June 19, 2000
Re: BRA request for City operating funds
To Boston City Councilors:
For your consideration as you review the Mayor's proposed City budget, we submit this brief summary of our testimony at the June 6 hearing on the BRA budget request.
1. The BRA is asking for $725,000 for planning director and staff salaries. Funding for city planning should be used to establish a planning department outside of the BRA. The BRA cannot perform impartially as acomprehensive planning agency, because it has a conflict of interest (see ABN White Paper, November 10, 1999, and Boston Globe editorials dated April 6, 15, and 20, l999, and Jan. 12, 2000, submitted separately). Boston is alone in having a combined planning and redevelopment agency, for this very reason. The BRA responds that having both functions makes our redevelopment authority uniquely powerful and "efficient." This is true, but absent a comprehensive planning framework, the BRA is simply uniquely effective at shaping Boston's growth as a series of individual construction projects, with no overall vision of the city. We need an entity that will pursue a vision of Boston as a community, rather than managing the city as a collection of investment opportunities.
The ABN, which began the public dialogue on our need for impartial, comprehensive, long-range planning, has been excluded from the Search Committee for the new Planning Director. The 16-member Committee consists mainly of business and institutional parties with real estate or commercial interests (list attached). As BRA Director Mark Maloney acknowledged at the hearing, this Committee's meetings will be closed to the public; after all decisions are made, a "public process" will begin, with meetings to announce the results. This is typical of BRA public process, where outcomes are pre-determined on a political basis, and the public is closed out of meaningful participation.
2. The BRA is asking for permanent operating funding from the City. It is best to minimize funding to the BRA, for either capital or operating expenditures. City budget allocations to the BRA will be used to circumvent City Council oversight of major BRA expenditures, as illustrated by the City Hall Plaza arcade funding. The activities and funding of the BRA, as long as it continues to exist, should be confined to its urban renewal functions and properties. The BRA is a relic of urban renewal, a program that has long been discredited among enlightened planners; its circle of influence should be diminished as the urban renewal plan terms now begin to expire. For the future, the City should be structuring a real planning agency and a public property department such as the DND. The City Council should retain as much control over expenditures made by BRA as possible, on a request by request basis, rather than relinquishing oversight by an annual appropriation. The City Council will enable the BRA's circumvention of Council power by granting their current request for $1,325,000.
Thank you for your consideration of our comments, and for your conscientious work on behalf of the citizens at this hearing. We appreciate your thorough and wide-ranging consideration of planning issues across the city.
Shirley Kressel
President, ABN
Search Committee for Chief Planner of Boston
Mark Maloney, Chair
1. Business Paul Guzzi (557-7330), Greater Boston Chamber
of Commerce
2. Planner: Tom Broadrick (781-934-1114), American Planning
Assoc. (Mass. Chapter)
3. Architect: Fernando Domenech (267-6408), Domenech,
Hicks, & Krockmalnic
4. Trade Union: Mike Monahan (436-3710),IBEW
5. Downtown Real Estate: William McCall (542-414 1), McCall
& Almy, Inc.
6. Business Civic Leader: Liz Reilinger (782-7600), Boston
School Committee
7. Community Developer : Kirk Sykes (451-3383), Crosstown
Associates
8. Neighborhood: Phil Tracy (523-5253), West Roxbury
resident*
9. Community Development Corp.: Gail Latimore (825-4244,
x132), Codman Square NDC
10. Academia: Peter Rowe (495-473 1), Graduate School of
Design, Harvard
11. Preservationist: Susan Park (367-2458), Boston
Preservation Alliance
12. Environmentalist: James Hoyte (495-1540), Harvard
University
13. Transportation: Rick Dimino (557-7319), Artery Business
Committee
14. City Council: Paul Scapicchio (635-3200), Boston City
Council
15. Institutions: Kathy West (278-1037), Partners
HealthCare System, Inc.
16. Business Interest: David Weinstein (563-6579), Fidelity
Investments, Inc.
* Senior Partner, DiMento and Sullivan, Attorneys; former Assistant DA for Suffolk County; practice includes real estate and development law
cc: All City Councilors