CAPTION: 79 Pinckney St.

Three youths were arrested in connection with the second robbery on Beacon Hill in less than five weeks, according to Boston Police.
At about 11:17 p.m. on Saturday, March 21, officers responded to a radio call for a person screaming in the area of 79 Pinckney St. While en route to the call, police were advised that the male victim had his wallet stolen. On arrival, officers met the victim, who stated approximately seven Hispanic males robbed him at the intersection of Louisburg Square and Pinckney Street.
The victim was able to provide police with an accurate description of the two main suspects and added the first suspect, a heavyset Hispanic male in his late teens, grabbed him from behind and forced him to the ground. The second suspect was described as a tall, thin Hispanic male in his teens.
The victim said numerous individuals hit him and took his wallet. Police observed the victim bleeding from his lip and nose and with heavy swelling and bruising under his left eye and temple area. Officers had the victim enter an unmarked cruiser and began searching the area for the alleged perpetrators.
On the Boston Common, police observed an individual fitting the description of the first suspect, accompanied by two other males. Officers exited the cruiser to conduct a felony stop based on the description given. The three individuals were handcuffed and frisked for weapons, and the victim identified all of them as suspects in the robbery.
Jamio Castillo, 17, of Roslindale, Alex Ponte, 17, of Roxbury and Ariel Dume, 18, of Dorchester were charged with unarmed robbery, according to a spokesperson from Suffolk County District Attorney Dan Conley’s office.
Castillo and Ponte were each held on $500 cash bail, while Dume was held on $1,000 cash bail. All three were arraigned in Boston Municipal Court on March 23 and are due back in court on April 7.
Meanwhile, the victim was evaluated and treated by Boston EMS ambulance, but refused transport to the hospital for additional medical attention, police said.
As they were completing the incident report, the officers received a phone call at Area A-1 headquarters from a male who said he felt threatened after being approached by a group of six or seven Hispanic males in the area of Louisburg Square an hour earlier.
The caller said an individual, fitting the description of the first suspect in the robbery, approached him in a threatening manner. Another individual said to “forget about [the man]” before the caller fled the scene.
In the earlier robbery, a 53-year-old man was robbed at knifepoint on February 16 by a group of youths on Pinckney Street. No arrests have been made to date in that case, but police increased their presence on Beacon Hill immediately following the incident.
Captain Bernard O’Rourke of Area A-1 said directed patrols of Beacon Hill would continue in the event that other suspects involved in the incidents were still at large, but he also urged citizens to contact police if they see questionable people in the neighborhood.
“We want to make people aware that when they see groups of individuals of a suspicious nature or who don’t appear to belong in the neighborhood, especially groups of kids who don’t frequent the area, they should call 911,” O’Rourke said.

Flavia Cigliano, executive director of the Nichols Museum, and Charlotte Thibodeau of Myrtle Street helped Gregory Van Boven of Mount Vernon Street stuff patrons' letters for the Nichols House Spring Fete to be held on June 4 at the Boston Athenaeum. Van Boven is this year's event chair. This ever-popular party includes a silent auction, which features exciting items, such as holiday cottages, both here and abroad.

Original Ordinance and ISD Bulletin

In March 2008, a new Boston ordinance became effective which, among other things, requires most roof decks to be certified by an architect or engineer in an affidavit filed with the Inspectional Services Department (ISD). Shortly thereafter, ISD issued a Bulletin implementing and clarifying parts of the ordinance, delaying the certification requirement until June 30, 2009 for many wards including all or parts of Beacon Hill, Back Bay, the North End and the South End. The certification requirement was delayed to subsequent years for other wards. The deadlines by ward are:

Ward Deadline
1, 3, 5, 7, 9 June 30, 2009
2, 4, 6, 8, 10 June 30, 2010
11 through 15 June 30, 2011
16 through 22 June 30, 2012

The delay in the certification requirement was applicable only to “legal” roof decks built in accordance with a validly issued building permit. Once a roof deck is certified, it must be re-certified every five years. This regulatory system is similar to the one for fire escapes which must be certified every five years.
Access to roof decks that are not certified by the applicable deadline must be restricted as required by the ordinance. This means that use of many roof decks will become illegal after June 30, 2009 if not certified, as it has been for illegal roof decks since the ordinance became effective in March 2008. With warmer weather in the offing, relatively little time remains to certify a huge number of roof decks so that they may continue to be enjoyed and used lawfully over the summer.

ISD Specifies Certification Procedure

With the June 30, 2009 deadline for certification approaching for many roof decks, ISD has begun to send out letters to certain buildings specifying in more detail what is required. A registered architect or engineer must certify that the roof deck is in compliance with all regulations applicable at the time of issuance of the original building permit for the roof deck. The certification is required to cover all public safety aspects of the deck, including access, egress, live load requirements and handrail requirements such as height, balusters and applied loads. If a building has more than one roof deck, all must be certified together even if they are not in common ownership. Thus, for example, if a condominium building has both common and private roof decks, the association and the unit owners with private roof decks must engage the same architect or engineer to provide the certification.
The letter sent out recently by ISD also states that the architect’s or engineer’s inspection report, in addition to covering compliance with applicable roof deck regulations, must describe the building and its overall condition, record any significant deterioration or unsafe conditions with a schedule for remedial action, and assess the water-tightness of the exterior surfaces of the building. It is unclear what the source of authority for requiring these latter, non-roof deck certifications is, and the additional work involved will increase the cost of certifications and delay their filing.
Certain roof decks are excluded from the certification requirement by the Bulletin. These include roof decks on owner-occupied one and two family structures and roof decks accessed through a single access point within owner-occupied units in larger buildings. Note that if a structure or unit ceases to be owner-occupied, any roof deck ceases to be legal if otherwise required to be certified.

Roof access restrictions

As indicated above, the ordinance requires that certain access points to roofs with uncertified or illegal roof decks or no roof deck be restricted by means of a lock, if legally permissible, or qualifying alarm device. Access points which must be secured or alarmed include any doorway, passageway, hatchway or staircase through which any occupant has unimpeded access to the roof or illegal roof deck from the interior of the building.
Securing roof access with a lock may raise fire egress issues, and thus a qualifying alarm often is the better approach. Such an alarm must sound whenever the access door is opened and may not substantially impede the opening and closing of the door. The alarm device must have signage on or near it to warn users of the presence of the alarm, and may be deactivated with a key, code or other measure as long as it is designed to reactivate itself automatically within a reasonable time.

Penalties and liability issues

Fines of $300 for the first offense and $500 for any subsequent offense are included in the ordinance. Moreover, while the ordinance expressly does not create a presumption of negligence if it is violated, the new requirements do create some additional liability risk for owners and condominium boards if an accident were to occur. A violation of the ordinance may also have some effect on liability insurance coverage under some policies.
All apartment building owners, all condominium and cooperative associations, and individual unit owners who rent out units with private roof decks should determine immediately whether any roof deck to which occupants have access was legally built and when it is required to be certified. Continued lawful use of the roof deck hangs in the balance.

Mr. Thomas is an attorney and CEO of CityState LLC, a property management firm. Mr. Gilman is COO of CityState Construction LLC, a design/build and contracting company. Both companies do business in the Boston area and have their offices on Beacon Hill.

Peter G. Christie is the undisputed voice and leader of Massachusetts restaurant owners and operators.
Christie is the president and chief executive officer (CEO) of the Massachusetts Restaurant Association (MRA,) a position he has held for the past 20 years. The MRA has 1,900 dues-paying members who own and operate 5,000 individual restaurants and restaurant chains.
“The chain restaurants join primarily for government affairs, but the independent operator – the entrepreneur – that’s my market,” said Christie. “The chains have legal advisers, human resource experts, law departments, wage and hour departments – independents don’t have that. What we do is provide information, cost-savings programs for our members, advocacy with both the Legislature and the regulatory agencies, and we have an education component and an educational foundation.”
Christie, who has a staff of 11 employees based in Southborough, said part of the association’s effort involves keeping state legislators informed and up to date on the nuances of the restaurant business.
“Restaurants are a special interest, and if you’re not up there at the State House looking out for yourself, there’s someone else up there on the other side looking out for themselves,” said Christie, a former owner of restaurants. “And it takes a great deal of energy and effort to educate legislators who don’t know about your business.”
Christie said he’s currently monitoring a proposal to institute a meals tax, which the MRA strong opposes.
“Right now, there is no meals tax. Meals are subject to the state sales tax of 5 percent,” he said. “They want to single us [restaurants] out from all the things that you pay a sales tax on and impose an increase of a 1 percent tax for the state and a 1 percent tax for the local community, which is a 40 percent hike.”
Christie said it’s not a good time to be adding 2 percent to the bill of restaurant diners.
“It’s a very difficult time for restaurants – it’s as bad a time as I’ve seen in my 20 years,” said Christie. “This is no time to be creating a disincentive. What we need right now is more people working – we need stimulation.”
Christie said the MRA has some excellent cost-saving measures to help restaurant owners. The association has monthly newsletters and hold informational seminars on a regular basis.
“We have a natural gas program that can save restaurants a lot of money. An owner of three restaurants on the North Shore saved $30,000 this winter,” said Christie. “Right now, we’re taking bids on a property casualty program for insurance. Anything we can use our expertise and our aggregated buying power to save our restaurants money, we will do.”
Another area of savings for MRA members is credit card processing.
“I can save almost any restaurant their [MRA] dues by having them take a look at our credit card processing program – it’s that good,” said Christie.
Christie takes great pride in the success and goodwill generated by the MRA’s educational foundation that is under the leadership of President Bobby Wong, an owner of the Kowloon Restaurant.
“I’m very proud of our educational foundation,” said Christie. “Its mission is twofold: to help educate the industry and to implement our school-to-career program. We’re in 25 high schools with a curriculum that introduces juniors and seniors to the food service industry. If they go on to restaurant/hotel management, we will provide them with a scholarship. In the last six years, we’ve given out over $500,000 in scholarships to students who are continuing their education in our field.”
Christie credited Bobby Wong for his outstanding leadership of the foundation and the Wong family for its generous contributions to the community.
“It’s families like the Wong family that are not only in the top of their game in the restaurant industry, but they’re upstanding members of the community. You talk about restaurants being the cornerstone of the community – the Wong family is so involved in so many philanthropic activities. They really know about giving back. It’s people like the Wong family that make me personally so grateful that I have the job that I have. They’re civic minded, philanthropic and they run fantastic restaurants. They’re always willing to share their expertise and knowledge and willing to help others.”
Christie is optimistically looking ahead in the restaurant industry in 2009.
“It [2008] was a tough year, but things are looking up a little bit right now,” said Christie. “We are in prolonged recession; however, operating costs and energy costs and wholesale food costs are starting to come down. Plus, let’s face it – we had a brutal winter. Spring is here. The weather is warming up. There hasn’t been a time in my life where I’ve seen more value in restaurants than right now. I think the restaurants have responded well to the very difficult market. People have cut back on spending, so restaurant owners are trying to create as much value in order to attract customers.”
Christie said initiatives such as Restaurant Week Boston, a twice-a-year program in which participating restaurant offers meals at discount prices, have helped stimulate business in the city. “Restaurant Week has been very successful,” he said.

“Another winter of distress is before us,” wrote Charles Rogerson, director of the Permanent Charity Fund of Boston, in a 1932 annual report. The Permanent Charity Fund, which today is called the Boston Foundation, had been established through gifts from Boston-area donors and had served as Greater Boston’s community foundation for 17 years. It was only the third community foundation to be established in the United States, following Cleveland’s and Chicago’s by just a year.
At the time, the Permanent Charity Fund had an endowment of less than $5 million. Even so, over the next decade, it was able to distribute hundreds of thousands of dollars to charitable organizations across the city, helping those whose lives were being devastated by the Great Depression.
“The bulk of the money went for direct relief, such as food, clothing and shelter,” reported Mr. Rogerson, speculating that the adverse effects of the Depression might persist for another year.
The Depression only deepened, of course. During the years before the federal government stepped in, people in already distressed parts of the city took the brunt of the hardship: the Italians in East Boston and the North End, the Irish in Charlestown and South Boston, and African Americans in the South End and Roxbury. In the poorest neighborhoods, unemployment rose as high as 40 percent and people went hungry.
In these grim years, the Permanent Charity Fund shifted more and more of its resources to “relief,” making grants to agencies such as the “Diet Kitchen,” which supplied food to the “sick and undernourished people of the South End,” and charitable organizations in the North and West Ends that provided the ailing poor with milk, eggs and other staples. Moreover, because poverty so threatened the health of young people, the Permanent Charity Fund supported many organizations that specifically cared for sick children, including the Floating Hospital, an actual ship docked at Pickett’s Wharf in East Boston.
Although these grants improved the lives of thousands of Bostonians, Mr. Rogerson acknowledged that, “What we were largely doing was holding a bucket to catch the overflow of distress, rather than to reaching up and shutting off the spigot.”
Today, the Boston Foundation has assets topping $800 million, built through contributions from hundreds of generous donors over the years through outright gifts and bequests. As a result, it has the capacity not only to “reach up and shut off the spigot,” but to make investments in long-term solutions to poverty and distress. It has also expanded its mission to include civic leadership, which allows the foundation to identify the most pressing issues facing Greater Boston and the entire region—and begin to address them.
In response to the challenges faced by Greater Boston’s most vulnerable residents in today’s economic downturn, the Boston Foundation held a forum in October 2008 that brought together hundreds of experts versed in emergency responses to hunger and homelessness.
At the end of the forum, Paul S. Grogan, president and CEO of the Boston Foundation, announced $500,000 in special funding to build capacity for organizations like Citizens Energy Corporation, which helps to provide fuel to households, the Red Cross of Massachusetts Bay, and the Greater Boston Food Bank.
The permanent, unrestricted pool of funds that provided the resources for grants in the 1930s, throughout the decades since, and those announced by Mr. Grogan in October, is called the Permanent Fund for Boston. It has been built by hundreds of donors who have left bequests to the foundation, motivated by the desire to leave a lasting legacy for the Greater Boston community.
“As we move through the trying days before us,” said Mr. Grogan, “we can be proud that in the 1930s, the Boston Foundation rose to the occasion of the last, major economic crisis with great compassion and wisdom. Today’s Boston Foundation will strive to follow that example as we face whatever the future may bring, inspired and informed by our city’s and foundation’s history.”

Barbara Hindley is senior editor at The Boston Foundation.

Who will guard the guards?

The news in recent weeks concerning the use of taxpayer dollars to pay bonuses at American Investment Group or the cry from the governor for raising the cigarette or alcohol or gas tax while appointing a state senator to a plum $150,000 job that has been vacant for more than a decade has raised the ire of taxpayers and voters.
Who can we trust in deciding how to spend our dollars?
Everyone who still has a job knows the many faces of friends who have lost their jobs in the last nine months. We look to our elected leaders to lead us, but we have our skepticism on their doing what is best for us instead of the favored few.
Members of the Massachusetts House of Representatives have taken a step in the right direction with the passage of the Ethics Law last Thursday.
This bill goes beyond the governor’s bill and calls for stricter enforcement in the areas of campaign finances, ethics laws and laws on lobbyists.
The bill will cover the actions of not only the lobbyists and elected officials, but also municipal employees.
If we are going to come out of this economic malaise that we are in, then we will have to do it together. This bill is a start in the right direction to give the regular people who have to pay the dollars, some assurance that the general good will be the dictate rather than interests of the special few.
We know all too well the mistrust for public officials. Senator Diane Wilkerson is probably a poster person for the lax ethics the state has been operating under for the last few years.
We urge the Senate to take up this bill quickly. We urge Governor Patrick to sign the bill quickly. If there is no attempt to change the way that we regulate our public employees, then our recovery will be all the harder and longer.
In ancient Greece, where democracy had its birth, there was the expression, “Who will guard the guards?” This Ethics bill starts the path of restoring faith in our leaders to do the right actions for taxpayers.


This is no April Fool’s day joke …


Street cleaning will start this Wednesday, April 1. The winter grime and dirt just litter our streets. Rubbish that was frozen in the snow is blowing around.
We need to get the streets cleaned.
In the past, the City of Boston has given some leeway to people, to remember the start of street cleaning that ended last November 30.
Given the budget, we don’t know if the city will again give people a warning rather that a $25 ticket and towing on Wednesday.
We hope they do.
But if they don’t, read the signs and move your cars, if to not only save the aggravation of a ticket and a tow, but to get the streets clean.