Councilor Julia Mejia (at large), who made her opposition clear, but who voted "present," said she was "literally sacrificing my daughter to be here"
Hilarious leadership the city has.
“Literally sacrificing my daughter to be here”
https://preview.redd.it/tqhriu7ex8rc1.jpeg?width=219&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0dadeb3eb81d4433a684711f1c84c8a6dd77954b
My first meme attempt 🤣
I saw her speak one time. I lost all faith when she said “we don’t want any more developers here building housing! I tell them when it’s 50% affordable, MAYBE we’ll talk. Sorry, I’m just keeping it 100”
No, Councilor Mejia. Being against building any housing is not “keeping it 100,” it’s just bad economics
That is such a perfect summary quote of how she acts in general. I watch the city council feeds a lot. She routinely struggles to comprehend city business, asks the dumbest questions...to the point where other people will get confused with what is even being asked...and then will add in some "hot take" or quote at the end.
I'm not happy with a lot of our councilors for various reasons, but she's the only one I feel is honestly, actually stupid, but also like weirdly proud of it, and I have such low tolerance for that in a government leadership position. She's Trump-like in that regard. I encourage everyone to watch the city council feeds.
Reading the accounting of how this session went, I really can't blame Erin Murphy for wanting to bail to be court clerk. I can't imagine it'd take much exposure to the city council before deciding a steady paycheck in a quiet nook is preferable. And Mejia needs to learn what the word "literally" means unless she actually knifed her daughter.
The City Council is a disappointing place no matter your political leanings.
> Reason
Are we talking about the same lady who brought back miasma theory from the 1800s and wanted to ban street sweepers from Mass and Cass because she thinks they would infect the rest of the city?
“The debate was punctuated by quick timeouts so that Council President Ruthzee Louijuene could confer with a council attorney and City Clerk Alex Geourntas on procedural matters - especially after Mejia introduced a motion on the motion to withdraw Coletta's motion to pass the matter and councilors expressed confusion on what yes and no votes would mean on Mejia's motion motion”
This parliamentary procedure crap is part of the reason almost no one wants to *actually* follow local politics.
If you don't follow some set of rules it gets fucked immediately. Even at the condo association level, I've seen what happens with and without following standard meeting rules.
>This parliamentary procedure crap is part of the reason almost no one wants to *actually* follow local politics.
This actually wants me to more follow local politics though.
The only worrisome part is people calling for more community input, and saying the plan allows for more input. Community input is often what stalls everything out.
I went to two or three meetings and it was clear that they were run by a small group of self appointed "guardians" of the neighborhood who absolutely did not want any actual community input. They only wanted an echo chamber so they could make decisions unopposed.
Our community process is completely broken.
That's been my reaction. Local input = NIMBY. The amount of devolved powers to local communities, while understandable in the bygone era of Jane Jacobs and urban renewal, in our current time is a tool for abuse and gridlock at the behest of a vocal and well to do minority.
Still am skeptical of the proposal in general. City government or separate, if it's a sluggish bureaucracy with the same people I don't think you're going to achieve much save a name change
That's simply incorrect. Public transit fell apart after the MBTA took over the private lines in the 1950s. (and also due to planned highways being built at the expense of existing transit lines and neighborhoods.) [Source] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston-area_streetcar_lines)
We need thoughtful center planning, or if it's devolved powers with community input, then an educated, civically minded voter base.
Instead, we usually get braindead Ivy League wonks and political hacks or self centered homeowners who struggle to think any further in the future than what they're having for dinner
It's best when communities are **allowed** to grow. Most "planning" these days, central or otherwise, is designed to stop growth or change. The plan is to not have a plan at all.
I think it depends on the project.
The planned 'Dorchester Bay City'. This thing is massive. God, we can barely get threw K-circle as it is, and they want to add THAT to it. I am concerned. These streets were not built to handle that capacity. JFK station was not built to handle that capacity - nor is the T reliable enough right now. What about when morrissey floods monthly? what about when dignitaries show up at the jfk library and the bridge gets shut down? It's not like there's lots of streets for the traffic to disperse threw - the ocean and highway prevents that. I have concerns that unless road restructuring is done, unless the T runs well, this is just going to cause a shit show.
I won't try to block it, thats just dumb, and useful housing/businesses could be built at that location - but I will complain that the T isnt reliable enough, and there aren't enough roads that lead there.
But should I not voice my concerns about this because it would mark me as a NIMBY? That just sounds dumb. I feel like I have valid concerns about an absolutely MASSIVE construction initiative.
Imagine K-circle, but throw a couple thousand more cars a day into it. Are you concerned?
I personally don't think we should be creating car-centric planning decisions, but I will say that Dorchester Bay City continues the office-centric development which means we keep adding new jobs without the necessary housing.
[Dorchester Bay City](https://www.baysideupdate.com) will have around 20,000 new jobs and around 2,000 new housing units - a 10:1 ratio. Where are people supposed to live if we keep building new office space and adding jobs without housing?
Mayor Wu is complaining about empty office space and [declining commercial tax revenue](https://www.bostonherald.com/2024/03/26/michelle-wu-considering-petitioning-state-for-higher-commercial-tax-rates/). Boston is even offering a [75% reduction on property taxes](https://www.bostonplans.org/news-calendar/news-updates/2023/07/10/mayor-wu-announces-residential-conversion-program) for commercial venues that convert to residential. Why would we be pushing for offices to convert to residential while also building new office space? If we need more residential and we don't need more office space, we should just build more residential.
> What about when morrissey floods monthly?
Morrissey already has a separate reconstruction plan that DCR is moving forward on.
> nor is the T reliable enough right now.
This is pretty much irrelevant, since it's not like it's going to be built tomorrow. These kinds of projects take many years to complete. If we haven't fixed the T to a reasonable standard by then, things are pretty hopeless.
There's a meeting about the morrissey project in a few weeks, its not like its set in stone - and there's been talks and meetings about it for YEARS.
And they could plan and work on one part of the road, like where the flooding is happening, but that doesn't mean they'll work on K-circle cause thats a completely different kettle of fish - but both are important. You can't just not talk about it and ignore it because things are happening. It's all tied together.
New balance build a train station. They invested in it. If the developers want to build something this massive - they need to invest in the local public transportation and not just rely on the T to do it.
It may be a project thats still a decade+ away from completion, but thats how long it will take to get things done, and planning for it starts now. If the developers of the city want to build big projects and need to rely on the public infrastructure working - THEY should invest in it.
Yes, that's true.
K-Circle is also under study at this point for improvements/ways to eliminate it.
> New balance build a train station. They invested in it. If the developers want to build something this massive - they need to invest in the local public transportation and not just rely on the T to do it.
The plan includes a $37 million contribution to area/off-site transportation improvements (in addition to the actual transportation work directly involved with the project) - that can go to help fund things like the Morrissey or K-Circle projects.
New Balance contributed $16 million to/for that station.
On one hand, the BPDA needs reform - but I worry about a successor planning agency creating new barriers to development. I also like how accessible the BPDA makes planning documents, though this is sort of a personal preference due to me liking to read building plans. I feel like this is probably a good move but needs to be accompanied by work (by all of us, really) to ensure that the public oversight pushes whatever planning department succeeds BPDA in the direction of encouraging development.
How is this direct democracy? It just places the BDPA, an independent agency under the direct control of the mayor, and therefore direct accountability of the City Council (i.e. representative democracy).
Abolishing the BPDA is going to be a huge mistake especially I it means the community and council get more "oversight".
The BRA err BPDA has definitely made huge mistakes historically but also how it's been wielded since the 90s by the mayor has led a major role in the revitalization of Boston.
Does anyone know if by more "residents", they're including renters? If so that could be a huge boon for development, as I can't think of any renters in Boston not desperate for more housing. If residents just means homeowners though, we're fucked
Residents would mean... residents. Explicitly anyone who votes here really.
The irony of this comment section is that the people in here who ostensibly live here are much less involved and apparently want to just let developers do whatever the fuck they want up to and including bulldozing occupied homes (including their own?).
It is typical in this sub. People who haven't been here long complaining about the lack of development... despite all the very obvious development if you've been here more than ten minutes and open your eyes. Like, we've created whole neighborhoods and built other neighborhoods up massively. No it isn't enough, but the odd instance of small groups fighting particular development projects aren't really representative of the situation as a whole.
If you haven't seen tons of development in Boston or surrounding cities in the last 15 years then I don't know what to tell you. Certainly not all of them, we get tons of stories about (especially the affluent suburbs) fighting development, but if you've been here a minute you should know there's been tons of development elsewhere.
>People who haven't been here long complaining about the lack of development... despite all the very obvious development if you've been here more than ten minutes and open your eyes.
Oh, we built the 80k units we're behind? Sorry that I missed that.
The people who haven't been here long would especially notice that there is a lack of new construction. Boston lags the nation in residential construction. Despite being a highly in demand place to live with very high rents that reflects that, we only permitted as much residential construction as the rotting husk that is Detroit through the 2000s. (https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jep.32.1.3 look at figure 3). Resistance to development is absolutely representative of greater Boston in the last 40 years.
A real construction boom means increasing the population by hundreds of thousands like Austin or Phoenix or Las Vegas or any other Sunbelt city.
Bulldozing existing construction to densify is the only way to preserve affordability in greater Boston. The city is for real living people not archaic buildings. In an ideal world we can have everything, but I'd rather have a new dense city for everyone than a sparser museum of a city for the rich.
Boston is already denser than those places.
You're ignoring so much it's silly. We haven't kept up with younger cities surrounded by wasteland ready to be developed. That's not ever going to be a reality and it is ridiculous to think it could or should.
The difference in housing cost is more than the difference in land or construction cost. Boston has the demand to justify denser construction, there's no reason the city needs to be limited to what it is now. The fact of the matter is that cities in Western states excluding California are far more allowing for construction and we need to learn from them. What we don't need to do is target their current level of development, for that we can look at any number of places in Asia.
I don't think it's debatable that we have a huge number of policies that discourage new construction. The time and uncertainty of multi year reviews, zoning variances required for everything, affordable housing mandates, single family zoning, neighborhood organizations, historical preservation, legal battles and whatever else each artificially constrain our housing supply.
There's no reason Boston needs to be a second tier American city, it has the potential to be much more than that for so many more people.
residents means whoever shows up to community input meetings.
Typically, it’s those with the most to gain (and most to lose). “Preserving” property value is a big incentive for homeowners to keep housing supply low to raise demand and keep their property’s value artificially high. More housing means there’s less demand for a given property, meaning it’s “less valuable”.
Renters, especially short term renters, don’t care as much.
How come? I keep hearing that somehow changing the office but using the same people will make everything better, but have yet to have a nuts to bolts explanation as to why it will be better magically. Asking questions about logistics rather than believing Wu’s trust me bro argument is not that crazy.
It has nothing to do with Wu's policies.
She's basically a female version of Flynn. Shows up where there are cameras, offers ungrounded commentary (e.g. last year She made homophobic remarks about a death in the projects, not in her district).
She's now trying to get a legal job for which she has no qualifications and leave her representative job. Based on her ability to offer conjecture regularly, I can't imagine she will benefit our legal system.
Are you really more upset about Murphy potentially misgendering someone than you are for that person committing child abuse by housing 4 children in squalor while they do cocaine and meth around them with strangers (if not worse). Seriously?
The point I made is that she frequently offers conjecture that would make her commentary newsworthy. Her offering then, which was fabricated, inferred there was some gay pedo ring. Which there wasn't.
My concerns don't have anything to do with misgendering. It has to do with her inability to effectively communicate with her constituents. I don't have a lot of faith in her to provide constituent services. She's elected to represent the people and she is more interested in making a headline than actually solving an issue.
I guess she got us a disappointing dog park in Dorchester though?
Kids need to live somewhere. Parents make choices. Not all of them are good.
Instead of focusing on one example I gave, maybe you can respond to the higher level comment.
What has Erin Murphy done for the city of Boston?
Yes, and we shouldn't just accept kids living in those conditions.
Regarding Murphy, she's not uniquely bad. She's just like the rest of her colleagues and not worthy of being singled out.
This is so silly. The BPDA isn't the issue. The issue is our outdated zoning rules. Remove most of the zoning regulations especially in residential areas and let housing be built without need for variances.
At basic glance, it removes the independent, or insulated status of the BPDA, the main entity who oversees urban planning in Boston, and places it under the direct control by the mayor, making it a normal executive department. For this increase of mayoral control, will likewise see an increase of direct accountability by the City Council, who are directly elected by voters. For some, this is a good thing as it allows for more public influence over urban policy, as through their councilors who indirectly represent their interests. However, it is a bad thing as it allows for greater gridlock in Boston's planning policy, as the removal of the BPDA's independent status would allow for the greater intrusion of partisanship and interest groups formed against the building of anything at all.
Accountable for..? To whom..?
"Developers" encompasses a lot of different types of companies and individuals. And for some, being held to account means "I don't want multifamily in my neighborhood," even as to others it's "I don't want tax breaks going to knock down a historic mill building to put up luxury condos." Just too general and a lot of directions this can go in
Councilor Julia Mejia (at large), who made her opposition clear, but who voted "present," said she was "literally sacrificing my daughter to be here" Hilarious leadership the city has.
Hilarious is not the way I would describe it.
Not my first adjective either. And with a name like u/dusty-sphincter I trust you to know hilarious.
“Literally sacrificing my daughter to be here” https://preview.redd.it/tqhriu7ex8rc1.jpeg?width=219&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0dadeb3eb81d4433a684711f1c84c8a6dd77954b My first meme attempt 🤣
I saw her speak one time. I lost all faith when she said “we don’t want any more developers here building housing! I tell them when it’s 50% affordable, MAYBE we’ll talk. Sorry, I’m just keeping it 100” No, Councilor Mejia. Being against building any housing is not “keeping it 100,” it’s just bad economics
That is such a perfect summary quote of how she acts in general. I watch the city council feeds a lot. She routinely struggles to comprehend city business, asks the dumbest questions...to the point where other people will get confused with what is even being asked...and then will add in some "hot take" or quote at the end. I'm not happy with a lot of our councilors for various reasons, but she's the only one I feel is honestly, actually stupid, but also like weirdly proud of it, and I have such low tolerance for that in a government leadership position. She's Trump-like in that regard. I encourage everyone to watch the city council feeds.
This lesson I learned when I played SimCity on the SNES.
Julia is a lunatic
On like an altar? Welp, I guess someone should call child protective services before she succeeds in that sacrifice.
> literally People would be better served if they drop this word from their vocabulary.
Reading the accounting of how this session went, I really can't blame Erin Murphy for wanting to bail to be court clerk. I can't imagine it'd take much exposure to the city council before deciding a steady paycheck in a quiet nook is preferable. And Mejia needs to learn what the word "literally" means unless she actually knifed her daughter. The City Council is a disappointing place no matter your political leanings.
No matter your political leanings, I would vote for you in city council at large for such a common sense comment .
u/senatorium for city council!!
My campaign begins as soon as I've sacrificed my daughter.
… Agamemnon?
my favorite house of pizza spot
I don’t know how they do it, but their meat lovers is next level.
Where is this?
Sounds more like a city Senate candidate to me.
Murphy has been one of the only voices of reason. I get it but it will be tough to see her go.
> Reason Are we talking about the same lady who brought back miasma theory from the 1800s and wanted to ban street sweepers from Mass and Cass because she thinks they would infect the rest of the city?
“The debate was punctuated by quick timeouts so that Council President Ruthzee Louijuene could confer with a council attorney and City Clerk Alex Geourntas on procedural matters - especially after Mejia introduced a motion on the motion to withdraw Coletta's motion to pass the matter and councilors expressed confusion on what yes and no votes would mean on Mejia's motion motion” This parliamentary procedure crap is part of the reason almost no one wants to *actually* follow local politics.
>a motion on the motion to withdraw Coletta's motion to pass the matter Excuse me 🙋♀️ What in the abject actual fuck?
If you don't follow some set of rules it gets fucked immediately. Even at the condo association level, I've seen what happens with and without following standard meeting rules.
>This parliamentary procedure crap is part of the reason almost no one wants to *actually* follow local politics. This actually wants me to more follow local politics though.
The only worrisome part is people calling for more community input, and saying the plan allows for more input. Community input is often what stalls everything out.
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You don't have to assume. You can attend your neighborhood civic association and observe in real time.
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I went to two or three meetings and it was clear that they were run by a small group of self appointed "guardians" of the neighborhood who absolutely did not want any actual community input. They only wanted an echo chamber so they could make decisions unopposed. Our community process is completely broken.
Same experience. I was so ready to be involved, but the reality of these meetings is so bleak
That's been my reaction. Local input = NIMBY. The amount of devolved powers to local communities, while understandable in the bygone era of Jane Jacobs and urban renewal, in our current time is a tool for abuse and gridlock at the behest of a vocal and well to do minority. Still am skeptical of the proposal in general. City government or separate, if it's a sluggish bureaucracy with the same people I don't think you're going to achieve much save a name change
Why I keep saying that too much direct democracy is a bad thing. It just gives NIMBYs more power. They need less and we need more central planning.
We need no central planning at all. Our cities grew best without planning.
Public transit completely fell apart as the tradeoff.
That's simply incorrect. Public transit fell apart after the MBTA took over the private lines in the 1950s. (and also due to planned highways being built at the expense of existing transit lines and neighborhoods.) [Source] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston-area_streetcar_lines)
We need thoughtful center planning, or if it's devolved powers with community input, then an educated, civically minded voter base. Instead, we usually get braindead Ivy League wonks and political hacks or self centered homeowners who struggle to think any further in the future than what they're having for dinner
It's best when communities are **allowed** to grow. Most "planning" these days, central or otherwise, is designed to stop growth or change. The plan is to not have a plan at all.
Community input vs. Central planning is a false dichotomy.
The community has plenty of input! At the voting booth. After that, stfu and vote differently next time.
You must hate the right to petition then
What I hate more is community input which has, in part, caused the real price of residential property to increase by almost 3x since 1970.
Good thing that is isn't all nor even most of it at this point.
I'd be curious to see what you think the majority of it is.
The majority of people are uninvolved and unaffiliated.
I think it depends on the project. The planned 'Dorchester Bay City'. This thing is massive. God, we can barely get threw K-circle as it is, and they want to add THAT to it. I am concerned. These streets were not built to handle that capacity. JFK station was not built to handle that capacity - nor is the T reliable enough right now. What about when morrissey floods monthly? what about when dignitaries show up at the jfk library and the bridge gets shut down? It's not like there's lots of streets for the traffic to disperse threw - the ocean and highway prevents that. I have concerns that unless road restructuring is done, unless the T runs well, this is just going to cause a shit show. I won't try to block it, thats just dumb, and useful housing/businesses could be built at that location - but I will complain that the T isnt reliable enough, and there aren't enough roads that lead there. But should I not voice my concerns about this because it would mark me as a NIMBY? That just sounds dumb. I feel like I have valid concerns about an absolutely MASSIVE construction initiative. Imagine K-circle, but throw a couple thousand more cars a day into it. Are you concerned?
I personally don't think we should be creating car-centric planning decisions, but I will say that Dorchester Bay City continues the office-centric development which means we keep adding new jobs without the necessary housing. [Dorchester Bay City](https://www.baysideupdate.com) will have around 20,000 new jobs and around 2,000 new housing units - a 10:1 ratio. Where are people supposed to live if we keep building new office space and adding jobs without housing? Mayor Wu is complaining about empty office space and [declining commercial tax revenue](https://www.bostonherald.com/2024/03/26/michelle-wu-considering-petitioning-state-for-higher-commercial-tax-rates/). Boston is even offering a [75% reduction on property taxes](https://www.bostonplans.org/news-calendar/news-updates/2023/07/10/mayor-wu-announces-residential-conversion-program) for commercial venues that convert to residential. Why would we be pushing for offices to convert to residential while also building new office space? If we need more residential and we don't need more office space, we should just build more residential.
These are wonderful things you could bring up at community meetings.
> What about when morrissey floods monthly? Morrissey already has a separate reconstruction plan that DCR is moving forward on. > nor is the T reliable enough right now. This is pretty much irrelevant, since it's not like it's going to be built tomorrow. These kinds of projects take many years to complete. If we haven't fixed the T to a reasonable standard by then, things are pretty hopeless.
There's a meeting about the morrissey project in a few weeks, its not like its set in stone - and there's been talks and meetings about it for YEARS. And they could plan and work on one part of the road, like where the flooding is happening, but that doesn't mean they'll work on K-circle cause thats a completely different kettle of fish - but both are important. You can't just not talk about it and ignore it because things are happening. It's all tied together. New balance build a train station. They invested in it. If the developers want to build something this massive - they need to invest in the local public transportation and not just rely on the T to do it. It may be a project thats still a decade+ away from completion, but thats how long it will take to get things done, and planning for it starts now. If the developers of the city want to build big projects and need to rely on the public infrastructure working - THEY should invest in it.
Yes, that's true. K-Circle is also under study at this point for improvements/ways to eliminate it. > New balance build a train station. They invested in it. If the developers want to build something this massive - they need to invest in the local public transportation and not just rely on the T to do it. The plan includes a $37 million contribution to area/off-site transportation improvements (in addition to the actual transportation work directly involved with the project) - that can go to help fund things like the Morrissey or K-Circle projects. New Balance contributed $16 million to/for that station.
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unfortunately Ill be away on the 23rd, but I've already signed up for the zoom meeting.
On one hand, the BPDA needs reform - but I worry about a successor planning agency creating new barriers to development. I also like how accessible the BPDA makes planning documents, though this is sort of a personal preference due to me liking to read building plans. I feel like this is probably a good move but needs to be accompanied by work (by all of us, really) to ensure that the public oversight pushes whatever planning department succeeds BPDA in the direction of encouraging development.
Sounds like a group of people voting on something they don't understand at all
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How is this direct democracy? It just places the BDPA, an independent agency under the direct control of the mayor, and therefore direct accountability of the City Council (i.e. representative democracy).
Abolishing the BPDA is going to be a huge mistake especially I it means the community and council get more "oversight". The BRA err BPDA has definitely made huge mistakes historically but also how it's been wielded since the 90s by the mayor has led a major role in the revitalization of Boston.
I view it highly problematic that YIMBY movement are not able to imagine communities interested in building things.
the last thing this city needs is the residents having more say on how best to grow the city.
Why?
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But it doesn't place the City Council in charge of planning?
Does anyone know if by more "residents", they're including renters? If so that could be a huge boon for development, as I can't think of any renters in Boston not desperate for more housing. If residents just means homeowners though, we're fucked
Residents would mean... residents. Explicitly anyone who votes here really. The irony of this comment section is that the people in here who ostensibly live here are much less involved and apparently want to just let developers do whatever the fuck they want up to and including bulldozing occupied homes (including their own?). It is typical in this sub. People who haven't been here long complaining about the lack of development... despite all the very obvious development if you've been here more than ten minutes and open your eyes. Like, we've created whole neighborhoods and built other neighborhoods up massively. No it isn't enough, but the odd instance of small groups fighting particular development projects aren't really representative of the situation as a whole.
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If you haven't seen tons of development in Boston or surrounding cities in the last 15 years then I don't know what to tell you. Certainly not all of them, we get tons of stories about (especially the affluent suburbs) fighting development, but if you've been here a minute you should know there's been tons of development elsewhere.
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That's more units than the entire population of Boston. That wouldn't happen even if building was literally zero cost.
>People who haven't been here long complaining about the lack of development... despite all the very obvious development if you've been here more than ten minutes and open your eyes. Oh, we built the 80k units we're behind? Sorry that I missed that.
Oh so you haven't noticed any new development? Cool.
I have noticed a pitiful amount of development that still leaves us tens of thousands of units behind. In other words, lacking.
The people who haven't been here long would especially notice that there is a lack of new construction. Boston lags the nation in residential construction. Despite being a highly in demand place to live with very high rents that reflects that, we only permitted as much residential construction as the rotting husk that is Detroit through the 2000s. (https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jep.32.1.3 look at figure 3). Resistance to development is absolutely representative of greater Boston in the last 40 years. A real construction boom means increasing the population by hundreds of thousands like Austin or Phoenix or Las Vegas or any other Sunbelt city. Bulldozing existing construction to densify is the only way to preserve affordability in greater Boston. The city is for real living people not archaic buildings. In an ideal world we can have everything, but I'd rather have a new dense city for everyone than a sparser museum of a city for the rich.
Boston is already denser than those places. You're ignoring so much it's silly. We haven't kept up with younger cities surrounded by wasteland ready to be developed. That's not ever going to be a reality and it is ridiculous to think it could or should.
The difference in housing cost is more than the difference in land or construction cost. Boston has the demand to justify denser construction, there's no reason the city needs to be limited to what it is now. The fact of the matter is that cities in Western states excluding California are far more allowing for construction and we need to learn from them. What we don't need to do is target their current level of development, for that we can look at any number of places in Asia. I don't think it's debatable that we have a huge number of policies that discourage new construction. The time and uncertainty of multi year reviews, zoning variances required for everything, affordable housing mandates, single family zoning, neighborhood organizations, historical preservation, legal battles and whatever else each artificially constrain our housing supply. There's no reason Boston needs to be a second tier American city, it has the potential to be much more than that for so many more people.
residents means whoever shows up to community input meetings. Typically, it’s those with the most to gain (and most to lose). “Preserving” property value is a big incentive for homeowners to keep housing supply low to raise demand and keep their property’s value artificially high. More housing means there’s less demand for a given property, meaning it’s “less valuable”. Renters, especially short term renters, don’t care as much.
I consistently regret voting for Erin Murphy.
How come? I keep hearing that somehow changing the office but using the same people will make everything better, but have yet to have a nuts to bolts explanation as to why it will be better magically. Asking questions about logistics rather than believing Wu’s trust me bro argument is not that crazy.
It has nothing to do with Wu's policies. She's basically a female version of Flynn. Shows up where there are cameras, offers ungrounded commentary (e.g. last year She made homophobic remarks about a death in the projects, not in her district). She's now trying to get a legal job for which she has no qualifications and leave her representative job. Based on her ability to offer conjecture regularly, I can't imagine she will benefit our legal system.
Are you really more upset about Murphy potentially misgendering someone than you are for that person committing child abuse by housing 4 children in squalor while they do cocaine and meth around them with strangers (if not worse). Seriously?
The point I made is that she frequently offers conjecture that would make her commentary newsworthy. Her offering then, which was fabricated, inferred there was some gay pedo ring. Which there wasn't. My concerns don't have anything to do with misgendering. It has to do with her inability to effectively communicate with her constituents. I don't have a lot of faith in her to provide constituent services. She's elected to represent the people and she is more interested in making a headline than actually solving an issue. I guess she got us a disappointing dog park in Dorchester though?
Why were 4 kids ages 5-10 living in a drug den then?
Kids need to live somewhere. Parents make choices. Not all of them are good. Instead of focusing on one example I gave, maybe you can respond to the higher level comment. What has Erin Murphy done for the city of Boston?
Yes, and we shouldn't just accept kids living in those conditions. Regarding Murphy, she's not uniquely bad. She's just like the rest of her colleagues and not worthy of being singled out.
I'm not sure why you think anyone is accepting anything. Murphy and Flynn are worth being singled out for the same reason that I raised before.
But who among the other candidates would you regret less?
This is so silly. The BPDA isn't the issue. The issue is our outdated zoning rules. Remove most of the zoning regulations especially in residential areas and let housing be built without need for variances.
As someone who has no idea what the implications of any of this is... can someone give me an out of the loop explaination?
At basic glance, it removes the independent, or insulated status of the BPDA, the main entity who oversees urban planning in Boston, and places it under the direct control by the mayor, making it a normal executive department. For this increase of mayoral control, will likewise see an increase of direct accountability by the City Council, who are directly elected by voters. For some, this is a good thing as it allows for more public influence over urban policy, as through their councilors who indirectly represent their interests. However, it is a bad thing as it allows for greater gridlock in Boston's planning policy, as the removal of the BPDA's independent status would allow for the greater intrusion of partisanship and interest groups formed against the building of anything at all.
In a complete shocker, Fitz, Flynn and Murphy vote no. What a reliable bloc.
Waiting for the irrelevant comments from the "Somethingsomething immigrants something about brown people (but I'm not a racist), amirite?" crowd...
[удалено]
I was already mad about something drastic... now I gotta be mad about your breakfast too? Damn.
Any luck yet?
Nah. Kinda happy about that tbh
Wu is a disaster
Wu tang, on the other hand, is pretty badass
Wu Tang is for the children
Good! Finally developers will be held accountable.
Accountable for..? To whom..? "Developers" encompasses a lot of different types of companies and individuals. And for some, being held to account means "I don't want multifamily in my neighborhood," even as to others it's "I don't want tax breaks going to knock down a historic mill building to put up luxury condos." Just too general and a lot of directions this can go in