total time: 8.29 minutes
total words: 553
[John Petrella]: Hello, everyone, and welcome to your show, Method Happenings. As always, I'm your host, John Petrella, and today's show is part of our web-only series where we ask candidates for city council just a couple of questions around the most important issues leading up to the elections. Also, important to know, early voting is now going on for the city of Medford, so please get out there and elect all our independent candidates. We feature them on our website, which is methodhappenings.com. So now let's get to our guest today, a very special guest. He's been on the show before, long time city councilor. I can go on forever and ever about everything he's done. for people and for this city, a really, a really dedicated guy. Rick Caraviello. Rick, thanks for joining us. We really appreciate it.
[Richard Caraviello]: Thank you for having me on again.
[John Petrella]: Okay. I mean, you know, I can get into going into like real quickly, your background and everything. You want to just give us a few, you know, a couple of minutes, Rick, that's all.
[Richard Caraviello]: No, I'm not one to talk in my own home, but, you know, I was 12 years as a city councilor. Uh, three terms as a council president. Uh, um, I serve, um, on the library's, um, foundation as a, is as vice president and treasurer. Um, I've been the former, uh, president and executive director of the chamber of commerce. I am twice president of the Medford Kiwanis, uh, and one time, uh, earning a distinguished, uh, president award. I'm also president, uh, former president of Method Youth Hockey?
[John Petrella]: Quite a bit. And there's a lot more, but we don't have time. I wish we did. You know, so the purpose tonight, Rick, we're trying to focus in on some issues. You know, the talk of the town. Everyone's talking about it. It is affecting everybody in this city, whether they want it to or not. There's no way around this. But, you know, I'd like to ask, Rick, your opinions what you feel and what do you believe about all the zoning that's going on in this city or is supposed to be going on or that's being pushed, however you want to get into it. But can you give us your opinion?
[Richard Caraviello]: Sure. You know, obviously, the zoning issue is what's driving this year's election. It's probably the number one question and concern of the MFID. voters. So, personally, you know, my opinion on this is, yes, there's definitely some zoning changes, most certainly we do. All communities go through zoning changes, but to do a whole quick zoning change from commercial to residential, in a short period of time is obviously irresponsible. If you see what other cities have done, it's taken them four and five years to get this done. We could probably do it quicker, but this isn't something that you should be rushing through, maybe because it's an election year. For whatever reason, it needs to be thought and thought properly. I think The city of Medford should be concerned more with our commercial base. This is where our tax revenue comes from. It's from the commercial. We've sat back for a while and our commercial has dropped from when I got on the council in 2011, it was at 22%. It's down to somewhere nine to 10% commercial base. So that obviously has to come up. We maybe missed the building boom of the last four or five years. when people could have been borrowing money at 2% and 3%. It's much harder now, much higher. So Mystic Avenue should be the gateway to the city. It's the gateway to nothing. John, you and I have lived in this community our whole life. Nothing on that avenue was changed for as long as we can remember. And let's say you've got the highway, you have a major highway that runs behind it. I'm not opposed to a taller building going on the highway side, on the other side of the street. Something much smaller than what's been proposed. You have Method Square vastly underused. So right now we have an opportunity to redo the square with the Hamilton property having to come down and that whole block have to come down. And the city is proposing putting up two other buildings. Let's stop, take a look. Let's do this once and do it once right. We have the water. Nobody talked about the water in any of the proposals. Communities die to have a river running through it. That's right. Never talked about. We have met we have a square square. We have all these small squares that are right for some small smart developments. Not this not the intense story buildings that people are proposing. address each square as needed. See what the needs are. Don't overgrow them. We don't have the infrastructure to carry them. And we don't wanna overgrow those communities that are there either, John. So let's do some smart growth. Reading has developed what they call smart growth areas. They identify it. We've never done anything like that. Maybe that's something we should look into.
[John Petrella]: I know a lot of people are concerned with their neighborhoods too, Rick.
[Richard Caraviello]: Well, we haven't even got into the neighborhoods. Listen, the residential neighborhoods, should they be looked at? Yes. But the changes that are being proposed are just utterly ridiculous now. People purchase single family homes for a reason, because they wanted that small backyard. Listen, we have two family areas, we have three, we have mixed areas. We have so many different types of neighborhoods that aren't bothering anybody and don't really need any major rezoning or any major regrowth either. Because everybody talks about affordable housing. Anything that gets built now isn't affordable. It's going to be overpriced. We're a city five miles outside of Boston. And we got discovered probably in maybe eight years ago, people found out, I found out, we found Medford. We were a quiet, sleepy town and we got discovered. And it's happened in Woburn, it's happened in Malden. People are discovering these little towns right outside of Boston because of the proximity to the Boston's workplace.
[John Petrella]: All right, I think you covered it all. Thank you. Appreciate your honesty and the answers. Sounds good to me. You know, I want to bring up one more thing, Rick, before we let you go tonight. And the other big thing coming, we all know what's coming. There's no avoiding it. And that's the school, New Medford High School. You know, we go from not hearing anything. Now it seems like, you know, we were getting a lot of information. Now it's back down to all is quiet. But we do know something's got to be done with the school. What do you feel about the school? Where do you stand on that?
[Richard Caraviello]: Well, John, you know, the school's 55 years old now. I was the second graduating class out of that then new building. And, you know, there had been issues. from way back then. I do support putting up a new high school or maybe rebuilding that building with Chapter 70 money drying up. quickly and there's other cities in front of us looking for money for schools too. So I think we're going to have to take a look at what direction to go and see what type of reimbursement we'll be getting from the state, which is also a key thing. Do we do another two and a half override or do we do a debt exclusion? I mean, talk to people who live in Stoneham and Arlington, who just had just built brand new high schools, the effect on their tax bills. What's happened is, is that I think we wasted our two and a half override for $7 million. And I've been very vocal on that point. We had the money, we should have, because now it may be two or three years, the city is going to say to the residents again, hey, we want to do another override. And they're going to say, hey, you just did one two years ago. And the other thing coming down the road is the potential, we need to do a fire station. How many overrides can the city keep on doing? Remember, we have a lot of Asian people here who want to live in their houses and can't afford the tax rate. Never mind hitting them with another $1,500 to $2,000 a year tax increase. But I do support doing something. The students deserve it, and the residents deserve it. And also, that enhances your tax base.
[John Petrella]: Right. Yeah. No, I agree with you. But I think it's you're talking no matter what we do, you're looking at a lot of money. And because we don't have that industrial commercial base, like you said, it's going to come basically from property owners to homeowners. And that's going to be a big hit. I don't know what we can do for creative funding or how you go about doing things, but it's going to be tough, Rick, on a lot of people, that's for sure.
[Richard Caraviello]: No, it is. I mean, you know, I mean, John, unfortunately, there is no, the creative funding is either help from the state, which is Chapter 70 in my name. In fact, you know, Representative Donato spoke today on how the federal money coming into the state is drying up. which hurts our Chapter 70 funding. So where else do we have to go is but to the taxpayer again.
[John Petrella]: Right, yeah, yeah, yeah. But no, I hear you. I think, you know, I know you know what you're talking about, you know, but the school is going to be a big number. And you're right, we've got to figure out something, either a new one, refurbish, whatever it's going to be. I mean, that's all I really got for you, Rick. Is there anything else you want to finish up with?
[Richard Caraviello]: Just this, you know, early voting started on Saturday. Get out there and vote this week. Make sure you get out to vote on November 4th. And I ask for one of your seven votes. And I ask that you also support our independent candidates running. People who aren't in lockstep, who aren't being told what to vote for. Disagreement is good.
[John Petrella]: Right. It is. You're right. You're right. Yeah. We don't have that anymore. It's lock, stock and barrel done. And that's it. Yeah. People of method don't have a voice anymore. But all right. I just want to really thank you, Rick, for coming on. We appreciate it. And, you know, we love to get information facts out there. And, you know, boy, oh, boy, we're hoping you get in there, you know, and help get this city back on the right foot, so to speak. So thank you very much, Rick.
[Richard Caraviello]: Thank you, John. And thank you for all the staff that you use that puts this program together. Thank you very much. And thank you for having me again.
[John Petrella]: All right. Thanks, Rick. We'll talk to you soon.
[Richard Caraviello]: Thank you.
[John Petrella]: OK. I want to thank you again, Rick, Mr. Caraviello, for joining us today and for talking to us on the show. I also want to urge all Method residents to get out there and vote, and please vote for the independent candidates. Also, you can check out our website, methodhappenings.com. You can check out our YouTube channel, where all of our shows can be seen. And you can also, if you have any questions, any concerns, or if you want to be on the show, if you have an idea for a show, You can email us at methodhappenings02155 at gmail.com. I'm gonna repeat that methodhappenings at 02155 at gmail.com. Marko, our communications guy, will arrange a day and time and we'll get you all set up to join us. Once again, I wanna thank the audience for all your support. It's been a great experience for all of us. And that's it for the show. I'm John Petrella, and I'm reminding you all, stay informed and get out and vote. Your vote matters. Thank you. Have a good night.
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total time: 8.29 minutes total words: 553 |
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