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Not long ago, power emanated from the commands of top executives. Those leaders drove performance by devising strategic objectives, which they translated into directives that passed down through a hierarchy before reaching employees, whose job was to take orders and to act on them. Today, that model is obsolete, as more leaders recognize that the command-and-control style doesn't work anymore. A new source of power has come to the fore -- organizational conversation. Instead of handing down commands or imposing formal controls, many leaders are interacting with their people in ways that call to mind an ordinary conversation between two people.
Trade Publication Article
A SPARKLING GIFT FOR TOWN'S 300TH
[Arturo Vasquez] and [Harold Brown] also discussed a more ambitious approach to the \"missing tooth\" problem: adding one or more floors to the building. The monument does not foreclose that possibility, both men said. \"The foundation is built in such a manner that we could raise it and add another story,\" Brown said. If a transformation does come, it will owe much to David Tonnesen, who fabricated the monument in his Somerville workshop. \"It should last a millennium or two,\" said Tonnesen, whose previous work includes the menorah atop the Temple Ohabei Shalom on Beacon Street. He also has fashioned lighting fixtures for about 40 Boston- area restaurants. Tonnesen's contributions to the monument included making the structure leaner and making its finish brighter. \"I probably shaved a ton off the weight\" through refinements of Vasquez's design, Tonnesen said.
Newspaper Article
PLEDGE' QUESTION STIRS UP TOWN MEETING ; DEBATE REIGNITED WITH MOVE TO ALTER PRACTICE
Today, [Seymour Ziskend] says, \"world events\" make pressing the need to incorporate the pledge into the opening ceremonies at Town Meeting. If his proposal were to pass, the pledge would be voluntary and would take place only during the first night of the town's biannual legislative session. [Martin Rosenthal] discounts the ostensibly voluntary nature of Ziskend's proposed pledge bylaw. An official pledge becomes \"an invitation to finger pointing,\" Rosenthal says. \"It's an oxymoron to say it's voluntary.\" In 1984, believing the pledge to be a Town Meeting tradition and angered by [Carl Sapers]'s rejection of [John Bain]'s pledge motion, [Gary Kayakachoian] filed a warrant article that was a precursor to Ziskend's proposal. Town Meeting voted down the pledge measure, while approving a provision that formalized the longstanding inclusion of the national anthem in its opening ceremonies.
Newspaper Article
AT ACCESS TV, A BLURRY PICTURE SHARPENS
Thanks to the resolution in May of legal wrangling between the town and Comcast, its main cable provider, Brookline Access Television has the fiscal wherewithal to move in that direction. [Tom Bellotti] now knows with some certainty how he will fund his $440,000 annual budget. Under a new license, Comcast must continue to turn over 2 percent of its Brookline-generated revenues to the station, according to Town Administrator Richard Kelliher. It will also pay the town $800,000 over 10 years to support cable access efforts. Equally important, the town has banked more than $1.1 million in settlement awards from lawsuits against Comcast. According to Selectman Gil Hoy, Comcast had breached the terms of its old license by, among other things, providing subpar service quality and denying Brookline Access Television use of studio space. Bellotti cites the success of another show, \"Voices of Brookline,\" a series of interviews that host Larry Ruttman turned into a book last year. \"That's clearly not `Wayne's World' kind of stuff,\" says Bellotti, referring to the \"Saturday Night Live\" send- up of cable-access programming. \"Public access is really about the people,\" [Slotnick] says. \"It's a free-speech issue.\"
Newspaper Article
DRINKING AND FLUSHING LESS, BUT PAYING MORE
Brookline selectmen approved the new, higher rate, along with a sewer rate for next year that will jump by 8.8 percent, on July 18, and soon afterward, residents began receiving the first quarterly bills reflecting the increase. By [Andrew M. Pappastergion]'s estimate, a typical family of four will now pay $78 a year more for water and sewer service. The total bill for that theoretical household will reach about $1,190. Wholesale rates might have increased still more this year if the state budget had not included nearly $19 million for MWRA debt service relief. This month, just as Pappastergion was submitting his budget to selectmen, the state Legislature overrode a veto by Governor Romney that threatened the appropriation. Without such assistance, according to Pappastergion, Brookline's MWRA assessment would have risen by 9.8 percent. In exchange for paying the MWRA rate, Pappastergion told selectmen, residents tap into \"the best water in the country.\" [Ria Convery] used the same language when asked how consumers should respond to sharply increasing rates: \"You get the best water system in the country.\"
Newspaper Article
GREEN DOG' GETS A NEW LEASE ON LIFE ; PETS CAN RUN FREE IN 14 TOWN PARKS
In December 2003, [Michael Newman] applied his training to a pilot effort that allowed dogs to gambol leash-free in Brookline parks for the first time. Letting his engineer's mind run wild, he launched the Warren Playground Poop Patrol. Along with a few other volunteers, he began tabulating the incidents of unretrieved canine feces in an area of the park where dogs seemed apt to do their business. The idea was to compare numbers before and after dogs started being allowed to run off-leash. Bobby Zuker is one of them. As leader of the Griggs Park Green Dog Owners group, he helped produce a brochure that sets forth principles of \"doggie etiquette.\" Visitors to Griggs Park will find copies of the brochures in dispensers that Zuker said he has to refill \"fairly often.\" Its purpose, Zuker said, is \"just to remind dog owners that it's a privilege\" to unleash their pets. Zuker started campaigning for that privilege about four years ago when his dog, Fenway, was a puppy. \"It was just silly,\" Zuker said of the blanket ban on off-leash dog running that prevailed then. \"I had a dog. I lived on a park. I wanted him to run around freely.\"
Newspaper Article
THE STORM BEFORE THE CALM ; TO CRITICS, EFFORTS TO SLOW TRAFFIC AREN'T FAST ENOUGH
Driving down Winchester Street, motorists in Brookline often get a jolt when they encounter one of the street's two raised crosswalks. An example of \"traffic calming,\" the structures rise about half a foot above the street line, to make drivers slow down as they approach the Brookline Senior Center. Just don't call them \"speed bumps.\" That term, and the crude device it signifies, apparently belong to a more benighted era of traffic management. In the parlance of modern traffic calming, such bulges are \"speed humps.\" Other modern \"calming\" measures include the \"bulb-out,\" along with kindred efforts such as the \"neckdown\" and the \"choker,\" each of which narrows a street at selected points. And there are various curb-line changes, all designed to make streets safer for children and other pedestrians. At Town Meeting in May, [Marty Rosenthal] offered an amendment to a line item on traffic calming in the town's 2007 budget. The amendment, which passed with broad support, vests authority in the Board of Selectmen for spending the $100,000 appropriated this year for traffic calming. It also requires the Transportation Board to report to the selectmen quarterly on the status of traffic calming projects. Childlike impatience hardly characterizes [Richard Segan]'s Driscoll School committee, Segan said in an interview. The group approached the town about traffic calming in the area in 1997. They secured a $100,000 grant from the state to create a model project for traffic calming near an elementary school in 2000, and installation of changes, including several bulb-outs sections of sidewalk that extend into parking lanes began the next year.
Newspaper Article
NEIGHBORS WROUGHT OVER FENCE ; TOWN SAYS CONTRACTOR TRASHED ORIGINAL STRUCTURE
A century-old wrought-iron fence that surrounded Monmouth Park until July of last year is forever gone, the apparent victim of a contractor's error. Instead of restoring 270-odd linear feet of the park's original fencing, officials said, a contractor specially hired for that purpose sold the fence to a scrap yard for $600. An approximate replica of the fence, now under construction, will likely be in place later this summer. The town awarded Colonial the contract in June, Colonial removed the fence in July, and the bad news came in August. \"Colonial said, `It turned out we couldn't restore' \" the old fence, \" `and we had to scrap it,' \" [Annie Blair] recalled. The exhibit took place in May at the Brookline Art Center, adjacent to Monmouth Park. There, not far from the temporary chain- link fence that now borders the park, visitors could watch [Elizabeth Michelman]'s poems scroll across a video screen over images of the late, lamented fence.
Newspaper Article
TOWN MEETING CASTS A WIDE NET ; VOTERS TO DECIDE ON TAX SURCHARGE
Robert Allen, chairman of the Board of Selectmen, said early projections indicate a $3.3 million budget shortfall for the 2008 fiscal year. Brookline remains \"one of the best-run towns in the Commonwealth,\" Allen said. Even so, he added, \"We feel an underlying uneasiness.\" Nonetheless, Superintendent William H. Lupini reported, \"We've had staffing reductions at every building in the district.\" Especially disconcerting to Town Meeting members was the lack of provision in the budget for an elementary-level world language program or for a longer school day. Lupini said the \"current pie\" was too small to support those efforts. Member Linda Dean said, \"We will be raising taxes in one of the most difficult fiscal times,\" and \"our most vulnerable citizens\" will keenly feel the pinch of a new tax.
Newspaper Article