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BRA office supposed to formally monitor developers appears not to be formally monitoring developers
By adamg on Mon, 07/06/2009 - 10:28am
The Herald reports a four-person BRA office that's supposed to provide reports on how developers are complying with promises to the city and neighbors has yet to provide a single report. The director of the program says her office is still developing "an automated data system" - five years after she was hired. No doubt that's because 1-2-3 on a 286 PC is notoriously slow.
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Three plus one equals four which nets to zero
Adam - perhaps semantics - but the article says she has a staff of three. Plus herself I believe constitutes an office of four. In any case, the net output of the office is still zero and zero times any number is of course still zero. No wonder these people are so reluctant to divulge information - stuff like this keeps popping out.
Fixed
Thanks.
You gotta be kidding me...
"...administrative assistant who earns $61,251 a year..."
Why did I even bother getting a PhD? Until a year a go I wasn't pulling down that kind of scratch....AND I could have put up a database system in 5 DAYS let alone make coffee and keep Outlook organized!
"“We’ve been developing an automated data system, but it’s still in draft form,” Colley said. “But you can’t do that overnight or in a year or two years or three years.”"
Bullshit, lady. Just because you say it doesn't make it true. Just because you AND your staff are incompetent doesn't make it true either.
This sounds like a department for the private sector.
with a public empolyee overseeing the operation.
What *are* they doing?
The article reported that this organization was not doing things that we believe are things that they should be doing.
What the article did not report much about is what the organization *has* done, if they've not done these other things.
Could be that they've actually been doing necessary things that the reporter didn't dig into, or could be that they've been keeping their thumbs warm.
Shirley Kressel, are you out there?
I believe that Shirley Kressel has been complaining for quite some time about this particular BRA group's inaction. And that Kressel has submitted (unsuccessful) public records requests in order to obtain documentation about the group.
Shirley, are you out there? Care to fill us in?
From the Herald
Shirley posted the following on the Herald story directly today:
Colley's first day on the job, a big group of community people were there ready to help her get started -- to give her a long list of promises, ignored for years; she said she'd take off her coat and be right back. She slipped off to her new office, disappeared from sight -- and was never seen in public again. I tried to get a meeting with Colley a year after she was hired tp see what she had done. She refused, saying she had "absolutely nothing" to show me: BRA Director Mqloney refused my request to bring her out for a public presentation. Then he promised a presentation in response to requests by the City Council after public testimony at BRA budget hearings, but that never happened. When Maloney announced the hiring of the "promise keeper" during the BRA's World Tour of the neighborhoods in 2004, he said this person (to be hired after the usual international talent search) would compile a data base going back to the BRA's creation in 1957 and make sure all promises were kept, because "an unkept promise is a lie:" Well, who would know that better than the BRA....
Since the press release
Since the press release announcing her hire, she hasn't been mentioned once on the BRA website. That press release, frankly, simply deepens the mystery around her role. She had a long career as a Treasury Department attorney, working on compliance issues from 1978-2002. Toward the end of her stint there, she suddenly experienced a burst in civic interest.
The BRA website puts it this way: She served "as the Chairperson for the Citizen’s Advisory Committee for the Massachusetts Turnpike Air Rights “Columbus Center Project.” Colley held the position from 2001 until the project’s final approval in 2003. Prior to that she served as a member of Mayor Menino’s Strategic Development Study Committee for the Turnpike Air Rights parcels, which produced the widely praised and award winning “Civic Vision” plan."
Let's translate that. Back in 1984, Ms. Colley purchased a nice house on Melrose St, half a block from the Turnpike. By 1998, the proposed auction of Turnpike air rights stood to impact her neighborhood and the value of her home, and so she took on her first civic role. She was one of 26 members of the panel that put out the "Civic Vision" report, but there's no indication from the report itself of what role, if any, she played in its authorship. At some point, she also became active in the Bay Village Neighborhood Association, rising to VP by at least 2002. She was a mayoral nominee to the Citizen's Advisory Committee - and, shockingly, was hit by complaints that she wasn't willing to share necessary information with neighborhood activists who had concerns about the development. Yet she shepherded the project through a final vote, and approval. Shortly thereafter, she was hired by the BRA.
I don't think it was a payoff. But I do think it was a recognition of a symbiotic relationship. In Colley, the BRA had found a qualified attorney with compliance experience, who also had the credentials of a community leader, but who had a proven track record of not rocking the boat. Of not disclosing information to the public. They knew she'd play ball; perhaps her career has a federal bureaucrat prepared her. The BRA wanted to have a compliance office, but it didn't want that office to be in a position to enforce agreements - that might not be popular with developers. So they hired her, and let her hire a staff. And when years passed without any apparent signs of progress, that was just fine with the BRA. Colley, for her part, has continued to play ball. She gets a salary and a parking spot, and since her appointment, suddenly discovered hitherto unseen virtues in Mayor Menino - chipping in $875 to his various campaigns after never donating before. And, back when the Columbus Center project was still on track, she condo-ized her townhouse and sold off two of the units at a considerable profit - with a park and low-rise neighborhood on the drawing boards, instead of a gaping hole, their value had no doubt significantly increased.
Seriously
Everyone's so quick to jump to "incompetence." Isn't it at least as likely that this is the outcome the BRA wants - that is, to give the very superficial appearance of openness while continuing to hide information (and providing good jobs at good wages doing it)? I'm guessing this staff is doing exactly what it's being paid to do.
An honest-to-goodness, do-nothing patronage job?
This sounds like an example of Menino doing exactly what people accused Deval Patrick of trying to do with Marian Walsh...without it generating nearly as much negative publicity despite the fact that it has already cost the city hundreds of thousands. There's something wrong with the way Menino gets covered by the local media, and I'm not sure what accounts for it. We never got to find out what Walsh would have accomplished or failed to accomplish in her anticipated $180,000 position- because the whole gig collapsed when the heat got turned on- but it seems like we have a pretty good idea what these folks have not accomplished for five years. Why wouldn't they quickly correct the Herald's assessment of their efforts if they were actually doing admirable and necessary work? And I don't blame the BRA employees themselves- most people will do as little as their boss lets them get away with.
So who's the boss?