The Globe had articles regarding the Boston Olympic bid both yesterday and today.
First, yesterday’s piece reveals that despite promises of private funding, Boston will still be on the hook:
In 2017, as the international competition goes forward, Mayor Martin J. Walsh will be expected to endorse Boston’s blueprint for hosting the 2024 Summer Games and with his signature make a promise that should the plan for a privately funded Olympics falter, the city — and its taxpayers — will step in and fix it.
What is the plan of the organizers?
To protect the city from loss, local Olympic organizers with Boston 2024 say they have already been working on an Olympic plan, to be finalized by mid-2017, that will reduce risk, indemnify the city, and convince Walsh that he can comfortably agree to be the backstop without significant risk to taxpayers.
However…
Still, there is no such thing as a risk-free Olympics.
“This is a big complex project, so there is going to be risk,” said Doug Arnot, an adviser to the US Olympic Committee who is helping Boston 2024 develop America’s bid for the Games. “What we can say is, we will take every step we can to manage that risk, to mitigate it, and relieve the potential for exposure to the city.”
But there is no guarantee.
And today, the Globe says “Despite early pitch, many public projects don’t have full funds in place”
Boston Olympic organizers initially pitched the Games by declaring that they would boost an array of public transit improvements, including a $1 billion expansion of South Station, new diesel trains between the Back Bay and Newton, and an upgraded JFK/UMass Station in Dorchester.
Best of all, Olympic organizers said, the projects had already been approved in a $13 billion bond bill signed by Governor Deval Patrick last year. “That money has already been allocated,” John Fish, the chairman of Boston 2024, said last year.
But despite those statements, not all of the projects have been fully funded and others were not even included in the bond bill. In fact, if the state were to pursue all of the projects, taxpayers would have to kick in at least another $4 billion, according to a Globe review.
“The information that is being provided at this stage should be accurate,” said Rafael Mares, a lawyer at the Conservation Law Foundation, “and, unfortunately, it isn’t.”
Do those of us who have been expressing skepticism regarding the info Boston 2024 has been putting out still need to explain ourselves?
…which broke the story about incomplete State funding back on February 5.
an outstanding wire service that covers state and local politics and is used by many local papers, wrote the story.
n/t
for the interested public to have on-line access. I think you and many others would like to read much of it.
No charge
ten per day. There is a big difference in quantity and quality.
I get access to it twice a day. I don’t always check it though. Most of the news gets into the papers. Our local public radio station also interviews one of the SHNS guys once a week.
would have a cost in the billions. Billions and billions and billions. It’s never going to happen.
I mean, just look at the Olympic track record. Almost every Olympics in the past 30 years has cost twice as much or more than initially “projected.”
I’d submit that cost overruns have a lot to do with the fact that organizers and politicians intentionally low ball the costs up front. Better to ask for forgiveness than permission, and then politicians get to write lots of angry letters once people forget they were responsible for the games themselves.
The Boston Olympics would cost $15-30 billion to put on. Period. Who’s going to cover that, when Boston 2024 is pretending as if it’ll only cost $5 and saying the Commonwealth was already going to fund the transportation projects it wanted — when they’re we’re (predictably) no where close to doing that.
So what insurance company or obscure shadowy Wall St. organization is going to cover that for anything less billions upon billions upon billions? None.
And if Boston 2024, Boston or the Commonwealth signs any policy that suggests otherwise, the public should demand to see the details of the policy to ensure there aren’t Grand Canyon sized holes in it that would allow the writers of the policy to escape most forms of cost overruns.
The only real insurance policy we’ll ever ‘get’ is leveraging potential national embarrassment at a world wide level as a means to receive a federal Olympic bailout, like Salt Lake City did. But would today’s Republican Party ever agree to that for liberal Boston? The winds could certainly change in 10 years, but don’t count on them changing that much.
Here’s your chances. Several meetings for that purpose are scheduled not only in Boston, but also around the state.
I’m finding myself leaning away from a Boston Olympics. I still think Boston should have as much business of the Romes and Tokyos of the world bidding for such an event. I’m just not thoroughly convinced that this is the event for Boston. In many ways I still think it’s a missed opportunity — yes, almost all improvements come with risk. But this may be too much.
I live tweeted the meetings in Roxbury and South Boston, in case anyone’s interested.
South Boston: We Cherish Your Questions So Much That We Will Never Answer Them
Roxbury: The Boston 2024 Dog-and-Pony Show Comes to Roxbury
Regarding the latter, the “Citizens Advisory Group” meeting, it’s rather noteworthy how very un-group-like the so-called CAG is.
Regarding both meetings, if I took a drink every time I heard “proof of concept phase” or “I don’t know,” I’d probably black out.
…that Marty Walsh is renegotiating the agreement to acknowledge the possibility of a ballot question, and remove the prohibition on city employees from speaking negatively about the bid.
Gives lie to some of the pearl-clutching I’ve read about how everything is written in stone.
Where do yet get that from?
It does most definitely give lie to Walsh’s attempt to dismiss the issue as “just boilerplate”. Still, I am glad that he admitted this was a real issue and addressed it, especially given some of the stories going around about people being told not to speak about what happened during the Long Island shutdown.
Of course, this is a minor side issue in any case.
Still waiting for that transparency, BTW….
the prohibition that did not need to be removed because it was only boilerplate?
The GOOD news is that the games CAN be done in Boston for a sum within their sponsorship potential. Atlanta was able to put the games on for less than $2 Billion in 1996 (excluding the cost of security) via the sponsorship route. Of course, the IOC has since put some restrictions on the level of sponsorships permitted. But, Boston has a tremendous amount of facilities already in place, and thus should in fact be able to host the games without major expenditures of that type.
The BAD news is that taxpayers in the Bay State, in today’s times, lack the fire in the belly necessary to elect politicians who are frugal with public dollars, despite the stereotype of historic New Englanders. This is not your great grand parents’ New England.
If no one in the Bay State objects to the MBTA/MassDOT spending $1 Billion to add a few loading docks to a train station, who the heck is going to prevent ‘them’ from spending $25+ Billion to host the Olympics?
Deval Patrick has been named “Global Ambassador” and the same article mentions that Mitt Romney has been working behind the scenes in support.