Called Great Participation.

At every meeting, including this one, the Manager and the consultants praise the high level of community participation. In a city of 35,000, with 25,000 registered voters, the best the administration can do is draw 250 people and treat it like a smashing success. I wonder how many City Councilors, who were elected to their positions by engaging in door-to-door community outreach, are buying this baloney.

TROUBLING TAKEAWAY NUMBER THREE: It’s a Compromise If They Say It’s a Compromise.

Once again, the state’s mandate for Watertown to rezone for 1701 by-right multi-family housing units was not up for discussion. And it soon became apparent that it would not be placed on the table at this meeting or at any future meeting.

The number 3,133 has been presented as a compromise between the never-mentioned 1701 units and the once-presented 6,320 units, which was never going to fly. 3,133 is a phony compromise and they know it.

TROUBLING TAKEAWAY NUMBER FOUR: The Toy Soldiers, Otherwise Known As Activists, Answered the Call.

The local chapter of Housing For All (HAW) showed up at the meeting in full force and dutifully marched to the microphone, one by one, to praise the Manager’s plan.

Most of them expressed their regret at not having a housing goal higher than 3,133 but were “graciously” willing to accept the phony compromise.  HAW wants taller buildings, more density, and more “vibrancy” in Watertown Square. Like their counterparts across the country, what they actually want is to plant as many housing units as possible onto every available plot of land as their contribution to solving the national housing crisis.  

Their battle cry: Give housing developers more incentives and fewer restrictions.

Their implied message to the City Council: Please endorse our moral crusade!

 TROUBLING TAKEAWAY NUMBER FIVE: A Big Land Grab is in The Works.

You know those wonderfully convenient public parking lots behind the library and CVS that you so take for granted? You can kiss them goodbye. Those tempting morsels of land are a developer’s dream. How many housing units can they squeeze into those currently wasted spaces? Enough for Maura Healy and Kim Driscoll to send us a thank you note.

TROUBLING TAKEAWAY NUMBER SIX: The Number Behind the Number Shall Not Be Spoken.

We have now been conditioned to hearing the phony compromise number 3,133. But not once have we heard an estimate of the number of bodies that will occupy those units. “It’s mostly up to the developers,” is the likely answer. But, wait! Don’t we have experts on staff and expert consultants who could put their heads together and give us a range? Could it be as many as 4,000 bodies? Could it be 5,000 bodies?

Perhaps getting down to that level of nitty-gritty would spark too many mental images of suffocating hyper-density and is, therefore, officially taboo.

TROUBLING TAKEAWAY NUMBER SEVEN: The Traffic Nightmare You Must Endure in the Name of Progress.  

Let’s just cut to the chase. Your motor vehicle, whether it runs on gas, electricity, or oatmeal, is the enemy of the greater good. Watertown needs to become Bicycletown, U.S.A. and you need to either get on board or get out of the way.

The plan to make this happen becomes clearer with each poorly attended meeting. Major roads will be narrowed to create bigger and better bike lanes and “calmer” crossings for pedestrians (“uncarred” people) to better access inadequate public transportation.

Are you already zig-zagging between neighborhood cross streets to be able to get through or around Watertown Square? Well, that’s going to get a lot trickier, and that’s a major part of the plan. The more suffering you are forced to endure, the more likely it will be that you will either ditch your car or pick up and move to Vermont, making way for your bicycle-riding replacements.

TROUBLING TAKEAWAY NUMBER EIGHT: The Wild Card Members of the City Council Control the Future of Watertown Square.

It has been this way since the local election of 2021 when progressives gained an edge on our legislative body. As it now stands, the Council is composed of three progressive ideologues, three pragmatic moderates, and three wild cards, whose votes on any given issue are less predictable.

If I’m correct, it will take two of those wild card votes, added to the three moderate votes, to send the Manager, his staff, and his consultants back to the drawing board with instructions to come up with a commonsense plan that truly fits this city.

Such a plan should call for the continued building of multi-family housing units along with preserving the endangered qualities of the still somewhat townish city that distinguishes us from Cambridge, Somerville, and Shanghai.

The briefest resident comment made during the entire meeting came in the form of a simple one-sentence statement, followed by a simple one-sentence question. Combined, they spoke volumes.

He came to the podium and said:

“You published the results of a poll of a sort that attracts primarily activists. Would you be willing to commission a polling organization to do a randomized poll of the residents of Watertown?”

And then, he abruptly returned to his seat.

How about it, members of the Council? Shouldn’t you insist on getting genuine, unbiased feedback, representing the whole community, not just the most informed, most available, and most vocal among us?

How about insisting that all available avenues of community outreach are exhausted before you vote to approve a plan? All it will take to design and execute that comprehensive outreach is for someone with the will and the know-how to be put in charge – someone who, from the beginning, has been conspicuously absent from the process.

In the meantime, how about hitting the pause button? 

 The real Watertown will thank you.

End of rant.

 

Bruce Coltin, The Battle For Watertown

 

A HOUSING PLAN ON STEROIDS IS MARCHING US TOWARD YOUDOPIA

Ever get the feeling you’re being herded down a path without knowing why?

Sometimes that feeling is just a feeling but sometimes it’s a voice in your head, warning you that something is fishy here.

Watertown has been adding housing units and will continue adding housing units. For the most part, people are okay with that, though they may object to the size and appearance of some of those structures.

The current argument is about the number of new units being proposed and the location of those units.

At first, there were two options on the table. The first option called for by-right zoning changes that would allow for 6,320 new housing units and the second option would allow for 2,631.

The latest option put forward by the design team calls for 3,133 new units.

All of these units would be located within the Watertown Square Area Plan.

A longtime Watertown resident, who is also a prominent local builder, predicted that 6,320 units would result in about 16,000 people − almost half of our current population – being crammed into the Watertown Square Area.

Those who are clamoring for higher buildings and maximum density are thrilled by this prospect. They tell us that in addition to helping solve the state’s housing crisis, the maximum density will make Watertown “more vibrant.” We could become one big Arsenal Yards.

By comparison, the latest option of 3,133 units might seem much more palatable, if you consider potentially 8,000 new residents being added to the population and placed in one small section of the city to be a good idea.

The group of well-organized and highly vocal residents who are clamoring for higher buildings and more density might reluctantly settle for the 3,133 option. But how about you?

How do you feel about suggestions to replace the parking lot behind CVS with apartment buildings?

Are you excited by the prospect of having congested sidewalks that feel like being in Costco the day before a snowstorm?

It’s called vibrancy and if you’re not on board, it’s because you are old, or boring, or a NIMBY, or all three.

And finally, how do you feel about being deprived of a third option that makes a lot more sense − the missing option of 1,701 units, required by the state’s MBTA communities mandate? Many of us share the opinion that even 1701 adds too many units to Watertown Square. Following the lead of other communities, we could fight it (based on units already built or are currently online to be built) but we won’t fight it because we don’t happen to have a firebrand in government or in the community to lead that courageous charge. 

But, we hear absolutely nothing about the 1701 option mandated by the state. Not from the consultants. Not from the staff. Not from the City Manager.

We might call it the Big Shush.

Here’s a comment made on March 29, in Watertown News from Donna Leone (whom I do not know), which pretty much sums up my impression of the public process:

 “One thing that has stood out to me from these meetings is that the presentation team are not just urban planners and designers, they’re a sales team, and they’re good at it. Fortunately, it’s encouraging to see that many aren’t buying what they’re selling, myself included.

Until the questionable voting issues are resolved, and other options and alternatives to the housing side of this project are put on the table, I can’t  in good faith trust that these meetings are being conducted in an honest and unbiased manner.”

Yup! Very slick dog and pony shows and a very lax voting system, allowing people to vote anonymously, and multiple times, and permitting voting by non-Watertown residents. This is meant to pass for solid data?

Donna Leone’s comment continues:

“As far as my reading of Mr. Proakis ‘s response I understand that this doesn’t mean that 1,701 units plus the additional units will be built, but it does serve as an open invite for developers to come in and take over the square.”

True. No commercial property owner within the newly rezoned Watertown Square area will have to sell their property to developers to build apartment buildings – unless, of course, they get an offer they just can't refuse. I bet, in this housing market, those offers are already in the works.

And one more thing about grading what we’ve seen of the public process −

Promotion gets an “F.”

The Manager and his team began the public meetings by expressing their delight at the excellent turnout.

We are a city of about 35,000, of which about 25,000 are registered voters. Each of the Watertown Square meetings drew fewer than 300 attendees. Promotion for the meetings has been almost exclusively through social media.

Here’s what doesn’t get done:

Large signage placed on the delta and at other high-traffic locations throughout the city, advertising the times and locations of the meetings.

Notices of the meetings included with property tax and water and sewer bills mailed to homeowners.

Oversized, glossy postcards of the kind sent by candidates to registered voters during election campaigns.

Actual door-knocking. With all the new large-salary employees being hired by the city, who do not live in Watertown, this outreach might double as a great education and orientation experience for those new hires who think they are now working for Generic Town, U.S.A.

I am aware that many of you who are saddened and enraged by this tricky takeover but have remained silent, are not sheep. You are just fed up and cynical. But, seriously, what does it cost you to rouse your friends and neighbors and start rattling some cages at city hall?

Just pick up the phone or send an email to every councilor and the Manager and tell them you’re wise to the Big Shush and the only vote you want to cast and the only box you want to check is for:

1701 AND DONE!

If they ignore you or suggest that you get on the path to progress, their answer is essentially this:

 

 Bruce Coltin, The Battle For Watertown