BrooklineCAN Blog

The Town of Brookline has been conducting an eight-month pilot for Shared Electric Scooters from April 1 – November 15, 2019. As the Pilot comes to a close, Brookline has commissioned a survey to be administered to the community at large. This survey will help the Select Board, Transportation Board, and Town staff determine if Shared Electric Scooters contribute to the Town’s mobility, equity, safety, and climate action goals.
Your participation will involve completing an online survey that will take about 10 minutes or less. Participation in this survey is entirely voluntary. To help protect your privacy, this survey will not collect any information that will personally identify you.

 LINK TO SURVEY:   https://populus.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_0kC2uIRrqdGUqK9
Paper copies of the survey are available in the Transportation Division office on the 4th floor of Town Hall, 333 Washington Street, Brookline MA. Their office hours are Monday through Thursday 8am to 5pm and Friday 8am to 12:30pm.

Internationally renowned flutist and writer Eugenia Zukerman will present Like Falling Through A Cloud, her memoir of handling her diagnosis of cognitive impairment, on Tuesday, November 12, 6:00 pm, at Brookline Senior Center, 93 Winchester Street, Brookline.  Dr. Suzanne Salamon, Chief Associate of Clinical Geriatrics at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, will moderate the presentation. The event, which is sponsored by BrooklineCAN (Brookline Community Aging Network), is free and open to the public and is presented in November to coincide with Alzheimer’s Awareness Month.
To register for the event, call the Brookline Senior Center at 617-730-2770.

Refilling your MBTA Charlie Card can be time consuming, since you usually need to travel to the nearest T station for access to the Charlie Card machines. However, now you can load value onto your card in Brookline at Bay State Food, 1418 Beacon Street and at Star Market, 1717 Beacon Street. You cannot purchase new Charlie cards at these stores and you may need to pay cash. However, it’s faster than travelling to Kenmore Square!    For more information visit https://www.mbta.com/fares/charliecard

Have you seen the sidewalk billboards recently appearing throughout Brookline neighborhoods? They are called Soofa Signs and relay community news and information to anyone walking past. At present, Soofas are committed to a 12 month pilot program to bring news feeds to active and walkable neighborhoods, such as Coolidge Corner, Brookline Village, St. Marys Street, and Washington Square. Brookline Bank is the launch sponsor for Soofa Signs in Brookline. To learn more, visit Soofa’s Website www.soofa.co.

Brookline’s 2019 First Light – Holiday Celebration is scheduled for Thursday, November 21 from 5:00-8:00 pm.
The event, sponsored by Brookline Chamber of Commerce and Brookline businesses, is free for all and takes place throughout Brookline’s communities, including Coolidge Corner, Brookline Village, and Washington Square.  It’s a lively, entertaining experience for adults and children, alike.

A partial list of participating businesses include:  Art with Amy, Curds & Co, Boston School of Boabom, Brookline Bank, Brookline Booksmith, Eureka  Puzzles, Feet of Clay, Henry Bear’s Park, Lords & Lady’s, Olive Connection, Paris Creperie, Party Favors, Puppet Showplace Theater, Serenade Chocolatier, The Makery, The Village Works, Unlimited Sotheby’s International Realty, and Wild Goose Chase.

Center Communities of Brookline is seeking the opinions of BrooklineCAN members about their future housing needs. The information will help Center Communities in designing the new residence that is being planned for Centre Street (next to 100 Centre Street). The UMass Boston Gerontology Institute has designed a survey to learn about housing preferences of older adults who might be interested in living in the new building. Here is a link to the on-line survey
https://www.hebrewseniorlife.org/community-input-on-brookline-senior-living-services. The survey will remain active in early November so that newsletter readers have time to participate.

The BrooklineCAN Livable Community Advocacy Committee seeks your help in encouraging Town Meeting to pass a zoning proposal that would improve housing options for seniors. Article 19 is a proposal to add a new zoning bylaw permitting accessory dwelling units in single family homes. In plain words, the proposal would allow homeowners to create a small secondary apartment within their home. Older people could benefit in several ways. Older homeowners might obtain personal assistance, help with home maintenance, or rental income from the occupant of the second unit. In other cases, an adult child might create the second unit for a parent who assists with childcare. Town Meeting will consider a proposal that is carefully written to protect the quality of single-family neighborhoods.  We ask that you call or email your Town Meeting representatives to encourage them to vote FAVORABLE ACTION. Here is a link to all Town Meeting Members emails and phone numbers.

A new BrooklineCAN report provides insights on what older residents think about the Town and how they evaluate Town services. In 2018, Brookline participated in the National Citizen Survey, an effort to capture the opinions of residents on a wide range of topics concerning the Town. Over Brookline 400 residents participated by answering close to 200 questions. BrooklineCAN conducted a special analysis that compared responses of those 65 and older with younger respondents. The analysis shows both similarities and differences between the responses of older and younger residents. The report also shows how older and younger adults differ in the ways in which they get information and communicate. The National Research Center designs and administers the National Citizen Survey. Residents in hundreds of municipalities throughout the country participate. Click HERE to see the full report.

The theme for this year’s BrooklineCAN Annual Meeting was “Watch Us Network: Ucan2 !”, highlighting community organizations with whom we network and partner to make Brookline an even better place. Our newsletter will be featuring some of these valuable organizations.  The Brookline Climate Action Committee, one of our Community Service Partnership Awards, was established by the Town’s Select Board “to promote and implement resiliency measures to better prepare the Brookline community to adapt to climate change”. Co-chairs are Nancy Heller, member of the Select Board and Werner Lohe, Conservation Commission designee. A current project is the opt up to 100%renewable energy zero carbon emissions program—see https://www.brooklinema.gov/1342/Opt-Up-to-100 for details on how to participate.  The Committee’s responsibilities and full membership can be found at:  https://www.brooklinema.gov/1453/Climate-Action-Committee .