‘Abolish’ the BPDA? Not so much with the current proposal
Officials say consolidation a more accurate description
“Abolish” the BPDA? Try “consolidate.”
And that new city planning department? Well, look for that next year.
Top officials from the Boston Planning & Development Authority showed up to an eyebrow-raising City Council hearing to testify in favor of Mayor Michelle Wu’s high-profile proposal to begin the process toward her longstanding call to “abolish the BPDA.”
But in that hearing, the quasi-independent city agency’s top two officials and one of their lawyers attempted to downplay the scope of the proposal, avoiding the word “abolish” in favor of “consolidate,” presenting this as a move to just bring the two wings of the organization closer together.
“The petition before you today takes the BRA and the EDIC and consolidates them into a new agency with a new charter and new mission,” BPDA Deputy Chief Devin Quirk said, referring to the Boston Redevelopment Authority and the Economic Development Industrial Corporation.
“It doesn’t move any staff to the city of Boston,” Quirk told councilors for what would be one of many times he and Planning Chief Arthur Jemison attempted to move past questions from councilors about Wu’s intents down the road to bring planning back under the umbrella of the administration. Rather, Quirk said, this is an “elegant solution” to “clean up” some of the outdated urban-renewal rules currently still on the books. He said it doesn’t change the BPDA board or the development process.
“We are not changing the way development works in the city of Boston,” Quirk reiterated of this proposal.
And don’t expect the new city-side planning office to show up funded in this new fiscal year’s budget, Jemison said. He said “eight to 10” people might move over to get some preliminary staffing going for the panels Wu’s created to work on planning out the planning move, but as for actually shifting the planners themselves from the BPDA to the city, “It’s probably next year’s budget cycle at the soonest,” he said.
That means fiscal year 2025, which starts in July 2024 — about a year and a half from the next mayoral election.
Wu, dating back to when she was a city councilor, has called to “abolish the BPDA,” becoming the latest mayoral candidate to bash on the agency dating back to its inception half a century ago. Then called the BRA, it was infamous for bulldozing neighborhoods including the West End and South End in the name of “urban renewal.”
Those blockbusting days are well in the past, but it’s continued to take flak over the years from multiple sides, with residents saying it’s an unresponsive rubber stamp for developers, and the builders saying its processes are arcane and overly drawn out. The BRA rebranded as a kinder, gentler BPDA under former Mayor Marty Walsh and made strides in modernizing its processes, but criticism continues.
Wu ran against it, and indeed this proposal, filed with the council a month ago, notes that it “formally abolishes” the two wings of the BPDA and creates a new agency that’s called, in a twist, the BPDA. Wu has said that the process will likely take years, and it appears that, no matter what, a quasi-independent agency will need to remain to undertake certain propertydisposition operations.
This specific abolish-andreform proposal isn’t up for a vote this week. The council will be back at it with a working session about it on Friday, said Government Operations Chair Ricardo Arroyo, who’s running the hearings on this topic.
If approved, it would need state signoff.