Election 2014: Are You Voting with Neighbors on the Ballot Questions?

Photo: Local citizens and city officials rally in favor of Ballot Question No. 2; courtesy Rachel Poliner.

Editor’s Note: The following piece was written and submitted by West Roxbury resident Rachel Poliner.

One of the best things about canvassing for issues in West Roxbury is chatting with neighbors. To those of you who paused in your day and peppered me with questions – thanks! For everyone I didn’t get to talk with, here are the comments and questions I heard most.

Regarding Gas Tax Indexing, Question 1

By far, the most asked question has been about the confusing wording. The Legislature, by a wide margin last year, passed a law indexing the gas tax to inflation, which would provide funds for fixing roads and bridges (2,700 bridges are in need of serious work – and workers). The ballot question is about repealing the law. Once everyone sorts out the syntax, they’ve said, “We still have potholes and unsafe bridges when we have inflation, and they still have to be fixed, and we have other problems for the Legislature to solve. So voting No on Question 1 means keeping the law?” Yes, voting “No” means no change in the current law.

Regarding the Bottle Bill, Question 2

The people who hike Blue Hill are sick of seeing bottles strewn everywhere, as are the people who hike, bike, walk, paddle, picnic, play, or swim anywhere. They’re voting Yes on 2.

The people who’ve worked in trash management are voting Yes on 2, they said, because they know our landfills have too much valuable plastic in them (and plastic lasts nearly forever – whether the liquid inside is carbonated or not!).

Some neighbors are just starting to do their homework on Question 2 and asked about milk jugs. Nope, dairy products are not included. You drink those at home and recycle them via the big blue bin. The focus is the on-the-go bottles for our mobile lives, for example, non-carbonated waters and sports drinks, products that didn’t exist when the original Bottle Bill was passed.

Some people mentioned that the No-on-2-side says redemption deposits are an outdated approach and the new high tech equipment sorts the recyclables out of our trash. Well, it can only sort what we put into the bins. All those bottles left after parades and soccer games and charity runs haven’t been coming home for curbside pick-up. It turns out that only 23% of the bottles not included in the current law make it to recycling (compared to 80% with nickel deposits). That’s a lot of plastic filling up landfills (forever) or floating in ponds (forever). Besides, including Boston, only 47% of towns and cities have curbside pick-up. The rest of the state doesn’t even have it. (The 90% claim about curbside pick-up you may have seen in the No-on-2 ads was simply false.)

Some people asked about Comprehensive Recycling Works, the source of the No-side’s big glossy mailings. They’re the campaign created by Coke, Pepsi, and other big bottlers (aka the American Beverage Association) to fight the Bottle Bill, thus the big glossy mailings. (You can see their donations adding up to $8,000,000 on public online records at the Mass. Office of Campaign & Political Finance website ocpf.us.) If they were eager to recycle, they could have spent their eight million dollars on bins at ball fields across the state, perhaps preempting the need to update the law altogether. (Maybe someday those plastic Dasani and Aquafina bottles will hold actual spring water too!)

So, why are the big bottlers against the redemptions? If Question 2 passes, the bottlers will have to share in the cost of promoting recycling for the bottles they make, rather than having it fall on us taxpayers alone. I think their profit margins can handle it!

And who is supporting Yes on Question 2? To start with, all of our local elected officials – Senator Rush, Representative Coppinger, City Councilor O’Malley; too many officials and organizations to mention, so here’s the list http://www.yeson2ma.org/wp/supporters); and 209 cities and towns because they bear the cost (meaning we pay in taxes) for clearing bottles from storm drains, parks, and ponds, and they pay more for trash management.

Regarding the Casino Repeal, Question 3

Even after hundreds of conversations, I have enough fingers to count the neighbors who believe the casino industry’s promises. Almost everyone said they believe that the casino industry has reached saturation and is in decline, fosters addiction and crime, and pushes small businesses into closing, ending in a net loss of jobs. That’s impressive since the pro-casino campaign (No-on-3 Committee) has had close to $12 million in its budget versus $674,000 for the Repeal the Casino Deal (Yes-on-3), almost an 18:1 ratio. Lots of neighbors said they feel for the challenges of people who live in Springfield, Everett, and Plainville, and encourage state leaders to consider other ways to revitalize those areas.

For anyone who’s still researching Question 3, I encourage you to view these short videos and read a column by Don Berwick on WBUR’s Cognoscenti page, with all the links to independent research anyone might want.

• Legislative researcher, Lazarus Morrison, 2.5-minute video. http://vimeo.com/109984313
• Don Berwick’s column in WBUR’s Cognoscenti: http://cognoscenti.wbur.org/2014/10/27/no-to-casinos-yes-on-ballot-question-3-donald-m-berwick
• Stacy Stevens’ story, 30-second video: https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=374622889367682&pnref=story

Regarding Earned Sick Time, Question 4

Almost everyone shrugged and said, “Yeah, it’s sick time. Who doesn’t need sick time?” Several had a special interest in sick time for food service workers. Some asked for details: sick days would kick in after 90 days of employment (not for seasonal workers); up to 40 hours per year of earned sick time could be earned and paid in businesses with 11 or more employees, unpaid with 10 or fewer employees; doctors’ notes would be needed after 3 days’ absence.

So, if you agree with the leanings above, you’ll be in sync with me and many of your neighbors (and The Boston Globe) – voting “No on One, Yes on the Rest.”