Boston mayoral race goes green

Michael Flaherty's new YouTube video focuses on providing green collar jobs to the city's at-risk youth.

Tue, Jun 30 2009 at 6:03 PM EST

Let me preclude this article by stating that I don’t live in Boston, nor do I support one mayoral candidate over another. However, I ran across candidate Michael Flaherty’s new YouTube video, which focuses on providing green collar job training and opportunities to the city’s at-risk youth, and I was quickly impressed.

In his video, Flaherty details his hopes that part of the $6.5 million in funding the city received through the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant Program can be used to put at-risk youth to work greening the government buildings in the city. Instead of building new green buildings, Flaherty wants to take the green upgrade process to the existing buildings.

After viewing the video, I visited Michael Flaherty’s website and came across two PDF files that may be of interest.

It is nice to see a major U.S. city mayoral candidate paying attention to the need for a green-collar trained workforce to help solve the economic and environmental crises. Flaherty’s dedication to the environment in his platform should come as no surprise. Boston was recently named as one of the Top 10 green U.S. cities.

Photo: Paul Keleher