September 14 - 21, 2000
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House music
What happened to Menino's housing agenda? Plus, councilors dig in their heels over ballpark funding, and campaign-finance reports reflect a slow season for city pols.
by Ben Geman
Almost two years ago, as Boston housing prices soared, Mayor Tom Menino launched an ambitious effort to devote city resources to the crisis at a time of reduced federal and state commitments. Since then, rents have continued to rise. Between the first quarters of 1998 and 2000, the median advertised rent for two-bedroom apartments in Boston went up by five percent; it is now $1575. Meanwhile, Menino has followed through on few of his promises.
The mayor pledged millions in new funding for housing from the sale of the former police headquarters on Berkeley Street. Despite a real-estate market hotter than any we've seen in recent years, the building has yet to be sold. The mayor also pledged to spend $13 million from a city surplus fund on housing -- but he has yet to ask the Boston City Council to release monies from the fund. And although he pushed a measure through the council that would increase fees paid by commercial developers into the city's affordable-housing fund (a program called "linkage"), the measure is languishing on Beacon Hill with little to no lobbying from the mayor. (To be fair, Menino did issue an executive order requiring developers of market-rate housing to include affordable units in their projects or build elsewhere.)
In short, key elements of the ambitious housing plan that Menino began outlining two years ago remain unfulfilled. Although there's still enthusiasm in affordable-housing circles for the mayor's agenda, observers say the administration has been slow to drum up the necessary resources.
The failure to raise linkage fees is a disappointment. Defenders of the mayor point out that the measure to change the formula from $5 per square foot to $7.18 per square foot is stuck on Beacon Hill -- and Menino can't control that. But take a look at why state senators like Marian Walsh, Dianne Wilkerson, and Robert Travaglini held up the measure: they want language written into the law that would clarify Boston's ambiguous, ad hoc guidelines for developers' payment of community benefits to neighborhoods. In other words, they want to prevent the mayor from ever again signing off on a deal like the gift he gave to South Boston when he agreed to funnel 51 percent of the linkage dollars generated by development of the waterfront directly to Southie. And, perhaps more important, when he agreed -- in the same deal -- to let the South Boston Betterment Trust negotiate directly with developers for affordable-housing funds and other perks. All told, South Boston stands to gain about $65 million from the deal -- money that could have been spread around the city more evenly.
Menino and some state legislators have resisted the state senators' proposed language changes. In the end the senators simply called for a commission to study the community-benefits issue -- a compromise that Menino still found untenable. In the meantime, however, the mayor has been unable -- or unwilling -- to convince the senators that the issue of negotiating community benefits is under control. The result? The measure is in limbo. In the meantime, the city continues to sign off on deals with developers at the old linkage rate -- which has been in place for more than a decade. The Massachusetts Affordable Housing Alliance points out that some of the deals signed in recent weeks would have brought in $3 million in additional revenues had they been negotiated at the higher linkage-fee rate.
Menino officials believe they can break the impasse once the mayor signs a forthcoming executive order tightening up the ill-defined community-benefits process. But what about the rest of his housing agenda? Administration officials say they plan to ask the city council to release money from the surplus fund after the Department of Neighborhood Development (DND) completes a housing-strategy report that will give city councilors a blueprint for how the money will be spent. As for the sale of the Berkeley Street police headquarters, they note that a deal collapsed last month over permitting and other issues, according to Tom Philbin, a spokesman for the DND. The city, meanwhile, is in talks with another buyer -- who is offering a lower price.
Philbin insists that the city is continuing to fund affordable-housing proposals -- despite the failure to release city surplus funds or raise money through the sale of the Berkeley Street building. He notes that the agency has been able to give affordable-housing developers approval to pursue projects because resources promised by the mayor are forthcoming. But Marc Draisen of the Massachusetts Association of Community Development Corporations -- who praises the mayor's initiative on housing -- notes that the delays in dedicating additional money to affordable-housing projects may be discouraging some nonprofit developers from applying for funding in the first place. Others are simply delaying their deals, which drives costs up.
Although the mayor still wins kudos from housing advocates for his efforts to tackle the issue, the question of whether he can deliver on his promises continues to dog him. It has become fashionable for some city councilors and activists to assert that money should be spent on affordable housing before it's spent on a new park for the Red Sox. (Menino has pledged $212 million to the Sox' new park -- which, it should be noted, will displace the offices of the Boston Phoenix if it's built.) Many observers also say city officials should have prepared a strategic vision already -- after all, it's been two years since Menino identified housing as a signature issue. "The city has done more than most others, and the commitments are there," says Kathy Brown, coordinator of the Boston Tenant Coalition. "But we are concerned . . . that it has not moved faster."
She also notes pointedly: "There is not a baseball crisis. There is a housing crisis."
Speaking of the Red Sox, the deal the mayor spent his summer on continues to face big problems inside and outside City Hall. Menino aides insist they'll be able to garner the necessary nine votes from the city council to approve $140 million in bonds for land acquisition and site preparation, but seven councilors (out of 13) continue to state their opposition to the deal.
Inside City Hall, the administration says seven opposed now doesn't mean seven opposed forever. "We really have not counted anyone in or out," says Pat Harrington, Menino's point person for working with city councilors on the plan. He adds that he hopes councilors will "keep an open mind" and wait to see official transportation and development plans.
"I don't think that anyone is really worried; they are just doing what they need to do to work toward the goal," adds another Menino aide, requesting anonymity. "Where the council will be when this finally gets put on their plate, I don't think anyone knows for sure right now."
One guess is that the council will be right where it is now -- if some of the tactics being employed by Menino aides backfire. Councilor Maura Hennigan, who represents Jamaica Plain and West Roxbury, claims that her street, scheduled for re-paving, has been dropped from the list in a bit of political hardball stemming from Menino's anger with her anti-ballpark stance. And then someone passed on a juicy -- and embarrassing -- tip about Fenway councilor Mike Ross that was printed in Sunday's Herald. The item in question claimed that Ross, who has been nothing if not vocal about his opposition to the Sox' plan, may be open to a deal, given the infrastructure money it would bring to his district. "It's wishful thinking. It's a pipe dream," Ross says of the report, which prompted him to fire off a quick letter to the Herald and to Fenway neighborhood groups reiterating his "unequivocal opposition" to the plan.
What's more, Ross says councilors will merely dig in their heels at suggestions from Menino's aides that their opposition to the deal is weak. That kind of talk will increase their "level of intractability," he says. Hennigan, too, says she thinks the whispers about Ross will backfire. "They did him the biggest favor in the world putting that blurb in, because he comes back all the stronger," she said at a forum held Monday by the Fenway Action Coalition (FAC), which opposes a new park for the Sox.
Both Hennigan and Roxbury councilor Chuck Turner, who also opposes the deal, told the FAC forum that they thought they could actually get more councilors to oppose the deal as time passes. "I believe before the dust clears there will be a couple more" councilors opposing the plan, Turner said.
Still, no one should underestimate the council's reputation for rolling over when push comes to shove. Former councilor John Nucci says the plan may be in trouble financially (take a look at Monday's Herald editorial calling for the Sox to show whether they actually have a plan for funding their $352 million portion of the deal, and Tuesday's piece by the Globe's Meg Vaillancourt detailing how dramatically the Sox have scaled back their plans in order to save money), but he's not convinced by the council's adversarial rhetoric. "If history has shown one thing, [it's that] there is always wiggle room," he says. "The two famous words politicians love to use are `conditions changed.' And that could still very well happen with the councilors in opposition today."
But what's been surprising about the opposing councilors' statements is their utter lack of ambiguity. None of the more vocal opponents -- such as Ross, Hennigan, Turner, and at-large councilors Francis "Mickey" Roache and Peggy Davis-Mullen -- appear to be leaving the door open at all. Which means they're much more committed than anyone gives them credit for -- or that they're going to have to do some serious backpedaling should they ever vote in favor of a Sox financing deal.
The past summer may have been a slow season for city pols, who run for office in odd-numbered years, but it shouldn't have been too slow for those planning long-shot bids for mayor of Boston in 2001. Recent campaign-finance filings by two of the city councilors most frequently mentioned as potential mayoral candidates show that they didn't exactly work to lay the financial groundwork in June, July, and August. Roache -- the person flirting most seriously with a long-shot run against Menino -- raised just $18,525. And Davis-Mullen, who has also considered a run against Menino, brought in a measly $495.
Roache (who has managed to top the at-large ticket in the last two races while being outspent by opponents) has raised money inconsistently this summer. Reports show that he raised no money at all in May or June, $17,725 in July, and just $800 in August. By August's end, Roache had only $14,750 in his account.
Davis-Mullen, meanwhile, has not been raising money either. Records show she brought in $2930 in May, but totaled just $485 in June and July combined and added nothing in August. By the beginning of September she had just $5669 in her campaign account.
And the mayor? He raised $92,776 over the summer and is sitting on a war chest of slightly over $1 million, according to the state Office of Campaign and Political Finance. As for the other at-large councilors, Steve Murphy raised $8625 in June, $925 in July, and nothing in a slow August. He had $12,490 in his account at the beginning of September. The fourth at-large councilor, Michael Flaherty, raised nothing in June, July, or August and has $12,783 on hand.
