The garage on Governor’s and the new high school

During election season, local candidates get a lot of questionnaires. All of the 11 endorsements I’ve received (and the ones I applied for and didn’t receive) required their own questionnaires, as well as the ones for the Patch, Gotta Know Medford, the Tufts Daily (as of yet unpublished), Moms Demand Action, and Arts Collaborative Medford. This is in addition to film and audio media: two Medford Democratic City Committee Candidate Forums, the Medford Community Media candidate profile, and a Medford Bytes podcast interview.

One of the recent questionnaires from the Medford Chamber of Commerce contained a very interesting and specific question that’s long been on the minds of many voters:

Do you support the re-building of the Governors Ave parking garage as recommended in the Comprehensive plan?

To which I replied the following:

Yes, I do support the rebuilding of the parking garage on Governor’s. I would vote in favor of a bond or even a debt exclusion to fund that. But that project was killed by the City Council circa 2011 when they refused to fund a bond for it. We even had a state grant to pay for a good chunk of that project, but we declined it because the Council at the time didn’t want to put up that money and preferred to enforce two-hour parking in Medford Square. The money from the state grant no longer exists, and the fact that we have plans to build parking garages nearer to city hall would make it less likely that the state would fund that again. There is a path forward there, but it would require both a new grant (which would likely need to be initiated by the planning department) and a Council willing to fund the project. I’d be part of the solution for that, but new parking is being built elsewhere near Medford Square at the moment.

The parking garage on Governor’s Ave, behind Colleen’s, collapsed in 2005, and the city had plans to rebuild it. They presented it to City Council with a 182-page report after lining up funding from the state. The Council first said that they wanted to implement a parking enforcement program in Medford Square, but they would have had to approve a bond to fund their share of it. It didn’t pass. The state money ended up not going towards it, and the garage still hasn’t been rebuilt.

As I said in my answer, the recent Transcom real estate deal will be putting more parking in Medford Square regardless, so it’s unlikely Medford will get state funding to rebuild that garage 20 years after it collapsed.

I’m sure everyone on the 2010-11 City Council recognized that parking in Medford Square was a problem — it’s still one of the most frequent complaints I hear about today — but there was such an anti-development bend on Council back then that they didn’t want to do anything and found every excuse under the sun to not.

How is this related to a high school?

Medford High School is an old building that has had problems since it was first built, and we need a new one. Right now, there is a building committee that is coming up with plans for that. The problem is funding and follow-through.

The Massachusetts School Building Authority funds a big chunk of the cost of a new high school — around 40% typically — and the other parts inevitably needs to be funded by residents voluntarily voting to raise their own taxes (a debt exclusion). You can see the record for debt exclusions in MA here. A simple keyword search of the records reveals that 314 debt exclusions have been on the ballot in different MA municipalities for either a completely new high school or renovations. So ballot initiatives are the norm.

To put a debt exclusion on the ballot, you need a two-thirds from City Council. High schools are a lot more expensive than parking garages, and there’s typically a limited political window in which to fund these things; if Medford doesn’t get a debt exclusion on the ballot by around Spring 2027, the Massachusetts School Building Authority will tell us to take a hike and give their allocation to another city that’s willing to follow through. Pretty much every candidate in this race has said that they’re supportive of a new high school, in some form. But — everyone is also supportive of more parking in Medford Square. The problem is timing and follow-through. I think that only Councilors who have a history of supporting adequate funding for our school system will agree to put a debt exclusion on the ballot, in time for the MSBA to not lose interest in Medford.