Menino’s reputation of good service to the working/middle-class people is very important to get straight now, as the Mayoral race (or non-race) is a-borning. To my understanding, he’s done them a great disservice. The public schools are no better than when he came in. Crime, worse. The affordable housing business is more than a failure, it’s a ruse. Basic City services are terrible; people have to pay privately for trash clean-up, for park care, for school supplies. Road repairs, bad. He threatens the City Councilors with taking away their district services if they don’t toe his line — and he keeps his threats.

Worst of all is the taxation in the city — he taxes to the max allowed by Prop 2 1/2, and then burns away all the excess money in corporate and individual cronyism while still slashing services. He has absolutely no regard for the historic fabric of the city; he outright tells institutions and developers to tear down the old buildings — and he gets them the permits to do so. I honestly can’t think of a single thing he does for the people of Boston.

Shirley, thanks for the note.

I was just giving the mayor the benefit of the doubt.

I’ll leave it to the poor and middle class to decide.

I agree, the BRA needs accountability.

You’re right to doubt the numbers in his housing initiative; they have been heavily manipulated, starting with the inclusion of past construction in the first year’s achievement report. Someone should do a real analysis of the changes in Boston’s housing supply, “affordable” and other, in the last 15 years, who got to live in those “affordable” units, and what the BRA has done with the over $10 million it has collected in cash buy-outs from developers who don’t want to include affordable units in their buildings.