Mayor Tom Menino has dodged several bullets. The economy is strong. The city council is weak. Now for the hard part. For Menino, it's...

Prime time

by Ben Geman

Say this for Mayor Tom Menino: he's a big guy and not always graceful, but he's surprisingly agile. Consider the political disasters he evaded during the first half of this year, when City Hall was peppered with bad news. The Boston Housing Authority (BHA) was taken to task by federal housing officials for allowing racial violence and intimidation to scar Charlestown and South Boston housing projects in the early-to-mid 1990s. The police department threatened to erupt in scandal when a black lieutenant was the victim of a racial prank involving a noose. Menino feuded behind the scenes with South Boston leaders over the new Seaport District. City Hall was running on empty before Menino, finally, filled several key vacancies. Throw in the Boston Herald's taking the mayor to task for driving around in a new gas-guzzling Ford Explorer, and Menino was "off message" at best.

Fenway follies As the Boston Red Sox look to build a new stadium, the members of Mayor Menino's administration say that they are committed to giving the Fenway neighborhood a voice in its own destiny. But do they really want to play ball? If last week's meeting between the Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA) and skeptical Fenway residents was any indication, it's not entirely clear. The meeting was supposed to help the BRA solicit community input on new development, but planners allowed it to degenerate into a virtual food fight among rival activist groups. The Red Sox unveiled plans for a new 45,000-seat stadium about two weeks ago, and Menino has voiced his support for these plans. Even leaving the Sox' intentions aside, the Fenway is always being eyed hungrily by developers. Such hot property needs a careful watch kept on it, and to that end, the BRA plans to create an Interim Planning Overlay District (IPOD). It's not a particularly catchy acronym. But it is significant in that the BRA is setting up a neighborhood task force designed to give residents more control over what's built in their midst. BRA officials say the task force will add another layer of community review to neighborhood development and work with city officials to create new zoning codes for the Fenway. On Wednesday, the BRA came to the Fenway to continue setting up the task force and to move forward with the IPOD process. It appeared that the city was already putting its proclaimed good intentions into action. "We are a group of people who care very much about listening," pledged Menino's development director, Tom O'Brien, to a mix of residents, activists, and business owners at the Boston Arts Academy. "There are controls for this community that can be brought to bear on this process." Sounds good, right? On paper, at least, it seemed that the city and its administration were trying to give residents a voice. But in practice, it looked more like gasoline being thrown onto a fire. The mix of chaos and bile that was Wednesday's meeting indicates either that the city has no idea how to go about achieving the solid community process it wants, or that it's content merely to let the neighborhood's competing interest groups eat each other up. "If it is a multiple-choice question, then it goes like this: the BRA is incompetent, or the BRA is deceitful," said State Representative Byron Rushing (D-Boston), whose district includes the Fenway. "I hope it is the former and not the latter, because you can fix that." Lacking almost entirely in rules and order, Wednesday's meeting became a battleground for adversarial resident groups unable to agree on which organizations should be included in the task force. Granted, democracy can be messy. But the BRA allowed the meeting to deteriorate into a free-for-all between activist groups including the Fenway Action Coalition, the Fenway Civic Association, and the Fenway Community Development Corporation. When it was proposed that a tenants' union from a Fenway building be included on the task force, for example, one member of the comparatively conservative Civic Association grumbled, "They are all subsets of the Community Development Corporation." BRA staffers offered little help -- having arrived without easels, they were unable even to record what had been decided. "This is unbelievable," groaned Rushing. "City planners without paper?" It's true that the paperless planners faced a tough, vocal crowd of residents, many of whom argued that a new Red Sox stadium will choke the already-congested neighborhood with even more traffic. The BRA meeting also began immediately after an incendiary press conference/protest held by the militantly anti-development Fenway Action Coalition. The FAC's Peter Catalano serves as propaganda minister for a band of hard-core activists who take legitimate neighborhood concerns and blow them far out of proportion. Here's the latest gem from this faction: if the Sox build the stadium, it will create a "35-mile-long line of cars" on game days. Where did they come up with that figure? Well, if 37,000 people drive to each game, and three people go in each car, that's 12,000 cars. If you line 'em all up, that's 35 miles of bumper-to-bumper traffic. Got it? Dubious logic aside, the neighborhood's residents plainly have valid quarrels with the plans and the amount of public money the team reportedly will seek to fund them. Some say the traffic will be too much. Others say there are better things to do with the public purse. "Two hundred million dollars could cut all class sizes in half for 10 years," said former city councilor David Scondras Wednesday night. "Which would you rather have?" "People want to know," added another man at the raucous meeting, "is the destiny of their community in their control or out of their control?" As the summer begins and the Red Sox drum up support for their plans, it remains to be seen whether residents will have a chance to answer that question.

It's a testament to his administration's skill, good intentions, and just plain luck, then, that the Menino ship appears so sound. Last month the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) issued a second report on the housing authority, this one looking at its progress on racial issues; although it still found many problems, it struck a far more conciliatory note.

On the police front, meanwhile, crisis has at least receded, although questions remain: influential black minister Eugene Rivers of the 10 Point Coalition recently called for an independent review of the department.

If Menino is off the hook in one respect, though, he's on the spot in another. For the time being, Menino is scandal-free. Soon, he will have a nearly full staff. All-star former state representative Charlotte Golar Richie is getting up to speed as his head housing official. Turnpike-authority veteran James Rooney will come on in July as chief-of-staff, a position that Menino had allowed to remain vacant since David Passafaro left last October. All this gives the mayor, for the first time in months, a clean slate to display progress on the ambitious housing and schools agenda he laid out earlier this year.

Right now, Menino's in good shape. The most powerful figure on the city council, South Boston councilor James Kelly, is his good friend. The mayor has a clean shot -- with a strong economy, and with two years before he's up for re-election, he can look forward instead of glancing over his shoulder. "Now you have the question: can Menino come back and start returning to his own agenda rather than responding to others?" says Back Bay city councilor Tom Keane. "It's a good question."

Housing

"How many of you remember the debate on rent control five years ago? The real-estate lobby told us: if you end rent control, we will build new apartments immediately. We're still waiting for those new apartments," said Menino in this year's State of the City address at the Emerson Majestic Theatre. "But I'm not going to wait any longer. I'm moving forward."

That was back in January. And to prove he was serious, Menino announced he was installing then-Dorchester state representative Charlotte Golar Richie in the newly created position of city housing secretary. For Menino, bringing Golar Richie to City Hall was something of a coup.

With Richie on board, the city's goal is to provide for the creation of 2000 new housing units by the new millennium. Toward that end, Menino has pledged to up the city's efforts to work with nonprofit developers -- probably a good strategy. In many ways, though, staving off housing crises resembles the arcade game where you bang the head of a monster that pops out of a hole, only to see another surface moments later. For each unit the city brings on line, or works with developers to preserve, others are probably at risk. Announcements of market-rate conversions by owners of privately held but HUD-subsidized housing are beginning to trickle in, like word last winter that 223 units of elderly housing in Dorchester may fall victim to the market in coming years. (City officials say they hope to coerce the owner into preserving some affordability at the site.)

Although the city so far has been able to work with nonprofit developers to preserve some of the units, housing advocates say that more and more owners may start trying to cash in on the hot market. "Bringing in Golar Richie is a positive because she is talented and was effective as a legislator," says Dorchester resident and long-time community activist Lou Finfer. "But people are most interested in [whether] there is going to be any relief right now. The picture for most people is that unless you own a house now or live in public housing, you might as well pack your bags, because in a year or two or three you will be gone."

It's an issue over which the city has only limited control. Certainly cities and towns in Massachusetts are not getting help from state and federal government. The Weld-Cellucci years in particular have been disastrous for housing advocates -- Finfer points out that $100 million in housing- and community-development money has been cut from the state budget over the past decade.

Given Menino's ambitious housing agenda, some wonder whether the mayor is playing his cards as well as he could. Case in point: right now, city housing officials are seeking millions in HUD cash to renovate the South End's Cathedral housing development. But there's a catch: HUD's HOPE VI program requires cities to lessen density as they rebuild development and to create more mixed-income communities by making some of the new units market rate (see "False HOPE?", News and Features, May 28). Renovating run-down developments and creating mixed-income communities are worthy goals. But, in this market, where the hell are the displaced residents going to go? Mel King, in the Bay State Banner, blasted the plan as "economic cleansing."

Although Menino has come through, according to the Department of Neighborhood Development -- he's more than halfway to his goal of 2000 new housing starts and has worked to preserve some at-risk housing -- one of the city's most diligent observers says he's not sure Menino's approach is anything more than piecemeal. "There's a need to finalize a comprehensive housing policy, to identify how funds are going to be used -- what are the needs, where are the needs," says Sam Tyler, director of the Boston Municipal Research Bureau, a business-funded city watchdog group. "There are pieces of information along these lines, but there is not a comprehensive housing policy, and that is a very important first step."

Schools

On schools, too, Menino has made some gains. Earlier this year he began planning for several new institutions. The first two are slated for Roxbury, which makes sense for the city -- Menino has indicated that he's willing to entertain the notion of "neighborhood schools" (which means diminished busing), so putting new schools in areas where they are needed most is key.

But long before their foundation is laid, Menino could face scrutiny on the performance of students attending schools that exist now. Students recently took the second round of the MCAS standardized tests, and while the exams' utility for measuring skills is suspect, they are viewed as a public and quantifiable gauge of school quality.

"Politically, he's been a very popular mayor because people respect the fact that he works hard and pays attention to a lot of the aspects of city government that people are concerned about, from education to clean streets to crime and community policing," says Finfer. " I think the two challenges he has taken on that are not easy to deliver on but are crucial to the city are schools and housing. He has said, `Judge me on how the schools are doing,' and there is a long way to go."

Mass transit

Menino may see schools and housing as his bread and butter, but activists and residents will press him elsewhere as well. Residents of the South End, for example, have long nursed a complaint: since the old elevated Orange Line came down in the late 1980s, the rumbling, diesel-fueled Number 49 bus has continued to be Washington Street's mode of public transportation, and a slow and dirty one at that.

Late last month, the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority quietly filed updated plans with state environmental officials on the proposed new Silver Line that's been promised for years. How long the MBTA will take to fulfill that promise is unclear. The agency says it hopes to have the regular buses replaced by late 2000 or early 2001 with longer, more train-like vehicles powered by alternative fuel, providing transportation between Roxbury and downtown that's faster and less toxic.

One MBTA gadfly wants Menino to turn up the heat. "Washington Street replacement is simply part of a set of commitments, and the real question is what role the city takes in pushing the state to live up to these commitments," says Seth Kaplan, staff attorney with the Conservation Law Foundation, which is pushing the MBTA to make good on mass-transit pledges offered when the Big Dig was on the drawing boards, including the Silver Line and improvements to the Blue Line. It's time Menino leaned on Governor Paul Cellucci to make the MBTA friendlier to the city that houses the bulk of its ridership. After all, under Weld and Cellucci, it became easier to get into downtown Boston from the North Shore than from Roxbury.

"We are hopeful the city will take a very aggressive role," Kaplan says.

Inside baseball

Inside City Hall, say some critics, the optimism that Menino articulates about new development, housing, and schools is at odds with flat morale. Some of that is probably attributable to the mayor's inability, for so many months, to replace the departed David Passafaro. To the extent that that's true, things will change: some officials say that when James Rooney arrives, City Hall will get a shot in the arm. "Having Charlotte [Golar Richie] on board and Jim in the Mayor's Office gives people a chance to refine their priorities and have a strategic vision, allow things to work in greater synthesis," says Kathy Kottaridis, director of the city's office of business development.

Never heard of her, right? Well, her relative anonymity speaks to what some say is part of the problem at City Hall. Menino may have moved to fill vacancies in departments ranging from arts to building inspection, but it's what he does -- or does not do -- when the new people arrive that makes City Hall less than it could be. Menino, says one former city department head, does not let his department heads shine and develop their own identity. "He needs to let them do that," says the former official. "It's not just about bringing in talent, but letting them do their job and get some profile."

The mayor speaks

Menino's in a good mood. He's posing for a photo alongside Jack Bardy and Derek Harrison, the co-owner and chef of the Pho République restaurant on Washington Street in the South End. "Bet you never did a story to this music before," he says as someone bangs the gong the three are standing in front of.

Menino's on hand to help celebrate the $70,000 loan that helped get the restaurant up and running. The money, which came from the city's small-business-development office, is part of the effort to revitalize a commercially challenged stretch of Washington Street that was once among the city's pre-eminent stretches of commerce. (The storefront that Pho République occupies has seen several restaurants come and go in recent years.)

Seated at one of the restaurant's tables, Menino says that inside City Hall, the HUD issues and other flare-ups never caused his office to lose focus. "They may have jammed up the news, but they did not jam up the administration," he insists, arguing that even as the police-department problems and other high-profile issues "sell newspapers," the work of City Hall continues unimpaired. One top aide concedes that Menino's busy public schedule in recent weeks -- a ribbon-cutting here, an appearance in classrooms there -- may have given the appearance of an unfocused administration, but argues that enthusiasm shouldn't be confused with disorganization. "We are doing a number of things out in the neighborhoods, and sometimes the sheer volume obscures the larger message of what is actually getting done," says the adviser. "The mayor likes to be out there and sometimes does so fully knowing that if we do three or four events in a day, we may step on our own news. But he would rather be out in the neighborhoods, talking to neighborhood people."

Indeed, Menino is quick to call his critics malcontents or merely wrong. "Theory does not work," says Menino of Sam Tyler's view that the mayor's housing plans are not methodical enough. Critics "should be fighting alongside us for more resources," he says. And Menino is loath to admit to any kind of stasis at City Hall. "Just because I am out doing public events does not mean my administration is on the sidelines watching me," he insists.

Others, of course, are watching. "The longer he's in office," says South End state representative Byron Rushing, "the more people will hold his feet to the fire. People always hold your feet to the fire when they agree with your vision and don't see it happening."

Ben Geman can be reached at bgeman[a]phx.com.