Thursday, September 10, 2015
|
By George Donnelly (@geodonnelly) with Keith Regan
|
The action today: The grid -- and then the gridiron
Gov. Baker speaks at the annual meeting of ISO New England, the region's electrical grid operator. ISO New England is expected to release its 2015 Regional System Plan at the meeting and will gather feedback. It's at the Seaport World Trade Center, 200 Seaport Blvd., Boston. The governor is expected to speak at 12:15pm... Boston Mayor Martin Walsh participates in the ribbon cutting ceremony of the Irish retailer Primark's first U.S. store; corner of Washington St. and Summer St., Boston, 10:00am...World champions and now the official bad boys of the NFL, the New England Patriots, take the field tonight at Gillette against the Pittsburgh Steelers, kicking off the season for the NFL. Pregame ceremony at 8pm.
The T: Running deeper in the red
We now have a new number to try to swallow whole concerning the MBTA. Come fiscal year 2020, the T may have an annual operating deficit of $427 million, compared to $170 million expected this fiscal year. That's the number chief administrative officer Brian Shortsleeve put out there yesterday. Operating and debt service expenses are projected to grow by about 4.4 percent per year and revenue grows about 1.6 percent, a recipe for an ever-widening gap. When you weigh the $7.3 billion in state-of-good-repair backlog projects, the nearly $9 billion in debt and interest, it's hard to see how the anyone can conjure up an image of a "world-class transportation system." (It should be said, the operating deficit also is ballooning because the T will stop paying about 530 workers out of debt and federal grant money. Only the T would have to borrow to pay its workforce.) The new members of the MBTA Financial and Management Control Board have their work cut out for them, promising to propose some ideas by December to reduce or eliminate the operating budget deficit. The State House News Service's Andy Metzger lays out the red ink in a story picked up on the CommonWealth Magazine website: http://bit.ly/1OAK0fz
Baker 'cautious' after Rail Link sit-down
Gov. Baker emerged from his meeting with two of his predecessors about the North-South Rail Link yesterday politick and polite. And, of course, "cautious," CommonWealth Magazine reports. Baker said the price tag on the project was put at $2 billion to $4 billion and indicated he remains more inclined to support a stand-alone expansion of South Station, which he says be funded through development fees, but noted that doesn't mean both can't be built. "This is certainly something's that's worth considering," he said. http://bit.ly/1LYQ2q2
The Duke holds court
After former Governors Dukakis and Weld visited with Gov. Baker to press their case for the North-South Rail Link, afterwards Dukakis spoke with reporters for 20-plus minutes about (what else) trains and a few other things. Here are a few outtakes from Dukakis's comments:
-- On the new "Situation Room" in the renovated governor's suite: "We met upstairs with all those TV screens. I mean when I was here I went upstairs when there were demonstrators downstairs so I could escape and walk to the T and go home for dinner. That was my escape route."
-- On working with Weld: "It's fun to work with him. You know he was a rookie lawyer with my law firm. I used to say to him when he came up here, 'Where'd we go wrong?'"
-- On how to deliver a major transit project: "Let me tell you, we did billions in construction, not a whiff of scandal, on time. It's all about people...The T never shut down, folks, during the Blizzard of '78, I can tell you. In fact it had to carry thousands more people because I stopped all automobile traffic." -Matt Murphy, SHNS
MASSterList op-ed: It's time for grid reform
With ISO New England's annual meeting today, finding new energy sources and ensuring reliability will critical topics. In this op-ed, Ed Krapels, founder and director of Anbaric, which develops electric transmission projects, argues the grid must change to accommodate more clean energy sources: "Our current system was built to support large, central power stations fueled by coal and nuclear energy. To make the change to more distributed energy resources with more renewable energy content -- wind, solar and hydro -- the grid must change." http://bit.ly/1KbcVap
More reasons why it's hard to be middle class in Mass.
The Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation released a report on the cost of doing business in Massachusetts, and no one expected it to be a good news story. We're in the top brackets for costs in almost every category, and none higher than electricity costs, which for residential consumers is nearly double the national average. The Globe's Jon Chesto's story on the Mass. Tax report focuses in on a seldom-discussed angle: the disproportionate burden of our high health care and utility costs on those living in less well-off regions of the state. http://bit.ly/1FyJt8H
Miserable turnout for prelim
The voter turnout for Boston's preliminary elections -- with just two districts voting -- was 7 percent. Worcester's turnout was 12 percent. CommonWealth's Jack Sullivan explores the apathy in yesterday's Download, which all the same was a great day for District 4 challenger Andrea Campbell: "The message from the races in Worcester and Boston was that there is no message. Political wisdom, which is often an oxymoron, holds low turnout favors those with a cause, usually the challenger, which is how some of (city councilor Charles) Yancey's supporters are spinning it."http://bit.ly/1L3kfph
|
No comments:
Post a Comment