Mayor to ask City Council to Prioritize To-Do List

* --- UPDATED --- *

The Boston Globe North section has an article about the City's plan to FINALLY address the Crystal Lake/Elginwood Pond problems.

Read the whole story in the Boston Globe here.

The more interesting part of the article though deals with Mayor Bonfanti's plan to give the City Council a list of PRIORITY ITEMS for BONDING. The City can only bond about $8M according to the Mayor, but the list now totals more than $14M (down from an original wishlist of $170M).

So the Mayor is bringing this list of items to the City Council for them to discuss and advise him on their priorities for the coming year.

Frankly, wow. This is one of the first really positive moves toward some UNITY within the City that I have seen in a long while. In recent actions I have been quite critical of the Mayor (especially in the negotiations with unions), but this seems like a rather bold (and unexpected) move and one I applaud.

Now, of course, this good will must move from the Mayor to the City Council. And in a very uninformed way, Councilor Gamache has already declared that the City needs to do more than the $8M that the finance department has calculated.

Ward 5 Councilor David R. Gamache, who represents West Peabody, said that if Bonfanti offers a priority list that exceeds his bonding target, "I think we should look at the possibility of including more money over and above the $8 million to get these projects done." He said this might be a favorable market to borrow for capital projects.

Another uninformed and un-researched headline grabbing statement from someone on the City Council?? Perhaps Councilor Gamache has researched the financial situation in great detail and is somehow aware of more funding options that the City Finance Director, but I think not.

And if this is how they will proceed with this issue... as adversaries and not colleagues, I fear it is destined to become business (or rather gridlock) as usual.