Bob, Sabutai, Hysterprynne and I sat down with Mayor Walsh and his Chief of Policy/fellow BMGer, Joyce Linehan, today.
It was actually pretty great timing for me. I had been working on a post about the Olympics a couple weeks ago, just before I was told about the meeting, and it just so happened to be on what it would take for Boston 2024 to have any hopes of getting the 50%+1 of the voting population it needs to catch Olympic fever.
I thought it was a tall order then and, in truth, I still think it is now, but I feel pretty reassured about my original points — to the point where I can see a path, even if it’s a narrow one. I think Mayor Walsh gets most of them, even if Boston 2024 still has plenty of room to improve.
So, if Boston 2024 wants to have any chance of a Bean Town Olympics going forward, here’s a list of some of the things it should strongly consider.
1. Be competent. Unlike the Chicagos and Detroits of the world, Boston has by and large been an extremely well managed city — so that’s the good news. We’re a city that cares about creating jobs and maintaining our AAA bond rating — and because we’ve had our share of steady hands and forward-thinking individuals (including many on the 5th Floor of Government Center), we’ve neither been afraid to reinvent ourselves nor lacked the resources to do it.
That’s the reason why Boston has been able to pivot along with the economy, and that’s the reason — the only reason — why we’re even in the conversation for having the Olympics today.
I say all this because while I think Boston 2024 has stumbled out of the gates — to put it mildly — the city is competent, so there’s hope… depending on who really runs this thing.
If Boston 2024, the USOC and the IOC is running the show, I’m going to have my worries. But, if the city of Boston takes charge, tells the IOC that this is going to be run the way we like it or not at all — and sticks to our guns — then it is possible, however unlikely, that a sensible Olympics could actually happen. I mean, we’re talking about hitting bullseye shooting at womprats on our T-16s here, but it could be done.
2. We have to make this bid about being different. Like, that should be the whole freaking theme of the bid. It should be our entire messaging — both to the IOC and the public.
We have a pretty good history with that, from reinventing our economy to that whole starting-the-American-Revolution thing to turning the Back Bay into a land mass and carving tunnels so we could have parks and see the sky — so let’s be different now.
What this really means is we need to send the IOC a final bid that challenges all the Olympic Conventions of the past 15-20 years, of overspending, massive corruption, gross incompetence and excessive parties for the .01%, along with all the huge cost overruns that come with that.
We need to send the IOC a bid that we’re entirely happy with — and let the IOC know that if it continues down their dangerous path of awarding those who finish first in a race to the bottom, they’re going to have no where else to go but dictatorships and hack governments to host in the near future. That’s a path paved with a few glimmering games toward the slow march of death of the modern Olympic movement.
Our bid needs to loudly, clearly say that to the IOC — rebuking its past practices — and send a message that the games should be about the Olympic spirit and not who can build the most ostentatious pool.
That may mean we won’t win the Olympic bid in the end, but if that’s the case, oh well.
3. We have to make the bid process inclusive. If there’s a sense that the elites of the elites have been in control of this thing every step of the way, and haven’t deigned it worth their time to consult us plebes on any of the decisions, that’s because it’s true — and whatever efforts are underway to change that aren’t working.
If Boston is going to host the Olympics, Boston has to host the Olympics. Not Suffolk Construction, Harvard University or the State Street Bank.
It’s time to have fewer CEOs and VPs on the bid committee and a lot more representatives from neighborhood organizations, with deep Boston roots and who care about what happens before, during and after any Boston Olympics. We should not only allow concerned citizens to ask questions at forums, but invite many of them into the planning committees for everything from venues to security to transportation.
Small businesses need to be reassured that they won’t be locked out of their own city for the length of the Olympics or worried that they’ll be sued if they sell Olympic-themed cookies at their bakery.
Invest neighborhood groups, concerned citizens and small businesses in the process, let them use their on-the-ground expertise and understanding of the city to help make this a better bid, one that benefits all, and then they’ll have something to care about, because this will be their games and not John Fish’s.
4. Lots of officials are saying this won’t cost anything like Sochi or Beijing or even London, so let’s put that in writing. There’s been plenty of talk about taking out an insurance policy to cover us for any cost overruns, but I’m having a hard time seeing any insurance company want to take that bet when even London’s costs spiraled by a factor of 2-3.
We, the People, are not going to pay billions of dollars for this game, period. How we put that in writing doesn’t much matter, as long as its ironclad and protects us in the here and now, as well as future generations of Bostonians and Bay Staters to come.
If those four things happen, there’s an actual chance that the public could be convinced, and that Boston could throw a nice party at a reasonable cost.
But it’s going to be a long, difficult road to get there. I have my doubts, but I’m willing to be proved wrong.
A few themes emerged from the conversation that Rye describes, and I want to focus on those. But first, I think it’s worth saying that Mayor Walsh gave this conversation undivided attention, and we spoke for roughly an hour in this small group. Sometimes politicians have meetings just to say that had the meeting. I don’t think this is such a case — there was intent to this conversation. Onto topics that were raised and kicked about by different participants:
The anti-Olympic side has been very successful in driving the conversation toward their image and conception of what a Boston Olympics will look like. They have organized and presented effectively at information sessions and community meetings. Boston2024, on the other hand, hasn’t done a good job of presenting a rival vision. The current polling reflects that. If the anti-Olympic groups continue to define what a Boston Olympics will look like, the polls will never recover.
Part of that image is based on some recent Olympics. Drawing on London, Beijing, and Sochi, part of the image that’s being drawn is one of inevitable cost overruns and soaking the public. This isn’t a rock-solid case, and it may not account for the changed requirements and declared priorities embodied in Agenda 2020, released by the International Olympic Committee. Regardless, fiscal probity is a real demand as rye says. Navigating between the demands of the International Olympic Committee, and Boston’s need for fiscal wisdom, will be a priority for anyone looking for a successful Games.
Finally, how Boston’s bid fits into the wider scheme of things came up. Can Boston compete with Paris, Rome, and Hamburg — and anyone else who later joins in? If it is possible to evade the spending contests that previous bids have become and match up the bids pound-for-pound, unskewed by national coffers in Europe being poured into rival bids, Boston may stand a good chance. But if it become Boston versus France (by way of Paris), is this even a contest Boston wants to fight?
I know every conversant today has opinions on those questions, but for now I submit this as an idea of what the conversation generated, this afternoon at least.
but I am not hearing anything really different. Walsh promised transparency from day one but there really hasn’t been much. Yes, we now know the salaries of people in Boston 2024, but nothing more about the bid itself. We still have nothing more than glossy brochure documents they gave the USOC. Still no supporting information, no spread sheets justifying their budget numbers. Nothing. What did Walsh think he meant by “transparency”? Did he think that just meant having lots of public outreach meetings?
Whether or not we can afford it or not, I still haven’t heard one good reason for hosting the Olympics. Sorry, but constructions jobs is not a justification. We have tons of construction going on and if we are going to spend public money, we can simply spend it directly on the things we want rather than having some of it get thrown away. Does anyone believe that Boston won’t be paying some of the security cost? Does anyone believe that Boston won’t be paying for a lot of temporary infrastructure and overtime?
I am also not willing to grant a blanket “competence” label on our city government especially when our mayor has only been in office for a year. It is not like everything has gone smoothly for the city in the last year. I can tell you one thing for sure: if next Winter is anything like the past one and the T is once again broken and the city once again cannot keep the streets and sidewalks clear there is no way residents will vote for the Olympics.
The transparency issue is absolutely real, but I think there’s also a lot of things going on here that contributes to why.
1) We’ve had an insular Boston 2024 that was never transparent to begin with.
2) The insular nature of the group is one of the reasons opposition has formed — and quickly organized.
3) That angry organized opposition has been very vocal at these meetings.
4) Which, in turn, is making Boston 2024 feel like they have to batten down the hatches, be more careful and guarded at them, etc.
5) Which, in turn, is making the opposition even more angry and organized.
6) I also question whether we’re not seeing all the spreadsheets and numbers because Boston 2024 doesn’t really have those spreadsheets and numbers. Yet, if that’s the case, they should really just come out and say it. A “Dudes, this is 10 years away — we still have lots of planning to do” is better than non-answers, especially if they bring neighborhood groups and community members into that planning process.
I think it’s safe to say that these public meetings haven’t worked. Most of them should have been designed like Q&As, or public comment periods, with less time spent ‘pitching’ the Olympics before questions.
What’s more important than public meetings, though, is the committee process. *If* there’s going to be a path toward the electorate getting behind these games, I don’t think forums and q&a’s are enough — no matter how many there are, or how good Boston 2024 gets at answering the questions.
Because, ultimately, q&a’s still mean the same people from Boston 2024 are making the answers — when it should be the people of Boston.
Hence my 3rd point, on making the process inclusive. Boston 2024 needs to seriously consider organization changes that puts a plethora of local residents from neighborhood groups and small businesses, etc., on every committee deciding every issue — the kind of people who would be living in Boston before, during and after the Olympics. It’s critical that skeptics be invited into those process, too, because they’re the ones who will be on the lookout for the stuff that doesn’t smell right, and they’re the ones Boston 2024 is going to have to convince if it wants to host the games.
I really don’t think that Boston 2024’s insularity is really responsible for the opposition. The real issue is that they don’t have a legitimately good reason to actually host the Olympics. Their behavior just added insult to injury but doing a better marketing job would not have made as much of a difference as they like to tell themselves. In any case, it is not the responsibility of the opposition to less then pressure so that Boston 2024 doesn’t feel so threatened.
I also do not believe that they don’t have spreadsheets they could show us if they wanted to. They came up with concrete budge numbers. Did they just make those up out of whole cloth? Perhaps the issue is that if they were to do so, we would see how bogus their assumptions have been. If you are going to promise that we are going to do things differently this time around, then I would hope that would start with doing careful work on your numbers and would not simply involve making all your numbers up and assuming that you will be able to hire someone to fix it after you win the bid. Either they have real numbers or they don’t. If they do, they should show us, if they don’t they have absolutely no business getting us involved in this bid in the first place.
I really think that step one is to get the people of Boston and surrounding communities to buy into the idea BEFORE submitting a bid to the USOC. Can anyone tell me what burning emergency requires us to bid on 2024 and not some later year?
In any case, it is pretty clear that Mary Walsh signed on to this venture without the slightest idea of whether the numbers added up. Not a good sign. I hope he at least has the guts to refuse to sign the host city agreement.
So often the opposition seems to act like the bid committee hasn’t done the work and doesn’t know what it’s talking about. What you call the “real issue” I call the biggest non-issue. You don’t need a reason to host the Olympics; it’s just something nice to do.
It’s also a nice thing to do if you really enjoy the spectacle, and a lot cheaper.
I said that I *thought* they had numbers they are not showing us, but they may not. They may also have numbers that don’t make any sense. I do not acknowledge that they have actually made a plan that makes financial sense.
Your reason for the Olympics is just about the most stupid reason ever for spending 10 billion dollars. I also don’t understand why you think the Olympics is so “nice”. You have made it clear that you have no interest in any specific Olympic event or sports in general. The only event you said you might want to see is the opening ceremonies, but I really doubt that you are going to be willing to cough up the $300 ticket price for nose-bleed seats (and will they be even that cheap?).
Do you really believe that the government should sign up for arbitrary events with unlimited cost liability and potential to cause great disruption to daily commerce just because a minority of people think it would be “nice”. Really?
So let’s put a dollar amount on it. Exactly how many additional tax dollars (or charity dollars for that matter) are you personally willing to put up to pay for this “nice” event? Or do you expect everyone else to chip in to provide you a minor thrill?
I hope it is a sign of things to come and will start down the path of assuaging the fears of the skeptics.
And I am glad your perspective was able to be heard. I honestly feel that the Curtatone approach, largely close to yours, is a road less traveled. It will be awfully difficult to go back in that direction; but it’s clear that Walsh is getting the picture that this bid is starting to look more like the Hindenburg and less like Apollo 11. Walsh is at his best when he is a populist listening to the people and fighting on their behalf-and this entire Olympic bid has taken him in the opposite direction. I am hopeful this meeting is one of many others he will have with the grassroots to take a real second look at what they are doing wrong and how they can right the ship.
It will inevitably put more pressure on low and middle-income residents and cause more displacement. That’s not a nice thing to do.
Boston has already been driving out its lower income residents for a number of years, and no one in power has been able to do much about it.
I’ve been happy to see the 2024 people mess up; it means that we are less likely to be stuck with the Olympics. But a transparent, non-elitist, and well-planned Olympics is still a big problem for a lot of people who want to stay in their homes.
1. I think Mayor Walsh wants the Olympics to take place here only if our hosting the event results in tangible benefits for the current and future residents of the area.
2. I think he believes that it’s possible for the Olympics to produce that kind of benefit (that is, for the Olympics to be something more than an opportunity for the world’s plutocrats to revel in each other’s company at our expense). I remain skeptical, but agree that a convincing demonstration of the collective value of hosting the Olympics has yet to be made.
3. I was struck again during the meeting by the amount of time that is — of necessity — being expended by all interested parties in attempting to determine the value of hosting the Olympics nine years in the future (under the constraints of the informational vacuum that has been left us by Boston 2024), when so many other problems are pressing sharply upon us right now. I would not be surprised if the Mayor had similar feelings (100 inches of snow for starters). That’s probably my biggest gripe about Boston 2024 — its arrogance, in combination with its opacity, is taking up way too much oxygen in Boston 2015.
No doubt the Olympics would provide some sort of “tangible” benefit. The question is whether those benefits are worth the cost both in terms of actual public expenditure and in lost opportunities to do other more important things.
I should have said — a benefit sufficient to justify all the many expenses involved.
Your item 3 is the lede and money quote in your response, and I completely agree with it.
Boston 2024 is an ENORMOUS, senseless, and damaging distraction from Boston 2015.
The best way to solve today’s urging and pressing problems is to focus on today’s urgent and pressing problems.
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Good on you!
1. It’s hard to imagine this Committee so openly saying to the IOC…”Our bid is essentially a critique of the you-the-IOC. You’ve been failures. Only pick us if you’ve come to same conclusion, and looking to pivot.”
But it’s a fascinating idea.
And better than just folding our cards and saying “Referendum is not to submit a bid.”
2. Can you respond to HRsKevin note – i.e., that many voters think there’s a substance problem, but the backers continue to feel they have an optics problem (let’s engage the grassroots, etc).
…Isn’t raising the specter of Beijing and Sochi exactly an ‘optics’ problem?
Seriously. Who here thinks that the 2024 Boston Olympiad, at its very most egregrious, is going to be anywhere near the scale of Sochi or Beijing? Does anyone here think that one of the wealthiest states in the wealthiest (and oldest) functioning democracy in the world is going to devolve to Putinist rape and pillage? Communist style diktat? Wherefore?
The comparison is absurd and is indicative of a flawed perspective — that is to say, it is a problem of optics — and who makes the comparison does not see the situation clearly.
“Hegemonic minimization” is a term that describes certain forms of “optics” problems. I first heard the term used by Yale Professor of History Timothy Snyder. As far as I know, he coined the term. It refers to the ricochet between the specific and the general to elide responsibility and, indeed, response. Snyder used it to describe post WWII European response to the Holocaust: in the immediate aftermath of the war the term “Auschwitz” became so closely associated with the Holocaust that people found it easy to deny their knowledge of the general murder by denying they new anything about the specific camp: “I didn’t know about Auschwitz!” was the response, often, to the question of what did they know about the Holocaust.
Now, before anybody gets the jump-ups and tries to accuse me of making invidious comparisons: I AM NOT equating anybodies actions either for or against the Olympics in Boston with the Holocaust or any actions on the part of Nazi Germany. And, in fact, anybody who does so accuse me will be guilty of exactly this sort of hegemonic minimization. Snyder uses the term in that context and I don’t know any other way to describe it. I bring it up — not because I think anybody here is evil — but because the view of the Olympics as both becoming hegemonic and is used to minimize. I do not contend that this is a sin the equivalent of Holocaust denial. Indeed, I think Snyder is onto something much more general about human nature and not just about our response to the Holocaust, or the Olympics. There was a minor kerfuffle here some weeks ago when somebody got the vapors about Boston2024 suggesting “Olympia” by Leni Riefenstahl as an inspirational film. The hegemonic propulsion of Riefenstahls reputation as a Nazi propagandist minimized the responsibility to actually see the movie before commenting upon it and, in fact, falsely and unfairly amplified the outrage at Boston2024.
The idea of Olympics is a big one, and is nearly hegemonic by nature, but be that as it may an intrinsic quality of the Olympics it does not give anyone license to minimize the possibility of an Olympics or the efforts of the bid committee. But, frankly, that’s what I’m seeing. I see a bid committee that has anticipated many of the concerns and is working to address them. In response, either the committee is impugned and distrusted outright or the concerns have been escalated beyond a proper perspective. The idea that Sochi and Beijing are even remotely valid comparisons is just this hegemonic minimization.
The optics problem is an issue for Boston 2024 not the mishmash of citizens that are opposed to it. This isn’t Coke vs Pepsi, it is big expensive publicly funded project vs no project. There is no reasonable equivalence between the two sides here.
Anyway, going into “vapors” as you say about some particular rhetoric used by some subset of people on the anti side is still missing the point. Boston 2024 has simply not provided any details that would let anyone positively conclude that their numbers add up. They have details they are not giving us. They should do so. Promises that they will “figure it out in the next ten years” are simply not going to fly.
Let’s take a look at Summer Olympics from the modern era:
1984 – LA made money
1988 – Seoul Dictatorship controlled the pocketbook
1992 – Barcelona probably lost money
1996 – Atlanta broke even
2000 – Sydney broke even
2004 – Athens lost money
2008 – Dictatorship controlled the pocketbook
2012 – London probably lost money
So you have at best a mixed record, and forgive me if I don’t make a big deal of the point that Greece poorly managed something. Despite the big dazzlers of Beijing and Sochi, when we deal with free enterprise democracies, the record is not exactly harrowing.
I think there’s a substance problem and an optics problem (the elites running the B2024 show, residents frozen out, etc.).
Of the two, I think the substance problems are the more serious ones, but if the cost issues can be resolved such that taxpayers have ironclad protections, then there’s a chance the other issues can become workable.
That would be a step towards insulating Boston from formal liability. I assume that he does not want to do that because he knows it would make it highly unlikely that Boston would be considered seriously. Without that there is absolutely no way for the taxpayers to have an “ironclad” protection because there isn’t an insurance company in the world that will be sell you a policy with unlimited benefits. This is exactly why the IOC wants cities to sign the agreement.
Even if he refuses to sign the agreement, that would still not give us ironclad protections against cost overruns in the infrastructure/security portion of the project that the government is expected to provide. What if the Federal government does not pay the full cost of additional security expenses? Will insurance cover that? What if a T project needed for the Olympics that otherwise would not get priority (e.g. improvements to JFK station) experiences big cost overruns that eat into the T’s abilities to implement more important projects? Who is going to pay for that?
…that if a city’s mayor doesn’t sign there is officially no bid?
n/m
The IOC can do whatever they want. They make the rules. They can change them. They can consider Boston whether or not the Mayor signs the agreement, they can always negotiate a new contract that lacks the financial requirement if they want (remember that “boilerplate” from the USOC agreement). If it really is true that Boston 2024 can totally cover all cost overruns themselves through insurance, then surely they should be able to convince the IOC of that? Right?
Go back to the drawing board, have Boston 2024 go into every community-including adjacent ones-and ask what they want in the Olympic bid. This was basically my role in Chicago 2016 was facilitating this dialogue and offering proposals that community members want. This way they have input and buy in, and this way, even if they oppose the Olympics on principle there is still a deliverable that they can point to as theirs if we do win the bid.
Curtatone identified lousy transit and unaffordable housing as the two biggest problems in the region-and he created an Olympic proposal centered around solving those problems and hosting at the same time. At the end of the day, the IOC being the IOC, it’s likely this proposal gets rejected. But, it’s a proposal Massachusetts voters would be inclined to support in a referendum and one opponents could get behind if it passed.