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BRA board votes to keep its extra powers over wide swaths of the city
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OK Marty
You ran on a big reform the BRA campaign - to borrow a phrase from Bush, here's your accountability moment.
Rubber stamp this or push for meaningful reform.
What, no raise??
Shocked that they didn't vote themselves a raise while they were at it.
Not that I love the BRA...
But until we get a REAL planning department with does radical, crazy things like write plans and update the zoning code more than once-per-century, the BRA probably does need to keep limping around with its antiquated urban renewal authority.
I agree
which is why it's on the mayor to actually make some concrete proposals about what can be done to improve the path to development in the city.
Or he can ride around on the Holiday Trolley and tweet about local shopping. TBD.
A strong mayor system really works better when there's a strong, competent mayor it turns out.
Local shopping, yep.
One-Term Marty is so fond of local businesses that he picked a Florida-based trolley company.
No Way
The current system lets the Mayor hand out favors and do whatever he wants. There is no way we are getting real, enforceable planning or zoning in Boston because those favors are too valuable to the Mayor (whoever it is, but if your base is the construction industry . . . ).
Happy to eat my hat if it happens.
But it won't.
Maybe - but not for another decade
The City Council should give the BRA no more than a two-year extension and charge the mayor with putting together a legitimate city planning department asap.
The mayor should step up and do it - like he said he would.
Bostonians should keep the pressure on both council and mayor. And in two years, we should base our choice of mayor and council at least in part on how well they listen and respond.
The city council can't do
The city council can't do that. The law is written that their vote is for a 10 year extension or an immediate expiration. There is no middle ground allowed the way the law was drafted back in the 1960s.
Didn't the city council lose all voting power in 2004?
Even if they did, I'm still going to reach out to them about rejecting this.
Yes. The Council was tricked
Yes. The Council was tricked by the BRA into voting to surrender power over future extensions of the UR Plans. If the Council takes a vote on this issue now, it will be exceeding its powers, and be subject to legal challenge.
The BRA belatedly realized, however, that the Council's vote is a prerequisite for the state DHCD to vote, and so the BRA "reconsidered," as they told me, and "decided to give the Council a vote." Well, it's too late. The Council cannot exercise a power it gave up 11 years ago.
You should reach out and tell the Councilors NOT TO VOTE. If they take a vote, you can be sure a majority will vote for the extension; the BRA will trick them just it did so many times before. And then we will have to bring legal challenge. And the Council, unlike the BRA, is not bulletproof in court.
What law is that???
What law is that???
Anyway, the Council is not empowered to vote on this at all. I've told them, but the BRA is just pretending it's not true, and they know they can trick the Council into doing anything. They have unlawful secret meetings where they fill the Councilors' heads full of lies and nonsense, and the Councilors don't know enough to see that. Then the Council votes away our (and its own) interests -- and further, is liable for Open Meeting Law violations.
No, the Urban Renewal Plans
No, the Urban Renewal Plans are totally unrelated to the BRA's powers as the City's Planning Board. If the UR Plans expire, the BRA will still be the Planning Board. Separate action has to be taken to remove the planning power from the BRA and re-establish a real City planning agency.
UR Plans cover specific geographic areas, in which the BRA has absolute and unchecked powers to take property (private and City-owned) by eminent domain, declare blight, and convey public land without competitive bidding.
The BRA's planning powers extend across the city.
This is the problem. People just don't understand how the BRA's powers are structured, and that makes it easy for the BRA to fool people -- including City Councilors -- into doing whatever the BRA desires.
It is needed; Still blighted.
Just the other day I saw a sign in the North End that said New Condos For Sale, not New Luxury Condos For Sale.
HA HA!!!
Poor buyers might only get linoleum...
Why would a bunch of crooked
Why would a bunch of crooked slobs vote against keeping their cushy jobs?
Mayor Walsh shows himself to be a puppet and a coward for not taking a stance against this institutionalized corruption. He has a chance to make the BRA accountable for once and more likely than not will roll over.
See my comment above
The BRA is currently under the Mayor's thumb. Why would he want to change that?
The mayor controls the BRA;
The mayor controls the BRA; its "toolbox" of magic powers (i.e., government powers without accountability) serve him and his friends in the construction industry. He's not the BRA's puppet; the BRA is his puppet. And that's what he considers accountable enough.
Whelp
Looks like I'll be bothering my city councilor and at large councillors. I'd prefer to not see their power extended.
Power?
From where did they get their initial power from? Was it instilled by a mayor, city council, or a referendum?
Act of the state legislature
Granted Boston initially so it could condemn an entire neighborhood to make way for a some concrete apartment towers.
rename the BRA
They should be called New Economic Renewal Organization or NERO to celebrate their long heritage of destroying Spock's home.
wish
I wasnt nerdy enough to get this joke in its entirety
But, alas, here we are
Let Me Geek You
There are great parallels here!
The actor who played Spock on Star Trek was Leonard Nimoy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_Nimoy). He grew up in the West End, which was knocked down in the 60s to make way for what's there today.
Nero is the villain in the rebooted Star Trek movie from 2009 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek_(film).
He destroys Vulcan (Spock's home world).
So BRA destroys the West End, Nero destroys Vulcan - in either case, Leonard Nimoy loses his childhood home.
Urban Renewal is a Federal program
And while it has a bad name now (justifiably) it is one of the main reasons that the economy of the City of Boston turned around in the 1960s. Certainly demolishing the West End and destroying a healthy neighborhood was terrible. But this work allowed new buildings to be built in Boston for the first time in decades and encouraged companies to come back to the city.
No it didn't. Boston was
No it didn't. Boston was losing population, commerce, and industry continuously until the 1980s tech/finance boom reversed the tide. Now biotech is keeping the city afloat.
If it weren't for the hospitals and universities creating a reason for companies to want to be in Boston they city would look like a mini Baltimore.
Freakonomics credits Roe v
Freakonomics credits Roe v Wade with revitalizing cities near the end of the 20th century. Those unwanted pregnancies didn't have a chance to grow up and contribute to urban decline.
The BRA was created by vote
The BRA was created by vote of City Council in 1957, pursuant a state enabling law, Chapter 121B.
Headline is misleading and a
Headline is misleading and a little confusing. If they hadn't voted to extend the BRA's urban renewal powers, the BRA and the BRA Board would still exist. They weren't voting to extend the BRA - they were voting on whether a small piece of what the BRA does should be extended.
Not a small part
In addition to wholesale destruction of neighborhoods through eminent domain (which the BRA finally acknowledged this year was a mistake), it also lets the authority designate land as "blighted" and so subject to special tax deals, for example, 1 Beacon St. But you're right, they didn't vote to extend every single thing they do for 10 years, so I'll adjust the headline.
No, the tax deals are outside
No, the tax deals are outside the UR Plan areas. That power would remain.
Urban renewal
I am not entirely aware of what kind of jurisdiction the BRA board has, but when I think "urban renewal " these days in Boston, I think of knocking down older buildings to build new, generic and overpriced condo buildings that are inappropriate to the neighborhood. For example, look at what is happening in China town. Sure it was a dump before, but now it is turning into a series of high rises and pricing a lot of the original people out so that yuppies can move in. Pretty soon, it will be gone.
I don't know what plans they have for the north end, but I shudder to think what "urban renewal" is going to look like there.
Sometimes the jokes write themselves
I was going to hang back on this one, thinking that the Redevelopment Authority was probably acting outside of self interest and was genuinely concerned with making the city a better place. Then I went and read this, and saw how many people they employ, and to what little end.
The BRA: a means of propping up some boobs who would otherwise have no way of supporting themselves.