Weekly Transcript Round-Up for 8/15/25
After delaying $20M payment for White Stadium, team owner & her developer husband get ZBA approval for "Southie Spirit Factory" PLUS: Surveillance, School Committee, and Sidewalks
This week the heat did not prevent major policy action in Boston, with four important stories about surveillance, School Committee, sidewalks, and White Stadium:
The future of surveillance in Boston was the subject of a major mayoral announcement about a controversial federal grant that requires City Hall to collaborate with ICE, and two Council hearings about Boston Police Department use of surveillance, one on Monday about the Boston Police Department’s annual surveillance report that sparked concerns from civil rights groups, and another on Wednesday about “proposed new technologies and their associated surveillance use policies” that was held in anticipation of a vote on that issue at the Council’s next regular meeting on August 27;
The future of the Boston School Committee, with the School Committee Nominating Panel whittling the 18 person pool who submitted applications by the Friday, August 8 deadline down to 7 applicants at their Monday meeting, then interviewing those folks on Wednesday and Thursday, and then also on Thursday, voting to send 5 of those folks to Mayor Wu for her to choose a new School Committee member from, a decision likely to come before the end of August & attract the attention from the Globe’s editorial board;
The Dorchester Reporter & Council both found a lot broken with Boston’s sidewalks, after the local paper publishing a long piece by Seth Daniels on Tuesday detailing struggles with the City’s little-known sidewalk bond program and on Wednesday a long-awaited Council hearing on sidewalks that revealed that developers aren’t the only ones having trouble building acceptable sidewalks - the City’s own ADA ramp program saw hundreds rejected, with Streets Cabinet Chief Jascha Franklin-Hodge telling the Council “we actually constructed more than 2,000 ramps last year,” - 31:55 mark - but only 1,321 passed inspection, which he blamed “narrow sidewalks and hills” - 11:23 mark;
Is this where the $20M White Stadium payment went? After it was reported last week that the Boston Legacy FC got a 6-week extension on a $20M payment to the City for White Stadium originally scheduled for August 1, coverage of the approval of a different real estate development project put forward by the same power-couple behind the team & White Stadium renovation missed the connection: both Universal Hub and Axios Boston reported the approval of the “Southie Spirits Factory” by the Boston Zoning Board of Appeals on Tuesday - their ZBA presentation starts at 55:22 & is approved at the 1:06:31 mark in the transcript - but left out that the restaurant group behind the project is co-owned by Boston Legacy FC’s owner Jennifer Epstein, and Able Company, which is in charge of the build-out of the project approved this week, is the team’s “lead development partner” and is owned by Epstein’s husband Bill Keravuori.
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