Conventional wisdom has Menino walking away with the primary and election. He certainly has the bank account and foot soldiers.
Contenders McCrea, Sam Yoon and Michael Flaherty each thinks he has a shot. Kevin intends to give it his feistiest fight, as do the Councilors. They’d all like multiple debates to make their positions widely known, which the Mayor is unlikely to agree to join.
There are major differences among those challenging Menino. We encourage you to listen to their shows.
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I know that the BRA is complicated, and I have little experience with the BRA. In fact, I have two experiences:
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p>1. A neighbor of mine just retired from the BRA. He’s thoughtful, knowledgeable, and really good on local planning issues. I trust him on this stuff.
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p>2. The BRA requires that all spaces greater than 50,000 sq ft be LEED certifiable. That’s awesome, and they were able to do it relatively easily, with little overhead, at least according to a BRA representative who spoke at Greenbuild. Boston is way ahead of the curve as a city on green building, and the BRA deserves lots of credit for that.
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p>So, what’s the other side of the coin?
Predictably, both Kevin and his mentor (on this issue and on government transparency generally) Shirley Kressel have offered detailed, persuasive arguments against the BRA in posts below. In direct response to your two questions:
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p>1. There are many fine professionals at the BRA with terrfic planning experience and skills. However,planning at the BRA has always been the ugly stepchild of development over there. Rather than comprehensive planning we have “development review” where the only planning is how to get the Mayor’s latest favorite project through the largely symbolic public process.
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p>2. Requiring large projects to meet at least the silver LEED standard (as Boston does) is commendable. But it didn’t take the BRA to get that done, simply the leadership of the Mayor and the obvious utility of the policy. Indeed, over two dozen states and 100 U.S. cities already have policies that require varying levels of LEED certification for new buildings. A true citywide PLanning Department could/would easily have established the same standards and provide the real forward-thinking planning Boston needs to ensure that in 2050 the City has the “right” mix of residential, commercial, educational, non-profit and green space.
… wants more action:
… I was posting this in a different thread. Seriously. Strange bug.
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p>Appologies
Fair question GGW. I goofed around in the embed code and seem to have found the setting.
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p>I had just used the BTR code that worked without considering that. Thanks.
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p>Mike
My numerous experiences with the BRA leads me to believe that a Magic Eight Ball could do a better job at planning. I participated in the rezoning of Dorchester and found many of the people who were committed, then have had to watch both the Zoning Board of Appeal and/or the BRA evicerate the intent of the zoning, often not even at the same times.
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p>I have watched the BRA and the ZBA bend over backwards to ignore rules when the person is connected with the Mayor or the city, and I have watched them impose strict “rules are rules” for the most insignificant things when the person is someone who speaks out about abuse.
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p>I have also watched the BRA give away millions of dollars of tax cuts (without any oversight) to developers, and take millions of dollars of city owned land for $1.00, while at the very same time, our elected officials are telling us that we can’t affort police on the streets, or summer programs, or a new school, or cleaner streets.
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p>In my opinion, the BRA is cancer on the city and needs to be removed before it literally kills the city. We desperately need accountability in the people who would even think about giving away Winthrop Square and Post Office Square or agree to 121A’s while basic services are starved, but that will never happen with an “Authority” bleeding us dry.
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p>Kevin isn’t the first and he isn’t the only person speaking about and against the BRA, but he is right that we need transparency and accountability now, more than ever.
My question is if we get rid of the BRA, does its power devolve onto the ZBA, which is easily the most corrupt agency in the city, and that’s saying something. You must have seen them deny the plans of a guy who wants to add another bathroom to his house while letting a condo complex go in down the street.
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p>The basic staff of the BRA seems to operate as generalized humanoid serfs who do all the work, while the overlords at the top get to hang with Winn Development etc.
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p>It’s impossible to divide these governmental authorities from the times they were established. They are a continuation of top-down rebuilding that was a common feature of New Deal America. While I think they were enacted with good intentions, by establishing zoning and development restrictions, they created a market for breaking those restrictions with zoning variances etc. This led to a collusion between the politicians and developers, facilitated by the revolving door. As for redevelopment itself, it came to represent buying low and selling high.
The BRA is answerable to no one (but the Mayor), the ZBA is answerable to no one (but the Mayor).
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p>In the 60’s when there was massive blight in the cities, this may have been necessary to allow hard decisions to be made, but that time has long since passed. Almost every major city in the US has a separate planning department and development department, answerable to city government (not just the Mayor alone).
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p>The options are not simply the BRA or the ZBA, both of which are out of control. We need to divide planning from development and stop the conflict of interest in the system.
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p>The BRA and the ZBA are a clear example of a “Nanny State” run amok, with decisions not being based on equal treatment under the law, or being driven by the free market. This is become like a king bestowing grants to his friends, because they are his friends, not because of merit. It is the old boy network bleeding the treasury dry so they they get theirs and everyone else can pound sand.
A planning board. That’s what we had until the BRA grabbed up that function in 1960. That’s how other cities do planning and zoning. Planning boards or commissions or departments that are regular city offices. They are overseen by the legislative branch of the city government, since zoning is city law. Boston is the only city where a redevelopment authority controls planning and zoning — and that came about because when the BRA was wooing Ed Logue to be Director, that’s what he wanted, so planning wouldn’t get in the way of the redevelopment agenda.
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p>The Zoning Board of Appeal is a standard part of a zoning system, necessary to review permit denials based on zoning violation, and grant variances for proposals that meet the legal hardship criteria. The ZBA can be sued for wrongfully granted variances; that body of law is quite clear. Suing planning agencies is extremely difficult; it’s hard to establish standing, and courts don’t like to intervene in local planning and zoning, as many lawyers have told me.
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p>Of course, a planning board may end up benighted and corrupt; they often do — as do their overseer councils. But then, we have recourse at the ballot box. In fact, some municipalities have directly elected planning boards, which is a way to reduce concentration of power and to get more direct accountability. We have virtually no legal recourse against the BRA, as they have proudly said.
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p>There are indeed smart, thoughtful people at the BRA. They’d be hired by the planning department, where their talents could finally be used to do genuine planning for the city’s future, instead of scene-setting for unlawful development projects that have been politically pre-arranged.
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p>A planning department can also require LEED certification; you don’t need an authority to do that. But there is much more to being environmentally responsible than the building design. For example, the BRA approves large numbers of parking spaces for projects, so the city becomes a driving city and the transit constituency is reduced. That probably has more overall city and regional impact than individual building designs.
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p>I’ve written many columns about the BRA; I’m working on one now about the planning agency that would replace it.
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p>I’m always looking for information about the BRA, and it’s hard to get information from the agency. If any readers would like to share facts or documents, please contact me shirley.kressel@verizon.net, 617-421-0835.
StomV- Thanks for asking, here is an answer we gave to Metropolis Magazine on some of the basic issues you raise.
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p>METROPOLIS MAGAZINE QUESTIONS
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p> * Your main criticisms of the BRA (and of Mayor Menino’s handing of the agency)
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p>There are two basic problems with the BRA.
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p>First, it has a conflict of interest. As an urban redevelopment agency, its mission is to get projects built; it works for developers, and – although this was never meant to happen — it has actually become one of the city’s biggest owners of development land. And then, as Boston’s planning board (a function it usurped through a stealth legislative maneuver in 1960, three years after it was created) it is supposed to make comprehensive city plans, and review and assess development proposals in the context of those plans, to protect the city’s overall welfare. (Boston, the BRA tells us, is the only city in America where the urban renewal authority took over the planning board function.) The BRA preempted Boston’s planning process, in order to eliminate it so as to have free rein for its development agenda. And without real planning, we don’t have a real zoning code; it is just a toy of the BRA, which writes the code in such a way that it can twist and distort and totally ignore it with impunity. The BRA’s vision of the future is simply an accumulation of out-sized development proposals legitimized by its sham “public process.” Think about this: Boston is one of America’s oldest and most important cities; yet, we have no capacity to create and carry forward a comprehensive, long-range plan for our future.
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p>Second, the BRA is an authority, not a line agency of the City government. It is “independent,” which really means it is not accountable through normal democratic processes. So this agency, which has amassed enormous powers and assets, is not answerable to the City Council, as a department would be under a normal structure. In fact, it is not publicly accountable at all. The Mayor of Boston appoints the director and most of the board, and Menino has brought it closer to himself so he can wield more day-to-day control, but in the end, the BRA, like other authorities, is accountable only to its own board. As it turns out, legitimizing unlawful development is a power of the BRA that greatly magnifies the mayor’s power, since he can negotiate deals with big developers and assure them that they will be allowed to build whatever they want without fear of the normal legal risks. The real estate industry pours huge amounts of money into his campaign fund, keeping him there for themselves. He gives the BRA huge amounts of City money and land off-budget, so it never has to explain itself before the Council at public budget reckoning time, keeping it there for himself. It’s a vicious cycle, and it has to end. We need a planning and zoning operation that is publicly accountable, in the same way that all other City offices are accountable, and in the same way that it works in all other cities. We have to get back to normal.
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p>As a result of its mission creep over the years, the BRA has taken control of our major tax-incentive program and abused it to the point where its original purpose, to subsidize affordable housing in poor neighborhoods, has been totally eclipsed by its false declaration of the sites of hugely profitable commercial and luxury-housing projects as “blighted.” We lose something like $70 million a year in property taxes to some of the biggest and wealthiest development corporations in the region in unjustified 40-year tax waivers. And the BRA elbowed the City Council out of the process for approving these exemptions; it’s a private negotiation between the developer and the Mayor’s assessing chief. The BRA, with its internal bloated $17 million budget, has also extended its tentacles into other pots of industrial development and public service money, so it now runs a $45 million a year empire.
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p>And recently, the Mayor casually announced that he thinks it’s all going so well that he’s going to give the BRA our transportation department as well! That will take a key planning-related department, and its $30 million budget, out of the City Council’s oversight, and out of public accountability as well. This is an agency that should by rights be phasing out, with its 40-year urban renewal plans expiring and, actually, the whole concept of “blight” and urban clearance discredited as destructive and obsolete. Instead, Menino is aggrandizing it further. This is his simplistic idea of how to run the place: no checks and balances, total concentration of power, siphoning public land and taxes off to crony developers and to an unaccountable outside authority, and a total and deliberate lack of a coherent vision for the city.
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p> * examples of what you considers to be missed opportunities, mishandled projects and other costs of the BRA’s shortcomings
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p>The BRA’s project-by-project zoning often gets in the way of development. Even the big, politically connected developers, who can depend on the mayor and his BRA crew for huge windfalls, privately complain that the city needs planning; after all, the same finagling that got them the big tower deal is going to get them a view-blocking neighboring monster next year. But most businesses need predictability and fair rules. And with the BRA’s meddling as gate-keeper and toll-taker for development, and Menino’s micro-management, many developers won’t even come here. There’s too much uncertainty, what with the bargaining over “community benefits” (which are usually public services the City should and could be providing) and the BRA’s hoops and the mayoral shakedowns for donations to his favorite causes so he can play hero at politically strategic moments. So we don’t have a fair development playing field and healthy market competition. Who knows what we’re losing that way? It’s hard to quantify, but there are plenty of stories about lost housing and businesses because the shenanigans were just too much.
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p>As to mishandled projects, it’s more appropriate to talk about mishandled neighborhoods. The BRA – and this was its job – destroyed so much neighborhood fabric in Boston, it demolished so much housing, so many businesses and theaters and historic buildings, it’s almost unimaginable how much value they destroyed. And so much of it is either still lying around as vacant land, or was rebuilt with horrible concrete bunkers and unwalkable highways through the city. Go to the urban renewal areas with a camera; it’s infuriating and heartbreaking, when you look at the old photos and read the history. Someone should sit down and figure it out, what all that property would have paid in taxes all these years, and what all that historic building stock, that looked like Beacon Hill and Back Bay and North End, would have been worth now, compared to what we’ve got. And that’s only the physical part; how many communities and families did the BRA drive out and tear apart? The BRA’s achievement is a trail of tears and waste. If urban renewal hadn’t finally been halted by public revolt, if the BRA had been able to “accomplish” all it planned, this historic city would be a wasteland, with a few islands of isolated wealth and, out of their sight, big masonry boxes full of poor people with no environment and no economy and no public services. (Some would say we’ve got that now!) Whatever is good about Boston is good despite the BRA, not because of it. (And don’t let the BRA regale you with its heroic Fanuiel Hall/Quincy Market “rescue.” That wasn’t the BRA’s doing; it was dragged into it by more visionary planners, and then let it become a banal chain-store mall.)
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p>If you want to look at simple mishandling of its everyday work, you can talk to any community leader and hear a consistent litany of criticisms – from totally ignoring the neighborhood plans and zoning laws (wh
ich are created with years of “community process”) to reneging on promised community benefits. There is a deep well of resentment against this agency in every downtown neighborhood, where most development takes place. In the outer more “suburban” neighborhoods, there is less threat of out-of-scale development, but even there, small-scale projects ignore community concerns, and conversely, when the storefronts are vacant, the BRA doesn’t put the same kind of effort into the smaller, neighborhood-scale economic development as it does for the high-profit towers. The overarching fact is that no one trusts the BRA. And the BRA, in remarkably large part, is the government in Boston. The BRA actually destroyed our City Council, by taking away its most important legislative role, planning and land use regulation, and diminishing its revenue and budget control. We need to restore the normal government structure here, the normal competence and responsibility of our elected officials. We need to restore public trust in our government, because that distrust breeds skeptical and uninvolved citizens. People don’t vote or run for office, they don’t expect much from their public servants – who in turn feel free to shirk their responsibilities; it’s all very bad for democracy. We have to realize how we came to this situation, and turn it around.
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p>There are huge financial costs to the BRA’s operations that are harder to see. It bleeds our treasury by taking extremely valuable City-owned property without paying compensation (with Menino’s written permission) and selling or leasing it for development; that’s money from our capital budget that he’s giving away, and then he tells residents he can’t afford to build them schools and libraries and parks and they should go negotiate with tower developers for these as “benefits.” The BRA is banking, for decades, billions of dollars’ worth of property, exempt from property taxes. It doles out decades-long property tax breaks to big developers, as I said before. It gets millions of dollars in capital appropriations from the City, which it doesn’t like to talk about and trivializes at hearings. It “administers” many state and federal grant programs, and rakes off hefty fees. It bleeds developers, too – it actually exacts (and I use that term charitably) millions of dollars from property owners to grant zoning changes – yes, zoning code for sale — and to extend tax breaks that should legally expire; it takes a percentage of the proceeds of every resale of property even after they’ve sold it for development. It takes “anti-speculation fees” from developers after helping them speculate, at city expense. The BRA’s budget is separate from the City’s, so the BRA doesn’t care if the City loses money. The City gives the BRA land for free, and tax exemptions, and capital money and sometimes operating money, and money to do its eminent domain takings as well; but the BRA never gives anything to the City. The fact is, no one, not even the City Council, has ever seen a detailed BRA budget. We don’t even really know where all its money comes from, or where it goes – although, we do know that BRA employees are handsomely paid, sometimes even more after retirement than while they were working (which is illegal; one long-time employee has recently been caught and apparently will have to give back a quarter of a million dollars).
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p> * your proposals for reforming/replacing the BRA
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p>The BRA can’t be reformed; it was structured as an authority, to be unaccountable. This is what it really wants to be. Anyway, why struggle to reform it? It is really unnecessary; we just don’t need it. It simply should be eliminated. We have to terminate those expiring and obsolete urban renewal plans, return the planning and zoning powers to real city departments like everyone else has, and pry from its clutches all those service programs and grants that it plunders. With these three sources of power gone, it can easily be dismantled, and all its powers and assets should revert to the City, for the benefit of the taxpayers. The BRA has abused this city for over fifty years. We have to put an end to it, as soon as possible.
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p>To start with, I would get every document in the BRA’s offices put online immediately. Right now, it’s impossible to get information out of the BRA; its officials stonewall and mislead inquiring citizens, media, and even the City Council. If everyone knew what was going on in there, toppling it would not be a controversy any more. Everyone would jump on that bandwagon. This city would be a very different place, and a much better one, for everyone. Well, almost everyone…. We’d get a very different kind of government, and we’d have giant pot of money that’s been diverted from us for decades.
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p> * where this issue ranks for you in the election
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p>It’s very central, because you can see that it affects almost everything else. We need to have a real City Council, a legislative branch, again. We need to stop the loss of our land and money; we’re talking about billions of dollars here. We need to plan our city for the 21st century, and we have no planning going on because that’s how the BRA wants it. This is intolerable. There are big environmental issues we need to work on; we are depriving thousands of children of their rightful education; there’s a shortage of housing that ordinary working people can afford; our public transit is getting no attention, while the BRA is approving parking garages for every project. Yet, there is no one dealing with these things in a serious way. The BRA has managed to keep the public ignorant of its vast powers and influence, but it affects them every day. I intend to educate people about that, because they will have to be the political force to change this situation – even more so if I’m not elected, because the other three candidates will all leave the BRA intact and continue to benefit from its powers.
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p>- who’s advising you on urban planning, architecture and real estate development, and/or who you consider your main influences in those areas
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p>Well, you know that I am in the real estate business myself, in a small-scale way, and I’ve had a lot of personal experience with how development works here. I’ve always done well with it, but I could see that I was benefiting from very the problems I’m talking about. I’ve been to a lot of community meetings, where I could see how the game was being played. I’ve met a lot of activists in neighborhoods around the city; there are really a lot of them and many have been involved for years and are very well-informed, and we’ve spent lots of time talking about these problems over the last five years. Shirley Kressel, a landscape architect and urban designer who is a co-plaintiff with me on a law-suit against the City Council for violating the Open Meeting Law, has done years of research on the BRA, and I’m the only one who has picked up on the information she’s dug up. The other three candidates don’t really want to call attention to all this, since they’ve been in office for years, involved in it and benefiting from it.
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p>The problems are consistent all over the city, and people are finally seeing the pattern. It seems to me that someone who shows some leadership, and isn’t afraid to expose what’s been going on, could really turn this tide. I’ve posted a few YouTube videos about this, and I’ve testified at public meetings. Even if the other candidates are at the meetings, I am the only one who stands up and says what’s going on. That’s why it’s so important for me to run; I know that otherwise, this race will be a competition of platitudes and promises by people who never did, and never will, make the changes we need.