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☀️Sunny with just a bit of snowmelt and highs around 39. Sunset is at 5:14 p.m.
It’s been a cold, dreary February. But this weekend, local restaurants are hoping love will be in the air — and that people will want to celebrate by having a nice meal (and spending a bit of money).
“I’ve seen some projections that we’re expecting almost a 27% increase over last year,” Steve Clark, president and CEO of the Massachusetts Restaurant Association, told GBH’s Marilyn Schairer. “That’s a combination of a Saturday, Valentine’s Day, higher food costs and higher prices that are out there.”
Schairer spoke with some restaurants that are trying to make the day a little extra festive: Estella, a Caribbean-American fusion restaurant in Boston and Foxborough, will have a three-course meal with special cocktails and heart-shaped decorations; and a manager at The Capitol Grille in Dedham said they’re fully booked all weekend but still ready to welcome walk-ins in their lounge and have a porterhouse steak with a lobster tail on the menu. Read more from Schairer here.
If you’re looking for more culture this weekend, Jared Bowen has three recommendations: “The Moderate,” a play about a social media content moderator; “Overture to Spring: A Black History Month Family Concert;” and the movie “Bugonia.” If you want to stay home and cook this weekend, here’s a collection of Valentine’s Day recipes from GBH’s The Deep Dive.
Four Things to Know
1. The Trump administration said yesterday that it will no longer follow a 2009 declaration stating that greenhouse gases, like carbon dioxide and others, are a danger to public health and welfare. That declaration has been the legal basis for most pollution regulations in the U.S. over the last 17 years.
“While this isn’t a surprise, it is still a betrayal of every family across the country,” said Kate Sinding Daly, senior vice president for law and policy at the Conservation Law Foundation in Massachusetts. “Now that the EPA has set this process in motion, we are prepared to stand together, challenge this reckless, profits-over-people decision and hold the administration accountable by every means necessary.”
2. Jurors in Worcester found former City Councilor Etel Haxhiaj guilty of assaulting a police officer but not guilty of a charge of interfering with police. Haxhiaj and other Worcester residents had come to Eureka Street in May when U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were detaining a woman in the neighborhood. Local police officers were also there because they had received calls from ICE and another person about a crowd forming when people, including Haxhiaj, were pleading with agents not to detain the woman.
Body camera video shows an officer pulling Haxhiaj away from an ICE vehicle, and Haxhiaj putting her hands on the officer and yelling “Do not touch me!” A judge sentenced Haxhiaj to six months of probation and 40 community service hours. Haxhiaj lost a re-election bid in November.
3. Facing a potential $560 million deficit for the MBTA’s budget next year, Gov. Maura Healey is suggesting drawing $523 million from revenue the state gets from the Fair Share Amendment, also known as the 4% tax Massachusetts collects from people with income over $1 million.
The Legislature would still have to approve the funding, and advocates say the state should not rely on that money forever. Massachusetts has so far collected more than state officials expected from the Millionaires Tax, but experts expect the money to level off in the coming years.
4. UMass Memorial Medical Center in Marlborough reopened yesterday, four days after a water valve broke, flooding the basement and leaving parts of the building without heat. The valve break meant hospital staff had to evacuate more than 70 patients to different hospitals on a bitterly cold day.
Now emergency services and most appointments are back up and running, but some surgeries are still postponed. Hospital officials told GBH’s Marilyn Schairer that patients with upcoming surgeries should check in with their doctors’ offices.
All this ice and snow is a dam problem for Mass. homeowners
New Englanders are facing something most people haven’t seen in a while: ice dams. They can happen when heat from a home rises through roofs without enough insulation, melting the snow and sending water running down the roof’s edges, where it freezes again. After that process repeats a few times, the ice creates a dam that keeps water trapped on the roof, backing up under shingles and seeping into walls and ceilings.
Frank O’Brien of the Massachusetts Property Insurance Underwriting Association told GBH’s Craig LeMoult that the organization is seeing an increase in ice dam claims.
“For the first time in several years, we’re actually having a winter here in Massachusetts,” O’Brien said. “It’s cold and there’s a lot of snow, which are two things needed for the formation of an ice dam.”
LeMoult talked to construction experts and got a few tips for dealing with ice dams.
First: prevention is key. The best way to prevent ice dams is to make sure your roof is insulated and that heat from inside your home can’t melt the snow, said Mark Philben, who works with Charlie Allen Renovations in Cambridge. If you’re looking to install a new roof, consider a rubber membrane or ice shield under the shingles. That can keep water from reaching the decking.
Also, you can carefully use a “roof rake” on a long pole to scrape the snow off the roof.
“And don’t wait for a two-foot storm; you should do it all the time, and you have to jump on it really quickly,” Philben said. “Do it when you’re shoveling your driveway and your walkways. Because these things form really, really quickly, especially in older homes.”
If you have an ice dam problem: Rob Robillard, a remodeling contractor with Concord Carpenter, suggested creating a path for water to drain.
“I recommend just using nylons, like leggings, filled with calcium chloride,” he said. “You put them vertically every four feet ... it will melt as the snow hits it, and it will stay open for as long as there’s calcium chloride in that nylon, and it’ll just allow drainage.”
Also: keep an eye out for icicles. They can be a sign of ice dams, Robillard said.
And while ice dams can be prohibitively expensive to deal with, Robillard said his advice is to call a professional. It’s not something most people should try to DIY, he said.
“It’s very, very dangerous dealing with ice dams,” Robillard said. Falling icicles can cause serious injury. Slippery roofs are potentially deadly. And seeping water can leave mold in walls and ceilings. “I tell people, you get one ice dam, don’t worry about ripping the walls open, but if you’ve had ice dams continually for several years, you’re probably going to have mold in those walls. It can damage plaster, paint, woodwork. It can cause all kinds of problems. It can get into electrical.”
Read LeMoult’s full story here.
Dig deeper:
-Despite nearly $200K in fines, many Boston sidewalks remain blocked with snow
-‘Hockey is for everybody:’ How Massachusetts makes ice skating more accessible
-People in colder countries understand the magic of winter. What’s their secret?
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