City Council Agenda–The old courthouse, violent crime numbers, plastic bag bans and some nice pictures

Posted by Jeremy Shulkin

Tomorrow’s City Council meeting has some interesting things happening, including a precursor to the fate of the old courthouse building and a review of the RKG study which was referenced in last week’s article on affordable housing. Back in 2002 RKG Associates pushed the city to change its housing strategy and focus more on attracting market-rate developments.

Police Chief Gemme will say that there was one more homicide in 2009 (seven) than in 2008 (six), and three of them were from firearms. He’ll also say that non-fatal shootings went up in 2009, and the worst months for gun violence were during the summer (July and August). Stabbings also increased: 129 in 2008 to 133 in 2009. Some good news though, is that motor vehicle fatalities went down from six to three.

There will be some pictures of proposed Canal District streetscaping projects, City Manager O’Brien will discuss the FY11 budget and Lukes will ask that he draft an ordinance that bans the use of plastic bags by grocery stores and retailers.

All this and more, tomorrow night.

Belmont Street Community School Closed–Updated

Posted by Jeremy Shulkin

Damages resulting from a break-in/vandalism over the weekend at Belmont Street Community School have forced an early closing this morning, with students bused to Worcester Tech to be picked up by parents/guardians at 10 am.

The WPS has posted information releases this morning, but haven’t specified what the damages were. Dr. Melinda Boone, WPS’ Superintendent, has visited the school and a source reports that there were multiple police cars around the building.

Update: According to Rob Pezzella, the WPS’ Executive Assistant to the Superintendent on School Safety and Violence Prevention, the damages to the school were found this morning by the school’s Principal, which gave the staff enough time to direct arriving students into the gymnasium without them seeing the extensive damage to the classrooms, hallways and cafeteria.

Damages included broken glass strewn throughout the building, broken trophy cases and computer monitors, paint on the floors, cereal and milk thrown around the cafeteria and water damage from running faucets. It’s assumed that all of this happened within the last 48 hours, as the school was in order when the principal left on Friday.

The school will be closed tomorrow, a connect-ed message has been sent out and  there will be more updates on the school’s webpage (http://belmont.worcesterschools.org) as well as through CBS-4, WCVB-5, WHDH-7, WFXT-25, 580 am WTAG and 1030 am WBZ.