CAPTION: Marianne Castellani of Commonwealth Avenue testified at City Hall that towing had measurably improved conditions in the Back Bay.




City Councilors Michael Flaherty and Bill Linehan got so many calls complaining about towing cars on street cleaning days that they convened a hearing last Monday night to find out what was going on.

A few Bostonians testified that they had been unfairly towed. Dave Harvey of East Broadway in South Boston said he was against the towing, explaining that his car was towed when his business trip was extended and he couldn’t get home to move it.

But the majority of the attendees, including a Beacon Hill and a North End resident who said their cars had been towed under the program, said that towing 27,000 cars from Boston streets between April 15 and October 26 is the one effort that has made Boston cleaner. Don’t do anything to compromise the program, they warned. One person said until this program went into effect, Boston looked like one imagines a third world city would look in terms of cleanliness.

“This hearing makes us nervous,” said Mark Paul of Prince Street, “watering it down, backing down. Only since the city has had the courage to do private towing has our neighborhood not been a pigsty. We will not go backwards in the North End.”

South End, Back Bay and Beacon Hill residents said basically the same thing.

City officials agreed. “If you remove this program, the street sweeping will be ineffective,” said Joe Canavan, supertintendent of public works.

Flaherty said he learned from the hearing that downtown Boston residents wanted clean streets. “I heard it loud and clear from downtown neighborhoods — more towing, more street cleaning,” he said.

But he also said he was pleased that Dennis Royer, chief of the city’s public works and transportation departments, agreed that some parts of the program need changes.

Everyone agreed on those changes.

At the top of the list is that tow companies should not tow cars after the street sweeper has passed by, even if the signs say no parking until a designated time. Canavan said three companies were suspended for 10 days and one was eliminated from the program because they engaged in that practice.

Everyone also agreed that restructuring the contract so the city collects more revenue is desirable, as is shortening the posted time from four hours to two hours for the sweeper to do its job. There also needs to be recourse if a car is damaged, Councilor Mike Ross pointed out. The schedules should be adjusted so that the sweeper comes after, not before, trash pickup, and the times around schools should be changed so as not to conflict with pick-ups and drop-offs.

Flaherty said he supports extending the program to every street in the neighborhoods that want it, and that no one should have to get petitions signed to make that happen.

Moreover, he said, the towing and street sweeping program should be year-round. Finally, he asked Royer to make Boston even cleaner by installing more trash barrels and doing a better job of emptying them.

Flaherty and Linehan both called unfair the fact that 70 percent of the towing goes on in five neighborhoods — South Boston, Roxbury, East Boston, the South End and Charlestown. But no one presented any evidence of unfairness. As the largest and most populous neighborhoods without an abundance of private driveways, they would naturally have more cars on the streets.

A South Boston resident said that towing for street cleaning was keeping out non-Boston drivers who drive into his neighborhood and park on a neighborhood street while they catch the Red Line to work. A Roxbury resident said the towing program was getting rid of the cars without license plates that sat in her neighborhood for months.

Flaherty said he was surprised at a “sting” operation the city conducted with a female police officer in plain clothes who tried to convince a tow truck driver to unhook an unmarked car she had purposefully left in the street sweeper’s path. The tow truck drivers did not literally let the officer off the hook when she pleaded, nor could they be bribed, a common practice in the old Boston.

Flaherty said he still has concerns that the signs announcing cleaning times might be confusing to some residents.

But Ed Burke of the Fenway said the councilors weren’t giving their constituents credit for being smart. “People learn the hard way,” he said. “The signs are clear. If you can read, you can follow the signs.”

SIDEBAR

Street cleaning towing by the numbers:

Cars towed between April 15 and September 30, 2007: 24,937

Cost of a tow: $110 plus a ticket of $40, $20 storage fee per day

Tickets for street cleaning issued between April 1 and September 30, 2006: 142,388

Tickets for street cleaning issued between April 1 and September 30, 2007: 110,740 (a 22 percent decrease.)

Percentage of cars towed owned by non-Boston residents: 22

Ah, November — a month of big, yummy meals and — thankfully — big, comfy sweaters. The summer months certainly have their pros, but short shorts and tank tops don’t leave much room for indulgences in meatloaf and mashed potatoes. Now, though, is the time to celebrate sweater season, and for more than a decade, Stephanie’s on Newbury Street has been serving up a menu of “sophisticated comfort food.”

“We feel our food is sophisticated in that nothing comes out of boxes. We only use fresh ingredients,” said owner Stephanie Sokolove. “We also always try to come up with interesting combinations to make the menu more current.”

The season’s new menu made its debut just a few weeks ago, and on it you’ll find favorites such as Stephanie’s Famous Meatloaf — layered with cheese and caramelized onions — and new selections that provide a different take on old favorite, like a lamb spare rib. Other new items include a Winter Cassoulet (see the recipe to try this at home) and an El Paso Fish Taco, with pickled cabbage and a chipotle aioli. Sokolove said customers also are loving the porcini mushroom-dusted monkfish and the crispy duck with a honey glaze and cranberry port reduction.

“The duck has an incredible new flavor – but customers know they are still eating duck,” Sokolove explained, clarifying her overall cooking philosophy. “I don’t want my customers surprised.”

Instead, she wants them excited and longing for more. She said the key to sophisticated comfort food is properly cooking her dishes — and realizing that that might mean that some of her dishes aren’t good candidates for those on a strict diet.

“We’re not afraid of cream and butter — and that’s a big thing,” Sokolove said.

To update her menu and keep her cooking approach current, she takes inspiration from her customers and from her travels. She recently sent her chef and general manager to Philadelphia, for example, and they came back with an alternative to a crab cake — a salt cod and potato cake.

“New ideas constantly evolve, and we learn more and more about who we are,” she said.

Sokolove enjoys dressing up the basic mashed potato with ingredients such as lobster, parmesan or truffles. When using breadcrumbs, she favors a homemade mixture that incorporates Asian ingredients to make the crumbs crispier.

Comfort food isn’t just for dinner either. On the lunch menu at Stephanie’s, you can try a new hot pastrami pizza panini with pizza dough folded in half or a “PLT” with Prosciutto, lettuce and tomato.

And Sokolove’s favorite selection on the current menu?

“The lamb shank. I love it. I happen to be a big eater … I like those hearty foods,” she said.


Winter Cassoulet from Stephanie’s on Newbury

Ingredients
5 cups white beans, cooked
½ cup diced onion
½ cup diced carrot (carrots, onions, & celery should be diced to approximately the size of the white beans)
½ cup diced celery
¼ cup raw diced bacon
½ cup cooked pork shoulder, diced
½ cup chorizo sausage, diced
½ cup cooked duck leg
½ bunch fresh thyme
16 fresh parsley stems
¼ gallon veal stock
¼ gallon chicken stock
½ cup diced canned tomatoes
1 cup breadcrumbs
Olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste

Add bacon to a large stock pot, sauté over medium heat until crispy. To the pot add, onions, carrots, and celery. Cook until vegetables are golden brown in color.
Add beans, thyme, and parsley. Sauté for 3 minutes.
Add meat, chicken stock, veal stock, and tomatoes. Simmer for one hour on medium low heat until the Cassoulet thickens. Serve in individual portions. Top each serving with browned breadcrumbs.

New England Patriot Matt Cassel along with Shaw’s Wellbeing Program Director Jennifer Shea led second graders from Josiah Quincy School on a dairy supermarket tour, encouraging healthy eating and regular exercise, on Tuesday, October 30.

During the tour, kids sampled low-fat dairy snacks and were given a healthy eater certificate signed by Cassel and Shea.

The tour was part of the New England Dairy Promotion Board’s 3-a-day nutrition education campaign, which encourages shoppers to consume low-fat dairy products, fruits, vegetables and whole grains.

The picture includes Adrian Hernandez, Julian Pimentel, Jason Tang, Amy Ko, Gary Leung, Marlyn Desire, Maritza Mak, Luis Ortiz, Kedary Patterson-Drew, William Parsons and David Salazar.

The Neighborhood Association of the Back Bay’s Friends of the Clarendon Street Playground hosted a Halloween party for neighborhood kids on Wednesday. The warm weather and great costumes made for a festive event!


1. Lula Doeringer, 20 months, Supergirl.
2. Nicole Ribakoff, 6, Sharpay from "High School Musical."
3. Sydney Sharp, 3, pumpkin, and Isabella Alonso, 3, mermaid.
4. Maggie O'Brien, 4, Spiderman.
5. Roberta Fiorina, 5, elephant. Jacob Green, 4, pumpkin.

Editorial

City Council Committees

What kind of information do you need to cast an informed vote for the best candidates for city council? Meeting them and listening to what they have to say is one method. The candidates for the four at-large seats revealed some of their strengths and weaknesses last week at the forum sponsored by nine downtown neighborhood associations.

Another important piece of information could be a description of how they promote their agendas. Councilors have little actual power beyond approving the budget. They cannot even add items to the budget.

But in the budget approval process and with the negotiation it requires, they can promote pet projects and get them better funded. They can work with the Mayor and with their state rep and state senator to accomplish goals.

And, as a committee chair, they can hold hearings to highlight problems, find out the facts and craft strategies for accomplishing their agendas.

But hearings are deceptive. No one is going to fault the chair of intergovernmental relations for holding no hearings. But Ways and Means, Public Safety and Education are another matter. And so are committees that could be effective in promoting a particular chairperson’s goals.

Interestingly, attendance is not taken at hearings. To know who was there, one has to either go to the hearings in person or watch them on videos online, a time-consuming task. So we have gathered attendance information only on the most important one — Ways and Means — since the budget is the most obvious vehicle through which to accomplish a goal.

In 2007, Chair Jerry McDermott held 35 hearings to review the budget and modify it though negotiation. Attendance at those hearings was, in order of frequency of attendance: McDermott, 34; Murphy, 21; Feeney, 21; Consalvo, 19; Yoon, 19; Yancy, 18; LaMattina, 16; Flaherty, 14; Ross, 14; Turner, 13; Arroyo, 7; Tobin, 5; Linehan, 5.

One wonders what the three whose attendance is in the single digits were thinking when they chose not to acquire the very basic information presented at hearings.

There are 21 other committees. We offer no counts of attendance. But here they are, with the number of hearings they have held and the chairperson of that committee.

Arts, Film, Humanities & Tourism 2 hearings Tobin
Aviation & Transportation 4 hearings LaMattina
City & Neighborhood Services 4 hearings LaMattina
Economic Development & Planning 8 hearings Linehan
Education 12 meetings Turner
Environment and Health 2 hearings Arroyo
Financial Services & Community Investment 1 hearing Linehan
Government Operations 12 hearings Consalvo
Housing 5 hearings Yoon
Human Rights none Turner
Human Services 1 hearing Yoon
Institutional Relations none Ross
Intergovernmental Relations none Tobin
Labor & Workforce Development 2 hearings Flaherty
Post Audit & Oversight 1 hearing Yancey
Public Safety 11 hearings Murphy
Public Utilities & Cable Communications none Flaherty
Rules & Administration none Feeney
Whole none Feeney
Youth Affairs 1 hearing Arroyo
Youth Violent Crime Prevention 2 meetings Ross

The number of hearings may or may not be relevant. But they provide a quantifiable beginning for you to ask questions of the candidates you meet this week as they campaign.