Weekly Transcript Round-Up for 1/24/25: Madison Park renovation needs State $$$; BPS gets enrollment & school closure #'s; Zoning Reform in spotlight
PLUS: BPI is testifying about Boston's assessment #'s on Monday
The MLK holiday on Monday meant that there was no regular meeting of the Boston City Council, but there were a series of important Council hearings, a major School Committee meeting, and a detailed response on an important planning initiative from one of Boston’s leading YIMBYs:
Councilor-At-Large Julia Mejia held 4 hearings before her Transparency Committee this week on Squares & Streets, Mayor Wu’s recently passed Housing Accelerator Fund, the status of Madison Park High School’s renovation, the status of White Stadium’s renovation, and Boston’s hiring practices. The hearings produced major news, including that the estimated cost to build White Stadium had risen from again, and the announcement that City Hall would seek state aid to renovate Madison Park High School, a major policy reversal.
The Boston School Committee held their first meeting since Mayor Michelle Wu & Superintendent Mary Skipper announced earlier this month that a number of Boston schools were closing or merging, and SC members & the public got enrollment projections & concrete school closures numbers, though many important questions remain unanswered.
This week housing activists were busy at Council hearings and on-line talking about Squares & Streets, an effort to rezone neighborhood centers launched by former Boston Planning Chief Arthur Jemison, after a draft plan for Roslindale Square was released, the first such document produced by the effort. Nate Stell, a Roslindale resident and one of Boston’s most public YIMBY activists, wrote separate ‘what I like’ and ‘what I dislike’ columns on his Substack this week, and S&S critics testified about the effort in a Council hearing on Tuesday.
Before getting into more detail on those three items, mark your schedule for Monday, January 27, at 2 PM: Boston Policy Institute will be testifying at a joint hearing of the Council’s Ways & Means Committee and Government Operations Committee about Boston’s assessment practices & other tax classification issues. BPI’s testimony will provide new analysis on how Boston is faring on “vertical inequity.” What is that? A national problem with property tax assessments: as the value of a single family home or condo rises, property tax assessments often do not rise proportionally, resulting in proportionally lower assessments on higher valued homes.
COUNCILOR MEJIA HOLDS 4 HEARINGS IN 3 DAYS; PROMPTS CITY HALL ANNOUNCEMENTS ON WHITE STADIUM COST, MADISON PARK PLANS
Throughout January Boston City Councilors have clashed with Council President Louijeune over which committee dockets on hot-button issues like White Stadium were assigned to. This week one of those City Councilors, Julia Mejia, held hearings on many of those issues anyway:
On Tuesday and Wednesday of this week Councilor Mejia held three hearing for a single docket, #0176, that focused on four different issues: Squares & Streets, Mayor Wu’s recently passed Housing Accelerator Fund, the status of Madison Park High School’s renovation, and the status of White Stadium’s renovation.
On Friday Councilor Mejia held an additional hearing on docket #0177 concerning City Hall’s hiring practices.
For more on Tuesday’s hearing about Squares & Streets, go to this issue’s last section.
The hearing that made the most news was on Wednesday. While the transcript and schedule separated out a 10 AM and a 2 PM hearing, for attendees there was a single 9 hour long hearing. The focus was White Stadium’s renovation and the status of renovating Madison Park High School, the City’s technical high school.
The major news that came out of the hearing was about White Stadium: Boston’s Chief of Operations Dion Irish revealed that the estimated cost for White Stadium rose again - he is Speaker 4 and starts at the 2:04:01 mark in the transcript:
Say roughly a $100M . . . For the current that's the current estimate. Now keep it in mind keep in mind that we still we have a public bidding process that we'd have to go through. But that's our current estimate is around a $100,000,000.
The hearing also revealed major news about Boston’s reversal of previous plans to renovate Madison Park High School. At Wednesday’s hearing Chief Irish revealed that the City was no longer planning on paying for the renovation of Madison Park on its own, and would instead seek state aid - he is Speaker 31 and starts at the 2:33:46 mark in the transcript:
We all know this should have been done a long time ago, and we all wanted it done yesterday. That is why when we initiated this project, our goal was not to go through the MSBA. We wanted to have a fast path, and we had other projects that we wanted to go through the MSBA pipeline. However, we're at a point in time where, given the rising cost across all of our projects and the budget that we're trying to manage and ensure that we're not short-cutting what we have heard and what we believe that Madison Park needs to be that state of the art institution, to be the model for the state. We feel as though, at this point, that we should pursue state funding.
The Mayor’s Deputy Chief of Policy Tali Robbins provided a timeline for when the decision was made to switch from self-funding the Madison Park renovation to seeking state aid - she is Speaker 32 and starts at the 2:42:18 mark of the transcript:
We have been talking about the MSBA strategy or plan with different stakeholder groups over the last 2 months or so and look forward to having a broader conversation on the topic next week at the community meeting, and then coming to the School Committee for approval or for consideration into the City Council for consideration as well before the April deadline [for MSBA submissions].
The “MSBA” is the Massachusetts School Building Authority which provides funding for “the design and construction of educationally-appropriate, flexible, sustainable, and cost-effective public school facilities.”
This is a major change in Boston Public Schools’ long-term facilities plan. Last February BPS included this update on Madison Park which predicted work beginning in summer 2025, and a few months later in May 2024 the Designer Selection Committee interviewed firms who had been shortlisted for Construction Management at Risk for the renovation project.
To understand how major of a change this is, look at the MSBA’s timeline for new school construction: in the MSBA’s 8 step process for building a new school, the May interview would happen during step 6.
With City Hall having advanced so far into the school building process before reversing course, there are now major unanswered questions:
How much of the planning done for Madison Park’s renovation can be used in the MSBA process?
How does adding Madison Park to Boston’s list of projects being submitted to the MSBA process affect other schools?
Mayor Wu’s own deputy policy chief said that Madison Park would be part of Boston’s April submission to MSBA’s Core Program, so those questions should be answered soon.
BPS HAS MOST CONSEQUENTIAL DAY UNDER WU ADMIN BUT MAJOR QUESTIONS REMAIN UNANSWERED
Wednesday was probably the most consequential day for Boston Public Schools during Mayor Michelle Wu’s administration. In one day three major plans were announced:
At Wednesday night’s School Committee meeting BPS leaders released student enrollment projections, the first time such data was released by BPS under the Wu administration.
At that same School Committee meeting BPS set a goal for the number of schools they expected to close, the first time a specific number was released by BPS under the Wu administration.
At a City Council meeting earlier on Wednesday senior City Hall aides revealed that the Wu administration had reversed course and rather than pay to renovate Madison Park High School on its own, would see state aid.
The first two items were the subject of a presentation by BPS Superintendent Mary Skipper and BPS Capital Planning Chief Delavern Stanislaus to the School Committee. The School Committee did not hear anything on Wednesday about City Hall’s new plan for Madison Park’s renovation to be submitted to the MSBA.
Skipper begins introducing the presentation at the 1:56:20 mark in the video, and starts the first slide at the 2:10:23 mark in the video. You can watch the video here:
While Wednesday’s meetings provided a lot of new information, there are still a lot of unanswered questions. The biggest one is how decisions will be made about which schools to close now that there is a goal for the number of schools BPS wants to have by 2030. While what was presented to the School Committee on Wednesday was titled “Long-Term Facilities Plan Recommendations,” it is not a comprehensive master facilities plan that provides clear guidance for those decisions. It is clear that the School Committee wants more answers as well: Chair Jeri Robinson told Superintendent Skipper “I want to push you” before talking about how the lack of concrete plans negatively affected BPS families.
The School Committee has some time to consider what was presented on Wednesday: Superintendent Skipper said that she does not plan on asking the School Committee to vote on these recommendations until March. By that time BPS will have presented their FY26 budget and held a number of budget hearings, so it is possible some of the outstanding questions will be answered.
For more on Wednesday’s meeting, listen to the Shah Foundation’s Last Night at School Committee podcast and read coverage from the Boston Globe.
COUNCIL, PUBLIC, YIMBY LEADER WEIGH IN ON SQUARES & STREET & FIRST DRAFT PLAN
Squares and Streets (S&S) - an effort to rezone Boston’s neighborhood centers - was first announced in Mayor Wu’s 2023 State of the City address, and for the last two years has worked its way through various City processes. On December 16, 2024, the first concrete proposal from S&S for a neighborhood center was released: the Roslindale Square Small Area Plan.
The announcement caught the attention of a wide-array of folks - interest group organizers, neighborhood activists, City Councilors, and City Hall planners - and everyone aired their views in a Council hearing on Tuesday and in two columns from a prominent local YIMBY also released this week.
That YIMBY is Nate Stell, a Roslindale resident and pro-housing activist who has been involved in the Roslindale Square S&S process as both a proponent and observer since it started. Nate writes at his own Substack ‘Plenty of Room,’ and last July a column he wrote there - ‘Squares + Streets - Rezone the residential streets, too!’ - was widely shared, including in the Upzone Update, a newsletter from the Boston Foundation’s in-house think tank Boston Indicators.
This week he wrote two columns analyzing the small area plan:
The two columns are both worth reading. Nate’s analysis of the small area plan itself, the context he provides on the larger S&S process, and his knowledge of the potential paths S&S could take going forward are all valuable.
Also this week was a Council hearing on S&S, held by Councilor At Large Julia Mejia before her Post Audit: Government Accountability, Transparency & Accessibility Committee. The hearing was nearly 4 hours long and featured extensive public testimony, most of it from critics of S&S. You can find it on BPI’s AI-generated transcript feed:
Here are two snippets of testimony from Tuesday that capture the most frequently heard criticisms of S&S:
Gene Radwin,1 who Councilor Mejia identified as from the Roslindale Coalition, is Speaker 8 and begins at the 33:32 mark in the transcript:
“I'm very struck by the fact that there's been a lot of talk about community engagement and the disagreements about how well that the engagement is gone. But I'm struck by that the engagement process has not been a community building process, and as such differences between the very diverse community that constitutes Roslindale are being exacerbated. That concerns that people have are not being addressed. They're being voiced. They're being given a voice to, but they're not being given an opportunity to have concerns validated, respected, and so you've got a community engagement process that's undermining community building, and it's fostering community disengagement.” *emphasis added
Tarshia Green-Williams, who identified herself as an employee of Action for Equity and a member of Dorchester Not For Sale, is Speaker 4 and begins at the 18:03 mark in the transcript:
“I stand before you today to express my deep concern regarding the current squares and street zoning initiative. Specifically, I wanna highlight the urgent need for more family units and robust anti displacement measures in our community before any new zoning changes are implemented. We are in a crucial moment for our neighborhoods, especially areas like Fields Corner, Codman Square, and, uh, Four Corners. The ongoing housing crisis has made it clear that we must prioritize the needs of families, those who require adequate space and affordable housing to thrive. By increasing the availability of family size units, we can better support our community members and create more inclusive environments for all. However, this cannot happen without implementation of strong anti displacement measures.” *emphasis added
The debate over S&S, Boston’s wider need for planning and zoning reform, and Massachusetts’ housing supply crisis is far from over.
Boston Policy Institute, Inc is working to improve the public conversation - help us by following BPI on YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, Threads, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
This newsletter originally listed the testimony as coming from Laurie Radwin - this was incorrect and has been corrected.
Good morning. I believe that the comment you ascribe to me, Laurie Radwin, was my husband, Gene. While I have your eye on the page, the excitement over YIMBYism and the Roslindale Plan denies one fact: the spirit of the equity is not being upheld. That is, there has been insufficent and unproportional representation of communities of color in Roslindale in the Squares and Streets endeavor. Meeting people where they are at has simplied not worked. The most recent demographics tell us that community participation in Roslindale Squares and Streets planning activities has been around 6% Latino/a (although Roslindale is 27% Latino/a), 4% African-American/Black ( Roslindale is 20 % AA/Black) and 82% white (Roslindale is around 50% white). Clearly the laudable pop-ups and other non-traditional events were not as successful as hoped. As a recipient of HUD $$$, Boston has an obligation to correct this before putting any plan before the BPDA Board. In a similar fashion, the residents most affected by the extension of the original 1/3 mi radius plan area pulls in rezoning for low-income residents who are in protected classes. For example, residents living in the newly included area of Washington Street between Bexley and Archdale are 48% Latino/a, 28% Black, 17.5% multiracial, and 2.5% Asian. Only 20% are white. The average income is $47,324 +/-$18,535. There was no discernable outreach to this group. As we all heard at the hearing, there is a real threat of displacement of residents and small businesses and the COB has to prepare protections before implementing this rezoning. Building more units is important - and affordable units are very important. However, our current residents will need a place to live while these units are being built. Let's get it right and do a bit more planning, please.