Worcester Sucks and I Love It — 2021 in Review with Bill Shaner
We are back with our first new episode of 2022 with our guest and Worcester-based journalist, Bill Shaner who runs the popular newsletter, Worcester Sucks and I Love It. In this episode, Josh and Bill give a run-down of 2021 in Worcester and talk about important local events and news such as Polar Park, the city council election, and the restructuring of the school committee. They also talk about the importance of supporting local journalism and media and how many local publications do not receive adequate funding.
You can follow Bill and his work with the Worcester Sucks and I Love It Newsletter by checking out their website or checking out his Facebook page!
Public Hearing is a podcast from Action! by Design. We help communities address social challenges through facilitation and equity-centered design. Want to learn more? Let’s chat. Reach out to our team at theteam@actionbydesign.co
Transcript for this episode
Joshua Croke (00:01):
Hello Worcester and the world. This is Public Hearing, a podcast and radio show by Action! By Design, about engaging communities to address social problems in a way that centers, equity, justice, and the pursuit of joy filled futures for everyone. I'm your host and founder of Action! By Design Joshua Croke. Today, I'm here with the author of the most thoughtfully research news blog in Worcester entitled “Worcester Sucks, and I Love It,” Bill Shaner. I pulled this quote from your 2021 recap post that I think awesomely defines your blog. “Worcester Sucks is about a year and a half old. And the core goal of the project is to make city politics, something worth investing in something less alienating and boring and impossibly obscure. Because once you begin to understand how it all works and you see more clearly what Worcester could be and what's preventing it well, it's something you could conceivably play a part in changing. It's something you don't have to feel so hopeless about.” This is the Public Hearing podcast. Welcome Bill, It's great to have you here.
Bill Shaner (01:00):
Oh yeah. Thank you. You did a very nice job reading my words. I was, yeah, I did write that. Huh?
Joshua Croke (01:06):
I think like probably like a year plus ago sent you like a random Facebook message and was like, part of me wants to like take everything you write and like script, like read it as like a Last Night Tonight, like show style. Yeah. I feel like we need any media content. People can absorb in Worcester would be awesome. Yeah.
Bill Shaner (01:28):
That'd be fun with like sound clips and stuff. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Joshua Croke (01:31):
That'd be little like cut ins of like images and like funny memes. Yeah.
Bill Shaner (01:35):
Yeah. I love that. Yeah, let's do that, why not?
Joshua Croke (01:36):
That, that would be awesome. Yeah. So welcome. And so that indicated some of your inspiration for starting Worcester Sucks, but you also have a background with some local like publications and like work as a journalist in the city. So could you tell folx a little bit more about you and anything else you want to bring into this space today before we talk about 2021 in review Worcester edition.
Bill Shaner (01:59):
Great, yeah. So yeah, I've been a journalist in the area for a while, six or seven years. I started in the Metro West area and then got a job at Worcester Magazine. I don't, years are hard, I think 2017 maybe. And I was a reporter there and wrote a column called Wosteria for a while, and I really loved that job. But the job got sort of taken from me. Venture capital came in and sort of systematically destroyed Worcester Magazine. So dealing with increasing restraints on what I could do and what I had the time to do. I decided eventually that I was just going to pull a Yolo, quit and start this “Worcester Sucks, and I Love It” project where I could write about the city, the way that I really wanted to. And that's what I've been doing for the past year and a half. And it's been a lot of fun.
Joshua Croke (02:59):
And that's like so critical and it's something we could probably talk for our full hour about is like the importance of local media written by local folx and how there is such a lack of investment and money that goes to support people doing that work and that's like a nationwide issue. Especially for cities like Worcester, is like, how do we build a sustainable model for local media that also is not like influenced by that big like corporate machine. That's like, this is what you can write, this is what you can't write. So I appreciate you taking the plunge in doing that.
Bill Shaner (03:35):
Yeah. It worked out for me. I mean, the way I was thinking about it, I was so fed up with just dealing with sort of like the barren landscape of traditional media at the local level is it was just so suffocating. And there were some writers I really respected at that time that did the Substack thing Luke O'Neil was a big inspiration of mine. And you can really tell if you read both of us, I pretty much just rip him off and apply that style to Worcester. But yeah, it's been really great to be able to write in like a, sort of a fun engaging like opinionated and a loose way about the city, that doesn't seem so stiff and coming from like some detached arbiter of the truth who is entirely totally objective and is a voice from nowhere sort of thing. It's been fun to write about the city as someone who lives in the city and wants the city to do well. And it's really liberating to write about it from that perspective.
Joshua Croke (04:48):
And one of the other things that I think I really appreciate about your work, also agreeing with pretty much everything that you write from a personal vantage point is when one says, like wanting the city to do well, that means a different thing for many people in the city. And I appreciate that you challenge some of the things that are often advertised by local media in like the other publications that exist yeah. In challenging, like is the ballpark the best for the city is, are these economic development quote unquote economic development decisions, the smartest thing, or the most equitable thing for the people who live here? Which I think is critical because as we talk about like local media and stuff as well, I encourage folx to think not only about what is in the headlines, but what is not in the headlines and what is not being featured
Bill Shaner (05:37):
Very important. It's very important. That's actually a huge focus of mine is having been a journalist for so long understanding how newsrooms work, understanding the limits of sort of the concept of objectivity that you're taught in journalism school. And as you're starting out you really get a sense of just seeing the way that local news organizations tend to just be like the town crier for city hall and the cops just like sort of dutifully, repeating, the messaging coming out of those institutions and not challenging them all. And that's partly a problem of there not being enough money for any of the local media organizations right now to have a real like investigative team. Like if you see Spotlight, it's like they have eight people that just get to work for months on investigations that actually hold people to account.
Bill Shaner (06:50):
And there's no money for that. No one, no one has the money to just have eight reporters just producing no content at all for months at a time working on something really big. So that's part of the problem. And it's also just like, it just feels like they don't know what they're writing about, like, especially, and, you know, I don't wanna talk too much smack here. See, I'm not gonna swear, I'm not gonna swear. I don't wanna talk too much smack here, but you see the Worcester Renaissance narrative being very, very dutifully repeated by The Telegram and by Mass Live, especially, which are sort of our two biggest news operations. It's like it's uncritically accepted as fact, and as a good thing, but what's really happening is that we're through nothing that we did as a city are experiencing a massive seismic, often real estate value, pretty much just because we're in driving distance of Boston.
Bill Shaner (08:05):
And that isn't because Worcester's some really cool, amazing place that, you know, all these new people wanna like come live in. It's not, it's developers and capital looking for a smart place to park their money. And if you're a developer and you're looking for a smart place to park your money, you're looking for that sort of up-and-coming city that's like undervalued and is gonna be worth more someday. And that's what the entire Renaissance narrative is geared to. The Renaissance narrative is not geared to, you know, a family of five with three kids in the schools that lives on Grafton Hill. That's not who that's for, but as a journalist, who are you writing for? Are you writing for the benefit of the developer and the city hall that is trying to court developers, or are you writing for people who actually live here and for people's lived experiences in this city and what would actually make the city better for them?
Bill Shaner (09:12):
And I think that that's a question that if you are just going by the textbook definition of objectivity, you're not even really allowed to ask yourself, you're not, you're just like, this is the reporter voice I use. And it's way easier to just get the city's side of things than it is to go be asking random people in the neighborhood, what they want and why I do that anyway. So what ends up happening is you're just parroting the city manager or the district attorney, or the chief of police because your whole existence is just geared towards seeing what they say as having the ultimate news value and not anything else. So that is a problem that I use to frame my work, but I try not to like really harp on that a lot. I just try to kind of like do it and make the newsletter be something that somebody could read and be like, oh, that's like refreshingly, not just sycophantic parroting of what the city manager is saying.
Bill Shaner (10:20):
And I think people are gravitating towards that because we really do not spend enough time focusing on the downside and the damaging effects of having such a massive shift in property values, wash over the city, like a tsunami. And we don't really, we aren't thinking about the people who are just trying to find somewhere to live and raise their families. And their rent is getting up by like $300 a year. You know, like we aren't thinking about those people. We're not building buildings for those people. We're not increasing services for those people. We're just saying, oh, look, it's so great. Look, all these developers wanna build these buildings in Worcester and, oh, well, wait, we could never turn them down. I mean, we've been waiting for decades for developers to want to come to turn and build.
Bill Shaner (11:18):
We're not gonna turn them down. We have to give them tax breaks, obviously, because if they don't, they'll go to Fitchburg or New Bedford. So if we don't give them any tax breaks, they won't come here and we can't have that, you know, and there's no critical thought in city hall about good urban planning or like using the mechanisms of city government to accept projects that benefit us instead, it's just sort of like a free for all. And what we're getting is just like a ton of wood-framed, luxury apartment buildings that are designed for people who are gonna live there for two years and then move
Joshua Croke (11:58):
Somewhere else. Well, and the widely used economic development model that the city uses in, in many respects and cities like Boston use and Summerville views are these bring new money in look at increasing property values as success measure for the community. And then that's it and then not look at the sustainability, right. Of developing a community like that, because it is inherently unsustainable because the people to your point, Boston cannot grow further east, unless they start inhabiting the ocean, which they probably will in the near future or the ocean will inhabit them. Or that exactly, so regardless like Boston is either going further out or Boston is getting pushed further in and Worcester happens to be right you know, that next quote, unquote, most obvious destination yeah. For that growth and that development. And one of the things that in a kind of rapid fire overview of my history in Worcester is I grew up in Central Mass not far outside of the city, but never really came here as a kid.
Joshua Croke (13:01):
It was like the city on the way to Boston. I ended up getting my degree here at WPI and I've been here since, so I've been in Worcester about 11 years now. And it's the first place that I have actually lived and invested in as an adult person and cared about as like my home territory. Yeah. not again, not being directly from here, but when I was in college, the thing that was preached across all the campuses, like was Worcester as a college town. And I like, as someone who started like getting into that like belief, and I was like, yeah, like Worcester's a college town. I'm gonna stay here and get involved and try and better connect the colleges. I realize that we're a town with colleges. We're a city with colleges, but not a really college or university driven town like Amherst, Massachusetts.
Joshua Croke (13:47):
That is a college town. Students go there to be students, they all interact with each other and then the majority of them leave. And as I was doing this work and rooted in like the belief that we need to go to the residents and the people who are most impacted by challenges and issues that are facing the city to like utilize those voices as the solutions to solve solving those problems and more agency and decision-making ability needs to live in the Worcester, like community, the resident population. What we were finding in some of that earlier work was that people want young professionals to be here, they and we already have an entrepreneurial, creative, thriving economy that has been by and large, I think for many years ignored as part of this Renaissance because of how Renaissance is being constructed. You know, as you're talking about like how it's being positioned that by and large has been like, this is what Renaissance looks like, as opposed to this is what Renaissance look like. Right. There's like a disconnect in, like, what does that really mean? What does that really mean for people who live here and are they being supported? Are they leading this Renaissance?
Bill Shaner (15:09):
They should be for sure they should be. And this is something that I've thought about a lot, is that when it's useful, the, so as an objective fact, as somebody who lives here is an artist here as a musician here, Worcester has a really, really talented and diverse, ecosystem of creative people who care about the city are invested in the city and are trying to make something of themselves and their communities. And that is awesome. That is part of the reason why I moved to Worcester in the first place was that I was in a I in bands in, and living in Milford where I grew up and just going to practice in Worcester once a week and then hanging out. I was like, oh, wait, Worcester's actually really cool. And then I got a bunch of my friends from Milford to move into a place and been here ever since, and done what I could to contribute to that sort of homegrown culture, which really does make Worcester special and what people love so much about Worcester.
Bill Shaner (16:20):
And for city hall that's a good thing only insofar as it can be used for marketing purposes, but we're on a path where it's going to become so expensive to live here, short of any sort of intervention that the city hall doesn't seem like they want to take, that all of those people are gonna be priced out and they have to find somewhere else to go. And what made Worcester, such a fun place to be a creative person in, was that it relatively cheap to live. There's relatively cheap you know, warehouse, studio, office space it's cheap to get in on the ground floor for like a restaurant project. Like the cheap real estate was really what fostered or allowed for people to have like an entrepreneurial innovative spirit. And the, if Worcester just if city hall just got out of its own way and didn't give massive tax breaks to outside developers and just sort of let those people do their thing, then Worcester would just get weirder and cooler and people would take bigger risks and we'd have a way more defining urban character.
Bill Shaner (17:33):
But what we're doing is we use that creative spirit in so far as it's useful in our pitches to outside developers to bring outside money in, without any thought about how that strategy impacts the people who already live here. And that it's just so frustrating. Like literally if city hall just left it alone, if they just closed their economic development like office stop giving tax breaks and just let Worcester do what it does, the, the city would be blossoming. It would be flourishing in their own way by picking and choosing what projects get city money and subsidies and where they go. And they just shouldn't be in the business of doing that. So that's the problem. And I think that there's things that could, that could stabilize it out, but I just don't see the city of administration is being interested in those things so.
Joshua Croke (18:31):
Well, and, and that is a great segue into talking about 2021. Yeah. And looking back on the past year we had a pretty incredible for many folx election year, which I'm excited to talk about.
Bill Shaner (18:47):
Yeah. Very, very good election year.
Joshua Croke (18:48):
Which I am very excited to talk about and a bunch of other stuff. And you wrote the year in review 2021. So I pulled some notes from that going back to the beginning of the year. But what are some of the things that top of mind really resonated or excited or frustrated you in the past year?
Bill Shaner (19:06):
Yeah, so I think that the election was pleasant surprise that really you can't take for granted how sort of surprising and good that was, the outcome of that. So that was really what brings us into the new year with a sort of hope that I don't think we've had for a while, that things could start to change around here. And that's awesome. That's something to hold onto. That's great. But so I would say the election was, there are three things I'll go three dominant storylines that I think kind of defined 2021 for Worcester, the election the nurses strike at St. Vincent and The Bridge, which were right next to rest in peace. And The Bridge is probably the one that's most germane to what we were just talking about.
Bill Shaner (19:58):
You know, that's a bunch of people who just saw an underused building and were just like screw it. Let's make something of this and try to make a community center and try to help the neighborhood out and have like a rallying point for sort of, sorry, I gotta tickle in my throat. I'm not sick. I promise. But that was a really interesting innovative thing that was happening there. And there was a lot of energy from the community behind it and everyone wanted it to succeed and it was such a good positive thing. And you just, it just was like building a sandcastle at low tide, at the end of the day, like the private market was going to do what the private market does, and now it's gonna be condos, which is like, you know, I think that our city has enough, $2,000 a month apartments and condos, and is drastically lacking in community spaces like The Bridge should have been. And that doesn't seem to be an opinion shared by city hall, because they could have intervened and they didn't.
Joshua Croke (21:12):
Well and reflecting on some of what you were saying about like city hall and many of like the, I'll say like the peripheral actors within that, you know, within that sphere are, they have truly positioned themselves as like leaders instead of like stewards for the community. And I think like the main difference there for me is like there are economic development dollars that are earmarked every year to be utilized in some form or fashion. Right, and to your point, they're being decided in a small room with a, a small number of folx that don't all necessarily represent or even live in the city on how we can make Worcester unquote bigger and better. Right, and then there are people in the community like your Dan Ford and like the folx doing The Bridge project who are saying, I live in this community, I know that people here, this is what people are asking for having success. We need more funding and support to do this. You are just not justifying what we are doing as worthy enough for those dollars. Right,
Bill Shaner (22:17):
Right, right. Yeah. And that's the small room thing is an incredibly important detail to stress because it really is the city manager's office and the Worcester Redevelopment Authority that carve up the city and choose where the money goes and choose what happens, where, and that's 40 people tops, maybe, you know, and there's no real effort to make the budget process or make city planning more of an inclusive democratically driven thing. I mean, there are other cities have things like inclusive budgeting. And there's more of a citizen participation and it's not in their best interest to want an engaged citizenry. That's something that we have to use the mechanisms of power to achieve for ourselves. But as it stands right now, I mean, it's just pathetic the way that city manager, Ed Augustus gets to walk around like a God among men, because he gave a baseball team an absurd amount of money and they chose to move here, because he gave them an absurd amount of money. That's going to be an Albatros on the neck of varsity budgets for the next 30 years.
Joshua Croke (23:40):
And I'm sure we have listeners who are both agreeing and disagreeing with the, like what we're talking about here. And so for listeners who are in the disagreeable camp one of the things that I think is important to continue to like listen to and lean into is really the piece that you're talking about, like influencing like how citizens and residents participate in our democracy is really looking at like what the form and structure of Worcester's government is that enables the city manager, whether it's Ed Augustus or somebody else, what enables that position to have such significant control over how these decisions are made and the gate that protects that person from being held accountable by the residents, because it's not an elected position. And so for listeners, we're gonna actually get more into this. In our next episode, we're gonna be doing a series of like civic participation, like 101, 102 and 103 talking about our form of government and things like that. But in like the very quickest definition Worcester has a city council, which our elected positions, we have five districts, six at large seats, right. 11 total councilors, right?
Bill Shaner (24:51):
Five at yes. Yeah. Six at large. One of them, at large is the mayor.
Joshua Croke (24:57):
Yes and five districts. And that council hires the city manager and is essentially his boss. And so the city manager is CEO of the city has pretty much total control of how money is spent. Who's hired, who's fired what department structures look like, et cetera.
Bill Shaner (25:13):
Yeah. The the city council only has the ability to hire fire the city manager, pretty much everything else is the city manager's call. And we put ourselves in a situation where our city manager is just more politically powerful than anyone on the city council or the city council in general. And we have a mayor that's supposed to be like the interpreter of like, the way the system is supposed to work, the mayor is supposed to interpret public opinion and then make it an objective, have priorities and objectives for the city manager to meet and accomplish in order to keep his job. What happens in Worcester is we have a mayor and generally a city council that couldn't imagine anyone doing a better job than Ed Augustus does not press him on anything. And he's allowed to control the city and the way he pleases with a city council, that's like pretty much just sycophantic and just likes what they're seeing.
Bill Shaner (26:17):
And doesn't really, and you can see it when you watch city council meetings where like the city councilors will be squabbling about something. And then you know, Ed Augustus stands up and he's all like positioning himself as like the adult in the room. And he's all like condescendingly talking to all the city counselors about how much more he knows about the mechanisms of funding and the like than anybody on the city council does. And they're like, oh, well, this guy sounds like, you know what he is talking about and that's it.
Joshua Croke (26:44):
Well, and again, I think for listeners who agree or disagree, structurally, that is by design, right? Yeah. Like our city counselors and our mayor, which a lot of people don't know that I have conversations with are part, quote, unquote part-time positions that are considerably like underpaid for the labor that should be going into these positions. Right. The fact that city counselors should be reviewing budget engaging their constituents in like doing all of this labor and also hold full-time time jobs outside of their city counselor position and engaging someone who is compensated very well to be in this work full time. It's very easy to use the argument “well, I know better because I'm in this every day.”
Bill Shaner (27:38):
Right, Yeah. And he talks like a CEO. He talks like somebody who's controlling a business. And that is very much the way that city hall see’s Worcester they're like a real estate agency or a tax break vending machine, you know, and their main objective is to get as much development as possible and get as much tax revenue from that development. But there's not really, a critical analysis in any sort of democratically accessible way of how that money gets spent, where it's spent, what it's spent on, what the vision is. We just get instead of that, we have the city manager, just talking to The Telegram, talking about how we're gonna have an 18 hour downtown. And we're just gonna trust him that that's gonna happen, which is laughable because if you really get into urban planning and like I have been doing for the past couple years, urban design and what makes cities really hum in work as like living organisms, Worcester's basic a museum of horrible ideas. Worcester is like, just a series of massively disastrous decisions to its urban fabric, starting with 290 ending with Polar Park just staggers through the heart of whatever made Worcester like, fun and dense city.
Joshua Croke (29:06):
Ugh, 290, like for folx who aren't familiar with, like the debacle of 290 and like a highway splitting the city in literally two different parts, literally in half. I live right near where Mount Carmel church was. And there was like so much activity from the residents of like save Mount Carmel, save Mount Carmel. And I’m like part of me is like, yes, I support you, but the other part of me is like, this conversation should have been a hundred years ago or whenever 290 was built because the foundation of this church literally is not stable anymore because a highway was built next to a church. And that was not, you know, prepared for that much vibration over time, et cetera. Yeah. and for folx who are interested in more like urban development work, I encourage you to follow Joyce Mandel and Jane Jacobs in the Woo.
Bill Shaner (29:57):
I love her. She does such a good job. Joyce, she, she put the bug in me for sure. For real, like, I worked on her with a couple of stories and she got me thinking about Worcester in like a way that kind of blew my mind.
Joshua Croke (30:07):
And Joyce is a fantastic human does Jane Jacobs in the Woo and the Jane Awards every year that acknowledges development projects in the city that are inclusive of the residents have a participatory process and in some way so definitely like lookup and, and follow her and her work. But the one funny thing, and I need to look into like the actual history of this, but I was having a conversation with Bill Wallace at the historical museum and he is an incredible knowledge base for so much of Worcester's history. And we're having this conversation. He was like, yeah. And I don't wanna misquote you Bill, So if you're listening please feel free to like call me and correct me. But we were having this conversation about the downtown redevelopment and how at one point many, many, many years ago, the city was deciding whether to build a mall like the, the mall that was there for many years, which inevitably failed, or the implementing this urban design that was created by the same person who like created how Disney works. And like literally was like, let's do this experiment in Worcester and like build this like incredibly walkable engaging like neighborhood-style downtown. And they're like, no, let's build a massive mall instead.
Bill Shaner (31:26):
Yeah. Let's take up the equivalent of what could be six thriving, vibrant city blocks full of like everything that everybody wants out of a city, but let's just tear it all down and put a mall there. And then, you know, after that mall fails, let's replace it with three other superstructures that have no urban character or could even possibly allow it in the future. Right. You know, it's insane. And actually I was just thinking, it's a thought that like clicked in my head when we were talking about earlier, like way back in the beginning of the episode about how Worcester has a lot of colleges, but really isn't a college town and Holy Cross is the best example of 290 ruining that. I mean, can you imagine that highway isn't there and the college on a hill walks down into a neighborhood and what those streets would be like if kids felt it all comfortable, but no, you have to walk down a hill and then walk under one of the sketchiest highway overpasses you've ever seen in your life next to all of like the urban decay, that results next to a highway overpass.
Bill Shaner (32:35):
And it's just like, no, there was never any chance of that happening. It's, it's insane, and like that is a critical assessment of past decisions that Worcester seems to be allergic to in city hall. Because my whole thing with Polar Park is that it is a mega-development seen as like a silver bullet to save this city in a long history of those sort of projects that have never worked because it's just antithetical to the premise of a thriving city.
Joshua Croke (33:06):
Absolutely. And, and for folx who are listening, who might be like, “oh Josh and Bill, like, this is just so like your personal opinion” and I don't wanna speak for you Bill. I also engage who community a lot in my work. And what I find is that very frequently community members who live and work here in the community are often disagreeable to a lot, not all, but a lot of these decisions and it begs a question of like, why is that not truly being heard or listened to.
Bill Shaner (33:43):
Yeah. And that, I would dovetail that into this surprise election this year where we got sort of leftward swings on both the city council and the school committee as being so surprising and so refreshing because conscious or unconscious there, city hall wants to disincentivize you from participating. Maybe that might not be a conscious decision of anybody there, but what ends up happening is you just are so alienated from the processes of government and feel like it's entirely outta your control and you can't do anything about it and you know, why bother. And then that attitude starts to become the prevailing attitude after that being demonstrated to be the case time after time is like, if you aren't a west side homeowner, why bother getting involved? Because you don't have a voice in city hall and like whether or not that is true in the hearts of anybody working in city hall, the historical record suggests that it is very much true.
Bill Shaner (35:03):
And so I wouldn't blame anybody for thinking that local politics isn't worth being invested in and that you can't change anything because show me the proof that that has ever been the case. Right. But it is the case if you have the right people involved, you can build momentum and get people invested. So that's why this election was so exciting. Cause we can sort of start to do that. I mean, there's gonna be a block on the city council now with Christian King, Etel and Thu who are gonna be able to pull over some of the more center leaning members of the board into thinking more about how city hall reflects the needs and desires of the community and defining who the community is.
Joshua Croke (35:54):
Yeah and for listeners who I be just acquainting themselves with some of the like local politics and things going on Etel was the first Albanian immigrant to be elected to city council and Thu the first, queer, non-binary, and Vietnamese refugee to be elected to city council. So talking about representing the demographic of what the city actually looks like, this was a huge stride forward, regardless of your politics. It was a huge stride forward in representation. Which is a really critical piece of, of this.
Bill Shaner (36:30):
And Thu, especially, I mean The Bridge was their home base. They had a sign there from like the start of their campaign. And always throughout the entire campaign trail, they were hammering on that. Like we need to get the community involved in decision making and we need to make it more inclusive and we need to bring people in. And I think that is the best thing over the next two years that this new sort of like progressive block on the city council could accomplish is just getting people invested, getting, getting people, showing people who the good guys are and who the bad guys are and what we could accomplish. And like really clearly demonstrating what the barriers to those changes are. And start to just articulate a vision of what an inclusive and responsive city government can look like.
Joshua Croke (37:27):
And, and I wanna shout from the rooftops for folx listening that like the importance of like local politics and how Worcester elections can be influenced by like 20 votes. Like truly like 20 votes can make or break whether someone is elected over somebody else.
Bill Shaner (37:45):
Right, right elections are rarely decided by more than a couple hundred votes.
Joshua Croke (37:52):
And what was the turnout for the past election? Was it like 11%?
Bill Shaner (37:56):
If I remember correctly, it was like 14 in change, maybe 15.
Joshua Croke (38:01):
So abysmal.
Bill Shaner (38:03):
Yeah awful, Yeah, I mean, and that's a huge problem in general. That's a hugely unsolvable problem. And, but it starts with that sort of basic alienating principle or premise, or unconscious desire of city hall to not have anybody get involved or pay attention because it makes their jobs harder.
Joshua Croke (38:32):
Right. And you, you talked about kind of like participatory government earlier which I wanna bring forward again, because of the importance of that, like participatory, budgeting, people living in neighborhoods that are receiving or not receiving money, participating in how that money is spent and invested and utilized, et cetera. And related to like the confusing nature of how our like government and our like local political sphere operate. It's going to, I think, and this is my opinion get more confusing if folx have been following the lawsuit to the school committee that has been asking or district held seats on the school committee. Yeah. And instead of currently all of the school committee members are at large seats. So a large majority of the school committee has historically all lived in relatively the same zip code area of the city which has changed a bit now, but still predominantly while we have a great and much more representative school committee than we have before, there's still a lot of geography sharing between many of the folx on the school committee, but with the lawsuit, the city was like, we're not gonna fight the lawsuit.
Joshua Croke (39:48):
Let's talk about how we can solve this. And so we are now moving into 2022, like changing and adjusting the charter, the city's charter to create district. And so it's six district seats and two at large seats for school committee. But if you recall, from a few minutes ago, there are five districts for the city council. So there is now this confusing beast that we have to tackle of wait, there are five city council districts, but six school committee districts.
Bill Shaner (40:22):
Nine split precincts, so many problems. And I actually wrote about that a couple weeks ago of how we're walking into a trap of taking a well-intentioned reform and just making city government even more impossible, inaccessible for regular people to find some sort of emotional investment or to get involved in, or to think that they even have a chance of changing anything. And it's such a a crime that we've gotten to this point, really, because like, it's the only form of government that you actually can do that. You know, when you're thinking about like the United States of America, you're just basically a passive consumer of politics rooting for one team or another. You can't really do anything unless you attain a level of power that is inconceivable for most people. But in Worcester, it's a few hundred votes that the decide an election, you can get like like two, you can run for your first time and get elected and be on the city council for your first time, just spending a year, working hard to get your message out. Like, it is like maybe one of the last places where democracy really exists in a tangible way. And it would be great if more people got involved, but we just keep blundering into these things like having six school committee districts and five city council districts and having them all overlap in incredibly arcane ways that no, one's gonna take the time to understand. And that post for me as someone who pays attention and cares a lot about Worcester was like, oh my God, this is so obnoxious.
Joshua Croke (41:58):
I think I sat through four meetings trying to wrap my head around, like the changes.
Bill Shaner (42:03):
It was so obnoxiously confusing and hard to understand for like, I am not some genius, but I'm a little bit more well versed in this stuff than the average person. And for me, I was like, wow, this is really dense and confusing. And I had to talk to like three people to like finally sort it out. And it's just like, okay yeah. if the person whose job it is to write about Worcester can barely figure out what we're doing here. That's a problem. It should be very simple and easy for people to get involved. But again seems like the modus operandi of city halls that's contracted right now in sort of like a, I hate to use the N word, but neoliberal framework is actively disincentivizing people from getting involved.
Joshua Croke (42:47):
Right, absolutely. And so hopefully our subsequent episodes from this will help you, our listeners get a little more involved in local politics and kind of removing some of the scary nature, of involvement and also definitely tune to and read Worcester Sucks, and I Love It by Bill. We have about like 10 minutes left so I know you wanted to also bring up the nurses strike and some other things. So let's, let's talk about the nurses strike and okay. 2021 was insane.
Bill Shaner (43:20):
Yes. The nurses strike was as I put in my piece, like sort of bar none the most significant event that happened in Worcester, I would say it's even more significant than the election. And it was part of like a national of movement of increased labor activity increased demands from the working class, for better conditions. And we got to see it right in our backyard, and we got to see how cravenly just awful the company handled it right in our backyard. And we got to see nurses off the job for the better part of a year until finally they won and got the provisions in their contract that they were looking for. Mostly safe staffing ratios, mostly throughout the hospital. And the vote was overwhelmingly in favor of it and like really kudos to those nurses, to the Massachusetts Nurses Association for sticking it out that long, because that was a really impressive show of like the power of regular people to to demand better of themselves.
Bill Shaner (44:38):
And that's what it took. It took 301 days I think, to get it settled, which is just massive. And it's like the strike started in March, right? With such like fanfare. Like I think a, like Elizabeth Warren came down, Jim McGovern was on the line. We were all like, “woohoo go nurses.” But then it sort of faded into like a depressing slog and a battle of attrition. And neither the company just sort of like refused to capitulate to the core demands. And they started trying to like blame the nurses for the hospital being unable to handle COVID and then cutting staff at the hospital and trying to blame the nurses on that when they could have just settled the contract and gone on their way. And, for the nurses to just super stubbornly stick in there while all of that was happening while this company was like, sort of baselessly and just in a craven way, trying to cast them as being the bad guys, and then eventually come out of that winning that's a really good role model. The St. Vincent nurses deserve all the respect in the world and we could learn a thing or two from them for sure.
Joshua Croke (45:56):
I think, you know, I live pretty close to St V so I'm always, I saw most days of that, you know, progression. And I think, you know, at the beginning, like you said, there was so much activity, so many people in the line and toward the end, it was varied, you know, how many people were there. And I remember a few days that stood out to me in the statement that the company was making by having more police officers around the hospital than there were people on the line. And like knowing how much money was being spent on that effort and I think it is easier for like the ghost of the corporate VC people who are not seen every day. It's easier for them to villainize the people that are standing outside, because they can point to those people and say, look, this is why you're not getting, you know, quality care. Instead of people understanding like how that is just abstracted from them, not wanting to release a few more dollars in their millions and millions and millions.
Bill Shaner (47:04):
Yeah their share price tripled over the course of the pandemic, fortune 500 company. Yeah. They made so much money off of people getting sick and dying. And just the idea of nurses having four patients to take care of at a time instead of five, was just beyond the pale to them so much so that they would keep them out of work for an entire year, while a pandemic rages on. I mean, it's really like the more you think about it, the more clearly you think about it, what a nightmarish ghoulish company, how are they allowed to control hospitals? How are we allowing a company like this to like like uphold our medical institutions? It's insane. Right. And the nurses strike is a path forward in a way of resting power back from such a greedy, like a conglomerate sort of company.
Bill Shaner (47:53):
And I think that that's why they spent so much money and time fighting. It is because like, oh, there's a peasant uprising in one of my little fiefdoms. I have 60 other hospitals in America, and I don't want them to start getting ideas. You know, the nurses over here can't win because the nurses in Dallas, my, I start getting some ideas, you know? So I think that that's very much why they spent, I was just talking about this on on my podcast that I just launched. We did the math $31 million they spent on the strike and there were 700 striking nurses. So you break it down. It's like $44,000 in nurse, which is like pretty much half a year's pay probably for most of them, which is just insane to spent making sure that they don't work, you know.
Joshua Croke (48:41):
Yeah, right it's really crazy. And let's do a quick plug for your new podcast that you're starting.
Bill Shaner (48:46):
Yeah it’s called Worcester's Good but Hurts. And it is going to be like a supplement to my newsletter. And some of the episodes will be paywalled behind the newsletter. Some of them will be free and available on all the podcast apps. So stay tuned for that. The next one will be coming out next weekend. Or this weekend, or one, is this running? It'll the next one will probably, there'll probably be two by the time you're listening to this.
Joshua Croke (49:12):
Sweet, Awesome. Yeah, and that, you know, this whole conversation parallels, we just did a mini-season on early education and care and how little funding and support go into early education and care workers. And it is this narrative on who is deserving of compensation and what is expected of people to output in labor and what we can, you know expect from folx. And I think, again, this, the nurses strike and the success that they had is not only gonna have echoes across that industry, the healthcare industry, both locally and nationwide, but also is part of an adding to this narrative that people are starting to like stand up and demand things like fair wages and ability to hold space for self care and you know, things that we need as, as general, you know, humans.
Bill Shaner (50:11):
Right yeah. I think that it's a very inspiring story and much, much to be learned from it much to take away. And that's why I would say it's the most significant thing that happened this year. For sure. Even though the election was personally the thing that I was the most excited by, and the thing that was the most inspiring for me that happened in 2021, the nurses strike was definitely the most like singularly important thing that happened, I would say. And then The Bridge was the most depressing thing that happened. well, we all know how that went.
Joshua Croke (50:45):
Yep, absolutely. So reflecting on 2021, what are some of your hopes for this new year and what would you encourage folx listening to get involved with or keep an eye out for?
Bill Shaner (50:58):
Well, I'm super, super excited to see the dynamic on the school committee and the city council change and, see what comes out of that. And that these first couple meetings are gonna be really fun and interesting to watch. The first city council meeting will have already happened by the time you're listening to this, but like every week it's gonna be a new thing to watch out for to see how the dynamics are changing and how these new people are settling in and what resistance they're meeting. And it's gonna be really, really interesting to watch. This is also another election year. That's less significant to Worcester, but also still significant to Worcester, it’s all of our state reps and state senators. And that's gonna be really important to pay attention to. I mean, we have Harriet Chandler who it might be close to retirement, but we don't know yet, that's in the spring. That's what we're gonna be looking at. And short of that, I really just want to see, like, Worcester speak up for itself and we have, you know, Thu, Etel Christian King. These are people that Worcester can speak up for itself through. And I wanna see more people get more involved and do that more and take more of an ownership over the city. That’s what I would love to see.
Joshua Croke (52:34):
Absolutely. We're also gonna be welcoming a new superintendent for the Worcester public school.
Bill Shaner (52:39):
Oh, I forgot about that. Yeah. That's very important.
Joshua Croke (52:42):
It iis going to really potentially, really, hopefully, shift to the dynamic, make of how the community works with our public schools. Yes. you know, a lot of my work has been in the educational equity space over the past few years and it is so critical for a district, a school district to look at leverage and work with their community-based partners. Yeah. We have a lot of out-of-school time, youth-based organizations, you know, the YMCA the YWCA, Boys and Girls Club, Girls Inc. The list goes on and on. And the, at the end of the day, we need to be prioritizing and focusing on quality of education and care for the individual student which can be obstructed when the partnership lines of communication are not clear and open. So I am looking forward to that as a progression in the Worcester on the move.
Bill Shaner (53:48):
Yeah. That's very exciting. I think February is when we're gonna be getting that news. There's a couple things that have to happen still. We gotta do a search committee, got some candidates. We don't know who the candidates are yet. And we're doing a national search, which is a lot different than when we hired Maureen Binienda that was like a fake national search. And then she was just appointing herself basically. But yeah, we're going to have a real national search, get somebody really qualified in, or at least that's the goal. And yeah, the schools are the biggest and most important service at the city offers seventy-ish percent of the budget every year. And it's like the most important thing we do. So the superintendent job is rightfully, you know, probably the second most important job in Worcester behind the city manager. So we need to get someone good in there..
Joshua Croke (54:41):
Absolutely, yeah. Well Bill, thank you so much for coming on the show. It was great chatting and hopefully, we can do this again some time.
Bill Shaner (54:47):
Yeah, this is really fun. I'll come on anytime.
Joshua Croke (54:48):
Awesome. For listeners, if you loved what we were talking about, let us know if you hated what we were talking about, let us know. You can reach out to us at publichearing.co. Thank you again, Bill Shaner for joining us on this episode reflecting on like the absurdity and some of the hopefulness of 2021. And as we move into the new year, thank you for listening to Public Hearing our podcast and radio show that airs Wednesdays at 6:00 PM on WICN 90.5 FM Worcester's only NPR affiliate station and can be heard wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm your host, Joshua Croke. If you have ideas for the show or would like to become a supporter, reach out to our team at publichearing.co. Our audio producer is Giuliano D’Orazio, who also made our show music and also thanks to Molly Gammon, and Anh Dao who also support our production of this show. Public Hearing is created and produced by Action! By Design. Learn more about our work actionbydesign.co that's dot co and not dot com. Thanks for listening.
