Wu to gut development agency, spare jobs | Presidential pipe dream | New housing law, questionable compliance | Quick hits | About Contrarian Boston |
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Trouble ahead: Gov. Healey touts local compliance with new state housing law, but a rebellion is quietly brewing
The new governor, in an interview Wednesday with WBUR, touted a 97 percent compliance rate with a new law that would open the way for hundreds of thousands of new apartments and condos near train and subway stops.
But Healey may want to probe that rosy-sounding compliance number a little deeper.
Sure, most suburbs, towns and cities covered under the MBTA Communities Act have filed initial paperwork, but that hardly means they are all waiting with open arms to welcome new multifamily housing.
A case in point is pricey Brookline, where you can build a 20,000-square-foot mansion by right, but have to go through years of hearings and bureaucratic red tape to build a humble apartment building.
While Brookline officials have filed an “action plan” with the state, Town Meeting members must now give a green light by the end of the year to new, apartment-friendly zoning rules.
And with the rise in town politics of Brookline by Design, a group giving off some distinctively NIMBY vibes, there’s no guarantee that will happen.
In fact, some Town Meeting members are talking openly online about voting no and simply drawing from town coffers to cover any state penalties, emails reviewed by Contrarian Boston show.
The expected $130,000 state penalty if Brookline were to fail to adopt new multifamily zoning would be a “real bargain,” wrote one town meeting member, warning that the wealthy town, which has a median home price of over $2 million, can’t afford to accommodate thousands of new apartments and the school children they might bring.
In an interview with Contrarian Boston, Chris Dempsey, a former state transportation official and a Brookline Town Meeting member, said there’s reason to be concerned.
"It was encouraging to see Brookline and 168 other communities comply with the requirement for an action plan, but if Brookline is at all representative, there is a tough road ahead for those of us who believe we need more transit-oriented, multi-family housing in Greater Boston,” Dempsey said.
New Hampshire governor gets royal treatment from Globe
That would be Chris Sununu, whose toying with a presidential run has already generated two sizable stories and a column in the always-scintillating broadsheet.
Son of former governor John Sununu and the younger brother of a former senator, he’s the scion of a local political dynasty in a key primary state, so we kind of get it.
Still, it’s a lot of ink to spill over a guy who has no chance of winning the Republican primary, is probably bored with his job, and may simply be angling for a cabinet position.
Just saying.
Bloodless coup? Wu pledges to keep City Hall development staffers employed as she upends how real estate projects are vetted
Ok, we can think of better ways of reassuring jittery employees than an email from the head of HR saying no one will lose “employment” in the mayor’s forthcoming shakeup of City Hall’s development arm.
In our cynical age, that’s a sure invitation to start sending out resumes.
Still, that’s the message the Boston Planning and Development Agency’s personnel chief is sending in the wake of plans unveiled by Boston Mayor Michelle Wu to neuter the long-influential city agency and break up its functions.
A longtime critic of the BPDA, Wu is forging ahead with plans to transfer planning staff to a new and separate department, while stripping the authority of its urban renewal era powers to seize property by eminent domain.
The full transition could take anywhere from a year to two years, writes Mike Kerr, director of human resources at the BPDA, in a memo to staff.
“I’m sending this message to alleviate staff concerns about the changes,” Kerr states in the email. “First and foremost, let me repeat the Mayor’s promise: no one is losing employment as a result of this transition,” he added in bold.
Stay tuned.
You saw it here first: Contrarian Boston lands more scoops
The Globe just ran a pretty good story about Belmont Hill School’s hotly contested expansion.
But it was even better when Contrarian Boston had it first back on Jan. 18, reporting how the elite school’s plans to bulldoze acres of woodland for a parking lot had divided Belmont.
Our story that ran over the weekend on Wu’s rent control plan falling most heavily on Boston’s wealthiest neighborhoods also got some traction. The State House News Service cited our story in a piece that ran on WBUR’s website. (CB, in turn, was alerted to the story by The Boston Guardian, a city paper that was the first to report this odd dynamic.)
And Maggie Mulvihill, a Boston University journalism professor and a former reporter for the Boston Herald, has been well ahead of the curve in her ongoing coverage for CB of the Hinton drug lab scandal.
Quick hits:
Sure, the more red tape the merrier when it comes to battling the state’s dire housing crisis: “Can a housing secretary make a difference? CommonWealth Magazine
Good story: “Herald exclusive: Stunning amount of problems with China train deal exposed” Boston Herald
About time: “Election deniers face a nationwide wave of pushback” Washington Post
What is Contrarian Boston?
Here’s a link to our mission statement – you can find it in the “about” section.
For a more prosaic, nuts-and-bolts description, read on.
An online newsletter, Contrarian Boston publishes every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. In Contrarian Boston you’ll find analysis of the day’s news, and original reporting as well.
Our focus is:
· Politics and all levels of governance, good and bad, with an emphasis on state and local, with some national mixed in;
· Economic growth and business, especially real estate, housing and new development projects;
· The media and why it does what it does;
· Education, from school board spats to the doings of multibillion-dollar university endowments;
· And whatever else catches our fancy.