Preparing for Thursday: Boston City Council's first BPDA reform hearing of 2024
With ordinance City Council joins BPDA Board & State Legislature being asked to take high-profile action to move reforms
This Thursday, the most important hearing so far of the 2024-25 City Council term is taking place. There are two subjects of Thursday’s hearing: an ordinance which creates a new planning department in the City and Mayor Michelle Wu’s corresponding package of reforms aimed at making changes to the Boston Planning & Development Agency (BPDA). The Wu administration made the link between this ordinance and the package of reforms clear in a three page letter that accompanied the ordinance. As the letter lays out, the proposed changes are the largest and most sweeping changes to Boston’s real estate development process in decades. The letter also makes clear that the changes are not as ambitious or wide-reaching as what then-Councilor Wu called for in her 2019 white paper ‘Abolish the BPDA’. With this ordinance now in front of the City Council, the Wu administration now needs three independent bodies - the City Council, the BPDA Board, and the State Legislature - to each take high profile action on this bureaucratically and legally complicated set of reforms. The hearing is set for 10 am in the Iannella Chamber.
READ MORE OF BPI’S WORK MONITORING BOSTON’S PACKAGE OF BPDA REFORMS:
The dilemma facing the Wu administration is that, based on recent reactions, the required actions from those three independent bodies may not be forthcoming. Both the state legislature and BPDA have blocked or refused to take action on Mayor Wu’s proposals in the recent past. Based on the hearing about the BPDA home rule petition held earlier this year on Beacon Hill, the City Council is likely to be subject to significant lobbying by a variety of groups, including residents opposed to specific BPDA projects and initiatives. To prepare for Thursday’s hearing, here is where the BPDA reform package laid out in Mayor Wu’s letter stands with each body, what the Wu administration needs each body to do to turn the proposed reforms into law, and at the end of this post, what the next steps are for each body.
THE CITY COUNCIL
Thursday’s hearing will be the first time this year that the City Council will formally hear from the public about the Wu administration’s package of BPDA reforms. For 5 of the 13 Councilors, it will be the first time they will hear from the public on this issue period - that’s because they were not yet on the Council in 2023 when the home rule petition was passed.
Even for those on the Council who voted on the 2023 home rule petition, the environment appears to have changed, with significant recent action on planning and the BPDA:
Contrarian Boston covered opposition to a rezoning initiative in January
Boston Globe also covered the brewing fight over the rezoning initiative in a detailed article published during February break
Dorchester Reporter published a letter-to-the-editor earlier in February that makes clear there are forces arraying on both for & against the changes, along with recent lawsuits filed against a BPDA project
While these are neighborhood activists focused on the city-wide rezoning initiative (#4 on page 2 in the letter), there is another constituency interested in a different part of the ordinance: BPDA staff. The BPDA has a residency requirement, meaning all 200+ staff who work at the agency must live in the City, making each one the constituent of the four At-Large Councilor and their own district Councilor, plus state and federal elected officials. These employees were brought up repeatedly in both prior hearings on the BPDA reform package: the 2023 City Council hearing on the home rule petition and the Beacon Hill hearing on the same. This concern can be seen in the Mayor’s letter, where #3 on page 3 explicitly lays out how the reforms address BPDA employee retirement benefits.
Also on the Council’s mind will be the budget, which depends on the fees and property taxes generated in large part by the development process that the BPDA manages. While the economy continues to do well, Boston is beset by a rising cost of living from high housing prices and worsening transit, declining public school enrollment, and the prospect of declining commercial property tax revenue as office values fall.
THE BPDA BOARD
Last year the BPDA board rejected an earlier version of the Wu administration’s BPDA reform package laid out in the letter that accompanied the planning board ordinance. That proposal was laid out in an executive order titled “An Executive Order Relative to Resiliency, Affordability and Equity in Planning and Development in the City of Boston.” Covering the meeting where the proposal was tabled, the Boston Business Journal reported that long-time board member Ted Landsmark criticized the Mayor’s proposal. Here is his whole response:
Watch the presentation from the Wu administration and response from the Board, it starts at the 03:42:30 mark.
This resistance is noteworthy because the BPDA Board has a major role in the planning department ordinance (#2 on page 2 of the letter). The ordinance sketches out a complicated payment process that would effectively see the City billing the BPDA for the work of their former staff, now working for the City of Boston. There is no indication if the BPDA Board has agreed to such an arrangement, or what the legal specifics would be. Also unaddressed is how billing for those payments would work, especially for staff who do not have a direct planning function like those with administrative and property management positions.
THE STATE LEGISLATURE
The State Legislature has traditionally been resistant to Boston’s home rule petitions, routinely rejecting or not taking action on home rule petitions submitted under previous Mayors and continuing the practice during the Wu administration. This is a major issue for the package of BPDA reforms because ahome rule petition passed last year by the City Council is essential to the planning department ordinance. As Mayor Wu’s letter lays out (#3 on page 3 of theletter), without the passage of the home rule petition, current BPDA employees who are being moved over to City of Boston will not be able to buy into the City’s pension system. At the Beacon Hill hearing earlier this year, here is what South Boston State Senator Nick Collins said:
Since the hearing the home rule petition was extended to May 1, meaning that the committee has given itself until that date to advance or kill the bill.
With the bill’s fate up in the air, an important question is raised that will hopefully be answered at Thursday’s hearing: what happens if the home rule petition is not passed by July 1, 2024, the date the ordinance calls for BPDA employees to move over to the City of Boston?
NEXT STEPS
The Wu administration has set a deadline for its package of BPDA reforms: July 1, 2024. That is when all current BPDA employees are slated to be moved over to the City of Boston and the date after which the agency will no longer have any employees. That means for this package of reforms to work, all three bodies need to complete their actions by that date. With the planning department ordinance now before the City Council and the home rule petition before the state legislature, those two bodies now have the ability to amend, pass, or reject the legislation. The BPDA Board is slated to negotiate an agreement with the City to pay for the planning staff’s services, but that is contingent on the passage of the planning board ordinance, so at the moment the Board has no required next step. However, the BPDA Board’s cooperation is required if the proposed set of reforms is going to work, so it is likely that both the Council and state legislature will require some kind of guarantee that the Board is going to cooperate with the City before making their own final decisions.
IMPORTANT LINKS
Read the Planning Department Ordinance & 3 Page Letter from Mayor Michelle Wu
Read Mayor Wu’s 2019 ‘Abolish the BPDA’ report
Watch the February 16, 2023 BPDA Board meeting where Mayor Wu’s executive order was tabled - presentation of executive order starts 3:42:30 mark
Read the executive order that the BPDA Board tabled at February 16 meeting
Watch the City Council’s February 27, 2023 hearing on the BPDA home rule petition - the home rule petition is the only item on the agenda
Read the transcript & find a link to the video of the January 22, 2024 Beacon Hill hearing on the BPDA home rule petition - the home rule petition is the only item on the agenda
Check out the public notice with details about how to watch & submit testimony for Thursday’s City Council hearing - BPI will send out a transcript of Thursday’s hearing as part of our ‘Weekly Transcript Round-Up’ on March 2
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