Dear Billy T and Somerville/Medford News Weekly Speakup Line,

I get it, between our higher than normal taxes and now this obsurd parking permit increase, they are pushing long time residence out. That’s just what the political establishment here wants — they won’t be done with condo and apartment building for however long it takes. All while, I’m hearing that there are a lot of vacancies throughout the city.

If the developers can’t unload them to unsuspecting transients (they buy to flip later in most cases), but since the looming recession, the market is not like it use to be. That’s ok though, they turn them into low income housing and just unload them to the fed. Many who bought on our street over paid and were forced to pay for the developers mistakes involving a faulty foundation, storm water damage, severely damaged driveway, and misaligned gutters. Many of the workers are unskilled and cheap, sloppy and arrogant. But the pols don’t care. As long as their paycheck clears, that’s all that matters. People with money to pay $1.35 million and $900k, $700k, will wait until the market resets and bail. That is my prediction. They can go anywhere as they have that much money to burn. The new Somerville is a fraud show and the new owners who had no recourse but to just remain and deal with it, pay additional $50k for fix all the issues, will spread this around to their lawyers and friends, family. They will all finally be exposed for what they have done. I only wrote to inform longtime residents, our family has been in Somerville since 1930. Like many of us, I too have reinvested in our home and became a landlord since 2000. Colleges are taking over. They are building Wet Labs in Union Square and Bio Labs throughout, including Boyton Yards. Soon, it will be a sprawling 4-mile Campus of students and employees of Harvard, MIT and Tufts especially will also benefit. I don’t know how they got away with it, but this is the future. I learned what they were doing while working at the last job and retired in “good standing”, instead of watching the takeover go on daily at work. Colleges will no longer build dorms for students– it’s Somerville they want and the former mayor was only too happy to turn it over. I hope the ongoing investigation continues. Sean O’Donovan is just the tip of the iceberg. At the very least, I hope they will all be banned from politics and development, as well as being disbarred to ever practice law again. They are nothing but sleazy grifters shaking down innocent residents, especially preying on the elderly. Their crimes can never be forgiven. Many people lost careers (including myself), and former city employees who were trying to blow the whistle for decades. If it were up to me, they would do jail time. But we who have been here for many years now understand this state too well. The pols are beholden to colleges and tech giants. They just want a steady pool of vulnerable residents to keep them rich and living comfortably. Term limits are a must. I just don’t know how we can save our city. We need a miracle to turn this around. Hang in there if you can and when you can sell at the peak times — after GLX completion, find your paradise.