I know a lot of us have already made up our minds, but we may finally get what I’ve been hoping for for some time. This Thursday evening at 8:00 Fox 25 will air a debate, co-sponsored by the Boston Globe between Boston 2024 and No Boston Olympics. Viewer questions are being accepted via Facebook and Twitter. Fact-checking and analysis will follow at 9:00.
Please share widely!
Is it just the local Fox affiliates that have fact checkers? 😛
Seriously, I’ve never gotten the sense that FOX broadcast affiliates were just local arms of the GOP network.
I predict that we will discover that virtually every fact to be checked will somehow involve the Boston Red Sox or Fenway Park — at least in the Boston Globe.
I say that, not as an opponent, but as someone in favor of more thought and information in the political and public spheres.
ICYMI, interesting read by Bob Ryan in the Globe today, someone who is a sports nut and an Olympics nut (he’s only been to eleven of them).
Of course what they say changes. Isn’t that the point of responding to criticism? This is the catch-22 I keep citing. Critics don’t like something and complain that Boston 2024 came up with this as if it’s a fait accompli without community input. Then they do respond to community input by tweaking the plan and the same critics complain that they have flip-flopped, moved the goalposts, etc. I still don’t get this cannot be trusted meme. That is not something you accuse without solid proof of previous misconduct in my book.
Second, like so many other critics including many on BMG the columnist seems to forget this is nine years away. We don’t have to be ready now. We have to show by 2017 that we can be ready by 2024.
It was just announced that Chicago is taking out a half a billion dollar bond to pay out its most pressing creditors, much of that money is dedicated to paint off debt from the 2016 bid. Even failed bids have unintended fiscal consequences down the road. Every single commentator, including former boosters like Mayor Emmanuel, Crains Business report, and the Tribune editorial page have all publicly said thank God Chicago dodged that billet of debt and despair. We could not have afforded those projects and could not have anticipated how much damage the crash really did to our economy until a few years into the bid.
Rio is also behind schedule and has already busted its budget, the people of London are grappling with a white elephant stadium and collapsing legacy programs.
So my issues from day 1 with Boston 2024 is that nobody there has done a project of this scope, or this size, and they clearly didn’t understand what they were doing and made promises they couldn’t keep. I think they have permanently eroded their credibility to the point that lukewarm supporters like Bob Ryan, the BMG editors, and others who disregarded the economic arguments against the Games are now seeing the light that these particular games are poorly conceived.
Wouldn’t you, an ardent Olympic supporter, rather wait until Boston was realistically able to host the games? I am not an ideological opponent, I think in 20 years time if we make the right infrastructure investments we should be making anyway, we will be in much better shape to host a games. Boston 2024 has already begun a half assed last minute effort to regionalize the effort as Mayor Curtatone suggested last year, going back to that model for a new bid would make so much more sense than continuing this one.
…but for the sake of argument sure, if the goal were another year that would be fine too. Right now though what we are being offered is 2024 and since we are the USOC’s bid city I’m not sure they would be inclined to choose us again for sometime. If the bid were withdrawn at this point that would especially leave a sour taste in everyone’s mouth. I also just have a really hard time believing that if this bid were as bad as some say it is that Boston leadership would have signed off on it or that the USOC would have chosen Boston to represent the United States.
… The City of London, long ago, signed a 99 year lease with West Ham United (my team) and Newham council to run the stadium for football games, rugby games, cricket games and concerts and. generally, to make money. The stadium is being refurbished and the Hammers will begin to play in it next year. Unless your definition of ‘white elephant’ is different from everybody elses on the planet, the Olympic stadium in London is not a white elephant.
I don’t think you know what you’re talking about. I think Boston could host the Olympics tomorrow and not be the worse for it. With 9 years to plan, yet, it’ll be the best Olympics evah.
Paying nearly a third of a billion dollars to modify a stadium you already spent half a billion dollars on hardly qualifies as a public policy success story if you ask me, it’s a white elephant if you are forced to spend nearly the same amount building it to modify it to be a suitable venue. Montreal’s Stadium is considered a white elephant and it hasn’t gone tenant less either, it just hasn’t recouped any of it’s costs in added revenue.
Taxpayer funding continuing in London:
Promised affordable housing hasn’t materialized either:
Transportation Boston 2024 is insisting we won’t get, they claim they will use our existing infrastructure. Funding a world class MBTA might have been worth the Olympics in my opinion, it’s a shame the suburban organizers didn’t think of it.
9 years is a long time, Chicago is awfully glad it didn’t get the Olympics now in hindsight
Has Boston or it’s municipal government completed a project of this magnitude on time, and on budget? Unlike the Big Dig, we can’t keep extending the deadline for an Olympics, a reality that has substantially driven up costs for behind schedule Rio, and even an infrastructure leader like Tokyo.
The onus is on promoters to prove us wrong, not the other way around. We are still waiting for a cost-assessment that shows Boston making money, or Boston 2024 delivering on it’s promised goods. Simply citing bid documents which are meant to win a competitive process within the IOC is not good enough. I write procurement bids for a living, it’s all about accentuating the positive and promising low costs and services delivered ahead of schedule. My company has a decent track record with that, what’s Boston 2024’s? I know for Chicago 2016 we went with the rosiest numbers possible, and were told to spin community meetings we attended to downplay the hostility.
… Sounds like fun. Let’s be THAT blog.
And, as for Tokyo, you’re contention that once it’s done it’s done is not bolstered by a country undoing what it’s done. Just saying..
What a load of crap. Nobody, ever, anywhere, said anything about making money. We don’t put on the Marathon to make money and we don’t put on the Olympics to make money. You’re trying to change the terms of the debate underneath us. Stop doing that.
Boston 2024 is arguing they will make money! So is Stanley Fish. If the games won’t create jobs and won’t generate revenue then all that’s left if wasting money on prestige. I am fairly certain you’re shifting goal posts now. Two weeks ago all we were talking about was how America does profitable games, and somehow Boston would continue that tradition. It was all about Atlanta and Los Angeles as benchmarks. And I am almost certain YOU and I had a back and forth over those games just two weeks ago. I am 100% certain sabutai has argued they will make money.
I am quite certain that was what our argument was about, quit shifting the goal posts to mask the fact that you have no third party reports on your end demonstrating why these games are practically feasible and what they will deliver.
But hey, you just conceded they will lose Boston money. I will take that. We have it on record folks, petr is conceding these games will waste taxpayer dollars.
I’ve long said that taxpayer dollars will not be wasted and I’ve never said there would be a profit nor cared much to do so… You’re making shit up. Again.
Stop doing that.
That’s a major concession, you are going into Christopher territory where it’s clear your want of the Games outweighs any of the stated benefits the organizers are promising and any of the potential costs taxpayers will be on the hook for. You still haven’t rebutted that tax payers are footing the bill to modify the London stadium to suit the needs of the Premier League team tenant. Nobody has bothered to refute the fact that Montreal is still paying off it’s Olympic debt. We took Greece out of the picture at your request, and you still were arguing Atlanta was a success, until I pointed out tax payers were on the hook for those games as well.
So just go into Christopher territory-you both want the games, rational argument won’t change your mind, and you both can quit posting on these threads regarding reality based concerns like budgets and taxes since Olympic rowing just looks so cool and everything will be awesome no matter what!
Here is what Boston 2024 has pledged to do according to WBUR (or is that a suspect news source too?)
If none of those targets are met, the Games were a failure. We are asking Boston 2024 to show us how it proposes to meet it’s own stated goals with private funding sources, on time, and on budget. The issues of IOC guarantees, public insurance money, and flip flops on the commitment to avoid tax payer funding, are all indicative that these debate tonight is sorely needed and a referendum is required for the public to make this commitment. After all, if the Olympics are so awesome, most Bostonians will want to pay for them, right? Why are you so concerned?
My apologies on the call letter confusion
…to say that we should stop posting here because you don’t like our opinions or how we come to them:( I for one am hoping and assuming some of these questions are answered Thursday night when they are put directly.
I think that he is saying that if you keep posting without addressing the facts, then your effort will not have much affect on the readers here and will mostly be for your own amusement.
… is some notion that you know how to run the Olympics, and the city, better than anyone else. That’s it. That’s your ‘facts.’ That’s all you got.
You don’t know. And I’ll save you the response: I don’t know either. And maybe Boston2024 don’t either but they’ve put themselves out there and I, for one, appreciate it.
because they are going to spend *our* money, and a lot of it. That is why the *vast* burden of proof rests with them. If they cannot reasonably show that the Olympics is worth the money, inconvenience and risk, then we should simply not do it. Things are quite fine without the Olympics.
People of chosen not to listen or believe. Most of the evidence against this being realistic is some variation of referring to the experiences of previous hosts. My standard rebuttal to that is always going to be a variation of Boston 2024 knows that and is making a good effort to address those concerns and do things differently. I guess on some level you are right though; if nobody is going to listen then maybe it isn’t worth any more than my own amusement, but that’s not my fault.
I don’t go back to fix every typo I make (and I make more than I should here), but the first three words of the above comment should be “People HAVE chosen…” which you probably could figure out, but it was bugging me.
… argument you offer is “I know better than you”. But that’s not a rational argument. And when you gotta keep making shit up to bolster your argument it doesn’t even retain an internal consistency… pudding ain’t an argument and you aren’t the one offering rationality here.
The tax payers will spend tons of money but it will be worth it for you so you don’t consider it to be wasted money. The question is whether it will be considered worth it for the rest of us.
… You’re too interested in putting words in my mouth to address the facts yourself: “cost effective” and “privately funded” are phrases alien to your intelligence… but they are all over the bid documents. You should read them sometime.
But to refer to them as evidence is akin to saying Jeb Bush will deliver on 4% annual growth in spite of no other President ever doing so because he said so and he is earnest and his time it will be different. Or asserting we will be greeted as liberators in Iraq. It’s not an objective analysis of the situation, which has been offered by Andrew Zimbalist who Mark Bail quotes from or other economists not affiliated or hired by the bid. I haven’t seen any evidence from any of them of an Olympics on schedule, in time, and under budget in the modern era other than LA. And as you said-nobody wants this to make money so I guess that’s not a model to consider.
Say I’m subjective or an ass all you want, probably right on both counts, but Mark Bail and others have made a consistent and evidence based approach you both choose to ignore and then insist you’re objective while we’re just critics and agitators. It’s a tired five month old debate, maybe older, let’s see what the talking heads on the television say and see if it changes any minds. At this point, the onus is on Boston 2024 to do so.
If a presidential candidate offered a plan for achieving a different result, then that is the part worthy of consideration and that is what Boston 2024 is doing. I too have provided evidence the best that I can; I wish you could at least accept that I am being sincere, and I would never call you the name you suggest. I won’t even type the word unless I’m quoting a KJV reference to a donkey.
The ass comment was referring to myself and directed to Petr, who might think of me as an ass and is taking our sparring quite personally. I wasn’t calling you or him an ass, I was saying, think of me an ass all you like, nicer folks like Mark Bail have made similar points in these debates.
As for you-I am saying show me evidence that is not from Boston 2024 material, that is from an objective source like an economist that these games are a good investment for Boston and I am all ears. It’s all I’ve been asking for, and I haven’t got it. I totally would’ve read Sabutai’s policy thesis from his undergraduate years, that’s the kind of stuff I read for fun. Find me a peer reviewed article, as I have provided opposing the games, and I am all ears. I truly am.
I am saying the debate so far has been, from our perspective:
The Olympics are bad in general for x reasons, cited by x economists
Boston 2024 is specifically bad for x reasons cited by x journalists
You refuted the latter claim with Boston 2024’s own material saying it is committed to transparency, to being on time and on budget, and the games provide a net benefit. A weak submission, but a valid one. You haven’t submitted anything to refute the first point that I am aware of (and I am always happy to admit I am wrong and change my mind based on the evidence-it’s why I come here-partly to vent but also to listen and to learn).
And Boston 2024 is very much an organization with an agenda and a campaign, to win the bid for Boston, so it will present facts and figures in the most positive light to justify that bid. As it should!
I like Bernie Sanders and am a bit of a social democrat myself, I wouldn’t use his speeches as proof that socialism works. I would instead use metrics from socialist countries, economists like Piketty, Reich, and Stiglitz, and evidence that the alternative-our existing form of capitalism-doesn’t work from similar third party sources. No one would consider Bernie’s speeches an objective source of information, so we shouldn’t consider the bid’s in that light.
You haven’t seen much evidence from me that it is an especially “good” investment, because that’s not the question I ask. I feel if anything I only need to offer the possibility that it’s not quite the sky is falling investment some are making it out to be. The economists you have cited mostly fall back on previous experience in other cities that Boston 2024 is expressly trying to avoid. I don’t look at this as an opportunity to make some material or financial gain for Boston, though I’ll happily accept any positive side effects like a shot in our infrastructure arm. I simply see it as a once in a lifetime opportunity to host an international extravaganza that brings humanity together.
Which is why I find it odd that you participate in these threads when you know the rest of us are concerned about budgetary implications and the long term urban planning challenges this bid presents, I certainly welcome your participation, but it does seem we are always talking past each other because of this basic disconnect.
I guess a follow up for you might be, what’s a cost or permanent that would be unacceptable for you? When would they have to cross a line for you to be against them?
…because I see value in pushing back on assumptions, different planning notwithstanding, that nothing will change, and that even if nothing were different, that somehow Boston will suffer greater than any number of other host cities. In other words, I’m not convinced your budgetary concerns will necessarily come to pass. In fact Boston 2024 is offering an “unprecedented” insurance policy paid for by them to cover the public and will release remaining documentation next week.
The report you cite makes no mention of insurance against cost overruns.
That strikes me as a significant omission.
…covering costs if unable to meet financial obligations. If financial obligations go up and can’t be met it sounds like they would be covered. I’m also fairly certain I heard the noon news report (different from the video at the link) specifically mention cost overruns as covered.
No matter how “unprecedented” the insurance policy is, there is absolutely no way it can really cover the the risk because no insurance companies would ever underwrite such a policy. This is one giant event, so there is no way for them to spread their risk over a large number of policies. The insurance will also only cover some small portion of the risk to the “operations” part of the budget. It does not pretend to cover the billions of dollars of required security and “infrastructure” work or other costs that will be dumped on state and local governments.
Any time I hear phrases like “once in a lifetime opportunity” unsupported by third-party fact and promoted by sources that will reap enormous personal benefit from the “opportunity”, I run away as fast as I can.
Perhaps because my “lifetime” is a bit longer than yours, I can attest that these “once in a lifetime” opportunities in fact come up rather frequently. That line is generally used when the “opportunity” crumples under even superficial due diligence.
Each of such promotions is nearly always more accurately characterized as a boondoggle. I see no evidence that Boston2024 is, so far, any different.
You have no way of knowing it will be a boondoggle.
You keep asserting it’s different, but haven’t shown why. It’s a nice catch 22 you have, this bid is unlike all other bids so we can’t use best and worst practices as a policy analysis tool, so we are left to evaluating Boston 2024 against what exactly? Itself? Talk about circular reasoning.
I can’t find it now, but some time ago I dug into the bid documents (those available at the time anyway) and composed a lengthy comment answering the concerns point by point from the documents. I am not going to keep doing that everytime the same concerns are raised. I was taught to prioritize primary sources, which the bid is. There may not be any valid available comparisons, but if you are accusing them of lying or acting in bad faith the burden reverts to you to prove it. There’s not much more I can say beyond, “I refer my honourable friend to the replies I have made previously on this matter.”
The bid document — and we haven’t really seen the real bid document — is just a gross summary. The primary sources are locked in Boston 2024’s offices. They could easily make their raw data public if they wished, but have not done so.
In any case, they very clearly have lied on numerous occasions. They claimed from the beginning that no public money would be spent to construct venues when that clearly was not true. They published what the claimed was the 1.0 bid document (and only because they were pressured to do so) but gave us a heavily redacted document without indicating they had done so. They have claimed more than once to have communicated with stakeholders such as property owners when they had not done so. For some reason, you want to think of all of those lies as honest mistakes. I don’t think so. While Boston 2024 has definitely been inept, they are not so dumb as to know when they are making statements that are not true.
…that 1.0 is coming out tomorrow unredacted, but that it’s also no longer operative as it is being superseded in its entirety by 2.0.
but why did they say it would be released next week? Why are they waiting until tomorrow?
The reason that 1.0 is “operative’ is because it can be compared to their promises they made at the time to see how honest they were (but you don’t care about that, do you?). It should also be noted that what we have seen about the 2.0 is roughly at the same level of detail that we got for 1.0 and much of the detail was retained from 1.0. For instance, didn’t you notice that despite the supposedly significant change in plans and venues that there estimates of ticket revenue and security costs are exactly the same? In other words, you can bet there is plenty of details they still won’t tell us.
I still don’t understand why you have absolutely no concern about their past dishonesty.
…is that there was a process to lift confidentiality requirements and thought they would be ready next week, but things are now moving a bit faster and it can be ready tomorrow. What you call promises I call plans and hopes in the works. What you call lies I call initial projections subject revisiting and revising as appropriate. It is NOT dishonest to provide information that is subject to change. If you know they were knew they were delivering false information AT THE TIME they delivered it you are a much better mind reader than I am.
They could have started that process months and months and months ago. And clearly that process did not happen when the first four sections of the unredacted document were obtained via a FOIA request. There was nothing in that document that would give any indication that there were confidentiality issues. It still is not clear whose confidentiality is at issue here. Surely their own document is totally owned by them. Why do they need someone else’s permission to release it?
And I am sorry Christopher when they say that no public money will be spent on venues when they knew that was not true of their plans, they were most definitely not telling the truth. They could have said “our current plans call for some public money but we are not committed to that”, or the like. They didn’t say that. They definitively stated that no public money would be spent building venues. That was not true and they knew it. That is lying pure and simple.
When they released the redacted 1.0 document they presented it as the same document they had given to the USOC when that was not in fact the truth. They knew perfectly well they were misrepresenting what they were publishing.
When they stated they had talked to various land owners about purchasing their land, they knew that was not the truth. That is lying.
I am sorry, but if you tell your boss that you already talked to the customer about your project when you haven’t done so then you are lying. It doesn’t matter if you intend to do it eventually.
Knowingly making false statements is lying. And they have done this a number of times now.
I fear you misunderstand me.
A “once in a lifetime opportunity” IS a boondoggle until shown otherwise.
Should I have jumped at the “once in a lifetime” chance to buy stock in the first Cold Fusion company? How about the first “once in a lifetime” opportunity to help whoever-it-was get his money out of a Nigerian bank (only a small service fee was needed from me). Or the “once in a lifetime” chance to “get in on the ground floor” of Herbal Life?
You keep repeating the same canards, as if they will somehow be different this time. There hasn’t been any “planning”, from what we know. There has instead been secret promises, promises like “no public funding” that turn out to be exactly the opposite of the press releases you call “planning”.
Like any other too-good-to-true once-in-a-lifetime-opportunity, Boston2024 is (is, not “will be”) a boondoggle until proven otherwise.
Sorry, Petr but smarmy condescension only re-enforces the impression that your simply rationalizing your own preconceived notions.
In any case, I am not sure what you are referring to by the phrase “privately funded”. We know that the Olympics will not happen without *massive* public funding, whether it comes in the form of direct spending, massive tax breaks, overtime pay, TIF deals, public land taking, unequal land swaps, or other word games or accounting tricks (e.g. “public-private partnership”). Not to mention the absolute requirement that the host city financially guarantee the venture (and only the most naive person can believe that any insurance policy will actually cover the City’s risk or that any claim would be paid promptly without years of lawsuits). And that doesn’t even count the public cost of misdirected infrastructure priorities.
If the Olympics can be done without any public spending and without taking over miles of highways and roads for exclusive Olympic use, then perhaps we can talk, but no one has proposed such a plan, and no one ever will.
BTW, I have read the bid documents. They are still not much more than glorified power-point presentations. I want to see the real data, or at least see what the USOC gets to see.
…that Marty Walsh, the elected Mayor of Boston and who unlike those of us who are just cheerleading actually has a responsibility for city funds, carefully read the document and asked a lot of questions? I continue to be extremely skeptical of the accusation I am inferring that he is not looking out for the city. You make a couple of assertions yourself above. Are you in a position to know something the Mayor or Boston 2024 doesn’t?
He has publicly said that he did *not* in fact read the bid document before signing on as Boston 2024’s #1 public supporter. He claimed that he had the city’s lawyers vet the document, but in response to a specific FOIA request, the city denied that it had access to any such document. So either the lawyers did *not* in fact review the document, or the city is violating Federal law by not producing it. The mayor has also voiced surprise or (at least faked it) as details of the bid were revealed that he would have already known if he had actually read the original document. It really could not be clearer that he did not consider the matter very carefully.
In any case, regarding Walsh. I am sure that in his own way he means well and believes that he is looking out for the city. But he is also someone who has made it clear that he believes that there is nothing wrong with patronage (in his defense of O’Brien in the probation scandal) and he also seemed very excited by the potential for construction jobs. I think that in his mind, anything that is good for the construction industry and brings more jobs to that industry is automatically good for Boston. Now just because he believes he is looking out for the city does not mean that those of us who do not share his simplistic view of the economy and his willingness to leave the details to others should trust that he will actually do best for the city.
much as some of you out East, but Marty Walsh seems like a tool to me. If he’s good, I haven’t seen it. But my observations are relatively few.
No Boston Olympics should reveal their funding!? They have less than $15,000!
Even more so than de Blasio, who seems to be rebounding from first year missteps. I still consider myself a fan of his personality, his record in the legislature, and I personally know good folks working for him who think the world of him. He is the rare white working class Democrat who is both a social and fiscal progressive down the line, and still has the potential to be a good Mayor. But he has not been a good mayor thus far, and the Olympic bid is starting to resemble an albatross more and more, and not the slam dunk he thought it was.
Per the Bob Ryan article cited above, there has been a conspicuous lack of competence to date on the part of Boston 2024.
Had there been some basic due diligence prior to going public (title searches, traffic studies, redacted security planning – the list goes on), the politics of this would be different.
The issue is not so much misconduct as it is misfeasance.
reading the original bid “details” was like recapping a night of drinking and scheme-hatching with my college buddies. “Hey – we could play beach volleyball on the Common!!” Just that idea alone should disqualify B2024 from any further involvement.
As we were driving through Holyoke (home of “real” volleyball) yesterday, my wife made an interesting pitch: “Give us high speed rail to every venue outside of Boston and then I’m OK with it.” Whaddya say, B2024?
They utterly refuse to respond to calls for transparency. They refuse to publish the unredacted bid document they gave the USOC. There can only be one reason for that: the contents are so embarrassing to them they would risk losing what little public support they currently enjoy.
The fact is that they should have talked to the community *before* they started making plans and before they signed us up for this boondoggle. They still don’t really know how it is going to be paid for.
The Tooth Fairy.
I didn’t see that in the bid document. Do you have access to the unredacted version?
How many teeth does it take to build a stadium anyway?
Presuming pro bono extractions by dentists and oral surgeons (and counting baby teeth that fall out on their own), I figure that the aggregate population of New England, plus New York City (in exchange for the use of Central Park as a venue) should provide the raw materials.
n/t
Now Boston 2024 is saying that they will release the unredacted 1.0 document, but not until next week. While I welcome further revelations from them, I can’t help but be a little bit suspicious about the extra delay. What exactly are they going to be doing during that week? Why can’t they publish it immediately? Are they just trying to delay it so that their debate opponents don’t get additional ammunition or is there going to be more redacting going on? I can see that it might be a difficult task to edit the document so that it is just embarrassing enough to explain why they withheld it, but not so embarrassing as to cause significant additional damage to their cause.
I think you’re right on the money.
I can’t imagine how an “unredacted” version 1.0 release requires anything beyond a few mouse-clicks.
Perhaps the original bid document was version 0.0. Then they’d be telling the literal truth (a common practice in my industry, sadly).
said he’d fight against federal funding if Western Mass doesn’t get its fair share of infrastructure dough. He said we suffered enough from the Big Dig.
Perhaps they should have regionalized the bid from the get go as Mayor Curtatone proposed. So I guess they will have so many bids spread out across the state to gain support that the games will cease to be walkable, seems to take away the only competitive advantage we had against our competition.
First, I didn’t realize the factchecking and analysis would be online only. Maybe someone else can fill us in as my computer doesn’t handle that really well.
In general I think the heat:light ratio was higher than I hoped all around. There was a lot of talking past each other like there is here. Daniel Doctoroff came across as most knowledgeable, but also as a bit of a carpetbagger. Steve Pagliuca was quick to correct the record when he found it necessary, but rejected the premise of a question more than I would have liked. Chris Dempsey tried the class warfare tactic which didn’t work for me. His closing statement also sounded like it was written before the debate. Andrew Zimbalist had clearly looked at numbers, but had trouble grasping how things had changed to produce greater efficiency. I’m still not sure how to reconcile the seemingly contradictory claims that the last three American ran surpluses and had cost overruns.
Overall, I don’t see this debate changing minds of those who have decided either way or giving the undecided a reason to pick a side. That includes me. It sounds like Boston 2024 acknowledges a work in progress with some risks, but that Boston is more than capable of handling it.
I think you are right that the debate probably changed few minds, but it didn’t help Boston 2024 at all. Whose bright idea was it to have Doctoroff there? I don’t think many undecided people watching this is likely to feel any more comfortable about the Olympics after watching this and I would be shocked if this does anything to help Boston 2024 change the tide of public opinion.
In any case, I am glad they made it clear that government will definitely be on the hook for overruns. Does that mean that if Boston refuses to sign the host city agreement (or at least the money guarantee part) that Boston 2024 will have to pull the bid?
It also sounds like there was the issue of having to compete with other cities on the guarantee. However, it still sounds like they are attempting to do everything possible to mitigate the costs to taxpayers via insurance and RFPs. This was the question on which Pagliuca most consistently rejected the premise, basically answering anything like, what if there are overruns with there will not be overruns.
If he were risking his personal fortune — by personally guaranteeing the first 100 million dollars worth of overruns, for example — I might be more inclined to believe him. If it turns out he is totally wrong, he will just shrug and mumble something about “unforseen circumstances”, but we will still be stuck with the bill. The fact is that there *always* have been cost overruns and City/State governments have *always* assumed a major portion of Olympic costs.
While Boston 2024 is probably doing what they can to obtain insurance, it simply will not be possible to get insurance — no matter how unprecedented the amount — that covers even a significant fraction of the risk the City is being asked to assume.
No Boston Olympics/2024 are really way too NIMBY and provincial for my taste, but this article from Gizmodo (of all places) provided some interesting context for the international, not just the local, issues that are making these bids so problematic.
As a side note, I could not believe the amount of New York hatred expressed on #OlympicsDebate Twitter this evening! Me and all of my close friends transferred out of NEC back in the day b/c we could not believe how provincial a place Boston was (is).
… it sounds like LA should just be the permanent US location for the Olympics (if they are going to rotate around the various countries/continents).
In what way is not willing to spend massive amounts of taxpayer money on a giant circus “provincial”? In what way is asking for accountability and transparency “provincial”?
Some day if Boston already has the facilities and transportation infrastructure in place, I would welcome an Olympic bid, although I doubt that will ever happen unless the IOC can restrain themselves on their bad habit of endlessly expanding the Olympics to include more and more sports (in the last LA Olympics there were less than 7K athletes and little over 200 events, in London there were well over 10K athletes and ~300 events, and more events will be added by 2024) and thus higher and higher costs for venues, housing and expenses for running events.