05.20.2022

Boston’s rich to fork over millions at “Beach Ball” | End times for real estate? | Waking up the sleepy Governor’s Council | BPDA still alive and hiring | About Contrarian Boston |

Development agency Wu wants to ‘abolish’ goes on hiring spree

The Boston Planning and Development Agency is sure not acting like it’s on the mayor’s hit list.

The agency that Mayor Michelle Wu has spent years vowing to sunset is on the hunt for the best and brightest to fill the agency’s depleted ranks.

That was the message given to developers last month when they met with James Arthur Jemison II at the Parkman House.

Jemison on Monday will start his new job as the city’s first-ever chief planner, as well as the new director of the BPDA, the 21st in its decades-long history.

A quick look online reveals dozens of job openings at the agency.

“That was our take from the real estate community – if you are bringing in people that doesn’t mean you are going to dissolve it,” said Greg Vasil, CEO and president of the Greater Boston Real Estate Board.

The agency is desperately in need of fresh blood, having suffered attrition as veteran employees and planners have left during the limbo times of the last 18 months since now former Mayor Marty Walsh was named secretary of labor.

The brain drain, in turn, has led to delays in projects getting vetted and approved, one developer complained.

“They were short staffed to being with and a lot of people have left,” the developer said. “There is a volume of work that needs to be done and they need people to do it.”

There also needs be someone at the top making decisions, a void that Jemison is expected to fill when he starts work this week.

All that said, it seems inevitable that Wu is going to insist on major changes to the BPDA, even if the agency Bostonians love to hate is ultimately spared from the chopping block.

For city’s movers and shakers, the place to be this weekend …

… is the “Beach Ball,” the annual fundraiser for Camp Harbor View.

Orchestrated by legendary ad mogul, philanthropist and all-round civic leader Jack Connors, the fundraiser is slated for 6 p.m. Saturday at the SOWA Power Station.

As charity events go, this is the big time. For $200,000, you too can become a “Lead” sponsor, reserving two tables of 12. Too rich for your pocketbook or wallet? Then a cool $100,000 will earn you the bragging rights of a “Platinum” sponsor and a table for 12 with “premium placement.”

Connors, who sold Hill Holliday to Interpublic Group nearly a quarter century ago and stayed on until 2006, has served on the board or the been the chair of just about every major charity and nonprofit in town. To give you a taste, Connors, chaired not only the board of Partners Healthcare for 16 years, but also served two terms as head of the board of trustees at Boston College, his alma mater.

Here’s a Globe story that should delves into great detail into Connors’ charitable and civic good works.

But Connors, who drove a cab to help put himself through college, clearly has a soft spot for Camp Harbor View, twisting arms and cajoling the city’s wealthy into contributing an astonishing $130 million to the nonprofit over the years, according to the above-mentioned Globe piece, which ran last year.

By the time the weekend is done, that number may very well be $10 million or more higher.

Prophesies of doom darken spring home sales market

There’s growing chatter in the media that the real estate market is finally peaking and may be headed for a slump.

And anyone who was an adult back during the market collapse of 2007 and 2008 understands what that could mean.

Some of the predictions, as these things go, are more credible than others.

Joe Zidle, a top executive at big Wall Street investment firm Blackstone, is warning that overall affordability in the home sales market is as bad now as it was in 2007, during the height of that decade’s real estate bubble.

That said, Zidle told CNBC he sees more of a levelling off in prices, mainly because homeowners haven’t gone to town tapping home equity lines. There hasn’t been a flood of newly built homes hitting the market across the country, either, though we could more of those in Greater Boston.

Here’s more from Time, “Signs Are Pointing to a Slowdown in the Housing Market—At Last,” and The Atlantic, and “The U.S. Housing Market has Peaked.”

Time to ditch the Governor’s Council, or just shake it up?

If you are inclined to the former position, you might want to check out this piece in Massachusetts Lawyer’s Weekly.

The editorial board of the paper for the state’s legal community states it is “nearing our breaking point” when it comes to the long-standing debate over whether the council, which dates to colonial times, should be finally handed its walking papers.

The culprit here? Lawyers Weekly cites the council’s initial balking at requests that it continue to simulcast its sessions over YouTube. When pressed, two councilors said there is no need for it since a fathers’ rights activist maintains an online archive of video recordings of the council’s meetings.

Of course, the other alternative is to elect new members to the Governor’s Council, which, despite its sleepy reputation, grills and approves judges and does other critical work.

That’s where’s Mara Dolan, a long-time public defender from Concord, comes into play.

Dolan, who served as communications director for former Senate President Stan Rosenberg, is running in the Democratic primary for a seat on the governor’s council that represents 32 towns and cities, including Brookline, Newton, Waltham, Concord and parts of Boston. The incumbent, Marilyn Petitto Devaney, has been member of the council for 22 years and was in the thick of the dust up over the simulcasting of the council’s meetings.

Dolan is an unabashed supporter of broadcasting the council’s meetings, contending “hearings of the Governor’s Council must be simulcast, period. The hearings are public, and the public must be able to attend easily and virtually. “

She also argues that the council could use a public defender to inject a little reality into the questioning of prospective judges, who may have little or any experience with the realities of the district court system and the challenges faced by defendants.

“All people have the right to be judged by their finest moment,” said Dolan, paraphrasing a quote by Emerson. “We need judges who see the whole person.”

Quick hits:

The guy just can’t win: “Biden's approval dips to lowest of presidency: AP-NORC poll (msn.com)” AP

David Brooks offers some thought-provoking, if unsolicited advice: How Democrats Can Win the Morality Wars NYT

Support from a seemingly unlikely source: “New Jersey governor backs Baker on sports betting, both push tax relief” Boston Herald

What is Contrarian Boston?

I have fielded emails over the past couple weeks asking what Contrarian Boston is about.

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 Monday, Wednesday and Friday. 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.