Why I'm voting for James Shanley

I've done a horrible job blogging on this election, which is too bad because I was really looking forward to the discussion. I don't like posting this on election eve, but I didn't want the season to slip by without fulfilling my long-promised reasons for endorsing James Shanley. Well, there's really only one.

I think we need him.

I disagree with the Current's endorsement, suggesting now is the time more suited for a candidate like Donna Holaday, someone who knows the inside and the outside of a ledger and can pull together a tight budget. To me, that would be the defensive position to take at a time when we need to show a strong offense.

We need a mayor who is looking beyond the squabbles of today and yesterday. Someone who recognizes the status quo just isn't working today. A person who is willing to lead folks toward possibilities they hadn't previously considered.

Shanley did that for me two years ago. We were attending one of the NRA's public hearing about the waterfronts, specifically asking what features should be included in the Cecil Group's plan for a waterfront park. Having just arrived to the city a year earlier, I attended the meeting thinking the battle over the waterfront parcels had been fought and won. The waterfront would be open; it's just a question of what we rest upon this openness (openicity?).

Skating rinks. Tot lots. Art displays. one after another suggestions for park features. Then Shanley stood up and reminded the NRA that the waterfront lots were economic engines that shouldn't be left in idle.

I couldn't believe what I'd heard. Someone actually suggested publicly that the lots be built upon. I thought these issues were settled in the 90s when Roger Foster finally abandoned his hotel bid (or had it abandoned for him), but someone had the guts to bring it up again.

We met for coffee later and his argument was convincing. We can't afford to maintain wide open green space. We need tax revenue. This city needs to maximize our resources if we're going to survive, thrive and restore some of the school programs and services that have been cut over the years.

A park, in my opinion, isn't the most practical or even the most attractive use of that space.

I know the surveys and so-called consensus that has built after 40 years supposedly wants an open waterfront. My question is this. Why isn't anyone using the park we currently have? A month or so ago back, we four made our way down to the Farmer's Market just before closing. We did our shopping, ambling through the crowds that still filled the Tannery parking lot and filling our shopping bags with vegetables, peaches and cider doughnuts. The place was packed, alive and a joy.

Lunch was next so we wandered over the Abraham's, grabbed some sandwiches and made our way to the Waterfront Park for a picnic. One might expect the place to be jamming in the middle of a glorious Sunday afternoon but that one would be wrong. The place was empty, a few families here, a napping waitress there, but the park was a quiet contrast to the bustle of the downtown and the Tannery, with the only exception being the boardwalk and walkways that guided people around the green space. In my opinion, this state isn't unusual. I never see crowds enjoying the grass we do have. The park always looks empty to me.

Having just returned to Newburyport a few years ago, I can testify that people "out there" don't think pastoral riverside retreat when they think of Newburyport. Quite the contrary, they think State Street, restaurants, shops and boardwalks. They want vitality. So do I.

In my opinion, people who have lived in this city forever-plus overstate the importance of the park in the ability to draw visitors to town. Most of the visitors to our fair city have parks in their own towns (admittedly without a river), what they don't have is our historic downtown.

As I write this the temperature is sagging into the 40s. I wonder how man people will be using that park this weekend or the weekend after that? How can we commit such a massive parcel of our downtown to be used for a handful of concerts and a three or four months of pleasant weekend afternoons?

To be clear, I'm not talking about building on the entire waterfront. I think we should extend the park on either side, but we should complement the open space with life, vitality and a return of the commerce that made and makes this city great.

This is the vision James Shanley laid out a few weeks after that 2007 meeting when we met at Plum Island Roasters. He never accepted authorship of the idea. (I'm told it was Nick Cracknell, the former planning director, but not sure.) But he sold it.

Anyway, at the time, I thought he was mildly nuts. I compared him to a WWII Japanese soldier who'd been holed up on a tropical island and didn't know the war was over, but I listened and I came to appreciate the vision behind the point of view, and I also appreciated the guy who was willing to stand up at a meeting filled with people who dreamed of parkland and state a completely contrary position.

I think he's consistently been willing to push for unpopular ideas that he thinks will work. He wants paid parking without free parking on the street, a system Donna Holaday seems to favor. I agree with James that the free parking will only undermine the paid parking system, causing people to drive around looking for "free" spots and adding congestion. He wants to develop a parking management program first before considering a parking garage. Again, at this time when government dollars are drying up we need to be prudent so this makes sense to me. (Jim Roy, a garage backer, had a great exchange with him in a recent Liberator.)

I think the time has come to settle these issues: the waterfront, paid parking. These programs, if executed well, all promise to bring revenue back to the city when we most desperately need it. Do we need a mayor who shows a propensity for counting the dollars or generating the dollars. I'm favoring the former, and I see James Shanley as that person.

I'll echo every other publication and blogger who has expressed an opinion on this matter. We're enormously lucky to have two capable candidates, and I'd be pleased to call Donna Holaday mayor. But I truly think James Shanley is the right candidate for this time, and that is why I'm voting for him.

Thanks.

p.s. Crazy day tomorrow, not sure how deeply I can get into comments until Wed.