Three years in the past, then-City Councilor Michelle Wu put out a manifesto arguing for the abolition of the Boston Planning & Development Agency.
After profitable the mayorship, apparently shedding management of her outdated AbolishtheBPDA.com area title to a overseas blogger and just lately naming her personal metropolis planning chief, Wu says the purpose remains to be to junk the controversial company.
“This will be a years-long process,” Wu advised reporters on Friday, answering with a fast affirmative “yeah” when requested if she does nonetheless plan to “abolish the BPDA,” as she’s beforehand advocated for. “This will be a complex organizational project that’s happening alongside day-to-day changes,” she stated.
Earlier this week, Wu named James Arthur Jemison, a Boston-native veteran of native, state and federal planning work, as her new chief of planning, a resuscitated place that didn’t exist below former Mayor Marty Walsh. Wu has stated she’s going to hunt to have Jemison put on a second hat as BPDA director, too, pending approval by the quasi-city company’s board as present longtime Director Brian Golden heads for the door.
With that change and different simultaneous shuffling atop the BPDA, the town will “dramatically rethink how business is done,” Wu advised reporters. She stated the management of the company, which operates semi-independently from the town — although Walsh made Golden a cupboard member, too — will probably be charged with holding the initiatives presently within the pipeline shifting whereas additionally making “organizational transformation” occur.
The BPDA introduced Golden’s upcoming departure final week after which Jemison’s appointment earlier this week. Wu had been imprecise on whether or not or not it was nonetheless her intention to abolish the group — which might require council and state approval — and presumably substitute it with one thing else.
Back within the halcyon pre-pandemic period of fall 2019, Wu, already producing buzz a few probably mayoral run two years later, put out a 54-page report calling to “Abolish the BPDA,” a slogan that her workplace mocked up on posters.
The doc, referred to as “Fixing Boston’s Broken Development Process: Why & How to Abolish the BPDA,” additionally lived on-line at AbolishtheBPDA.com — however you’re not going to have the ability to discover it there anymore, because it seems Team Wu didn’t preserve management of the area. Now it’s Arabic-language weblog posts about present occasions and journey within the Middle East, in accordance with the Google Translated model of the positioning.
The BPDA has been a Boston bogeyman for many years, ever since its neighborhood-raising days of the ’50s and ’60s, when it was often known as the Boston Redevelopment Authority, or BRA. Every election cycle, it appears, some mayoral candidate or one other is vowing to cast off the company, going again to former mayors Kevin White and Ray Flynn. Walsh himself ran in opposition to the BRA, after which he and Golden oversaw the rebranding away from that older title of unwell reputation.
Under Golden, the company modernized considerably, however critics nonetheless say it’s too opaque and never responsive sufficient.
Source: www.bostonherald.com”