Contrarian Boston/02.19.2024

Mass. teachers union pushes strike message in classrooms | Spring real estate market dead on arrival | Wu’s plan to “abolish” key development agency could trigger lawsuits | Boston school committee members urged to grow a spine | NYT conflates countries with death penalties for gay sex with homophobia in the U.S. |

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Worst of both worlds: Wu’s campaign vow to “abolish” Boston’s longtime development agency comes back to haunt her

Somewhere along the line, Mayor Michelle Wu must have come to an unwelcome realization about one of her most cherished campaign vows.

Truly dismantling the Boston Planning & Development Agency, the gate keeper for all major projects in the city since 1960, would involve a numbing, expensive, years-long legal and logistical slog.

So, Wu has put forth a plan that pretends mightily to abolish the agency - something she has lobbied for since her days as an uber progressive city councilor - but in fact does nothing of the sort.

And as is often the case with faux plans, everyone sees through it and no one particularly likes it.

Some of Boston Mayor Michelle Wu’s earliest and most ardent supporters are blasting her proposal, saying that it’s a far cry from the complete dismantling and eradication of the agency she once promised.

Often skeptical of new development projects, these neighborhood activists contend that Wu’s plan won’t truly eliminate the state-chartered development authority, but rather simply shift it completely to city control.

But the business community is also wary - and with good reason.

Boston Mayor Michelle Wu

For in her elaborate efforts to make it look like she is doing a complete rebuild of the agency everyone loves to hate, Wu’s proposal could inject ambiguity into decades old development agreements and potentially bog the city down in endless lawsuits, warns NAIOP Massachusetts, a trade group that represents developers across the state.

The new and “reformed” BPDA will now only be able take property for development projects that can be justified on the grounds of current, approved buzzwords like affordability, equity and resiliency.

Citing “blight” is a no-no now. But then what happens to all the “urban renewal” districts across the city - not to mention the many projects built in those areas, from condos and apartments to office buildings? After all, they were all built based on the old rules in which blight was used as the justification for taking land by eminent domain and approving projects.

“Remove the ‘blight designation’ like a very crucial Jenga piece and watch the entire thing collapse like a house of cards when you substitute it with ‘affordability, resiliency and equity,’” one city development insider notes.

Photo by Saurav S on Unsplash

Say, for example, a developer or real estate investor buys an apartment building and wants to scrap the old BPDA agreement that guarantees a certain percentage of the units be rented out at below market rates.

If so, the mayor’s politically-minded overhaul of the BPDA could offer up all sorts of potential legal loopholes and vulnerabilities to exploit.

Real estate and development is a litigious business and so it’s not hard to imagine that happening.

“NAIOP is concerned that the continuation of enforcement rights over covenants or fee collections could plunge the new BPDA into a costly, litigious cycle,” the trade group, which represents developers across Massachusetts, warns in a letter.

Controversial advice: Union urges teachers to chat up their students about the recently ended Newton strike

Enough already.

Here’s betting that Newton parents, exhausted after juggling work with bored children at home during the recently-ended teachers strike, aren’t going to be big fans of this.

In “The Intangible Victories, Talking About the Strike With Our Students,” a state teachers union rep offers tips to Newton teachers about talking with their students about the walkout - an illegal strike that triggered hundreds of thousands in state fines.