Michelle Wu says she still intends to abolish the BPDA – Boston Herald

Three years ago, then-City Councilor Michelle Wu put out a manifesto arguing for the abolition of the Boston Planning & Development Agency.

After winning the mayorship, apparently losing control of her old AbolishtheBPDA.com domain name to a foreign blogger and recently naming her own city planning chief, Wu says the goal is still to junk the controversial agency.

This will be a years-long process, Wu told reporters on Friday, answering with a quick affirmative yeah when asked if she does still plan to abolish the BPDA, as shes previously advocated for. This will be a complex organizational project thats happening alongside day-to-day changes, she said.

Earlier this week, Wu named James Arthur Jemison, a Boston-native veteran of local, state and federal planning work, as her new chief of planning, a resuscitated position that didnt exist under former Mayor Marty Walsh. Wu has said shes going to seek to have Jemison wear a second hat as BPDA director, too, pending approval by the quasi-city agencys board as current longtime Director Brian Golden heads for the door.

With that change and other simultaneous shuffling atop the BPDA, the city will dramatically rethink how business is done, Wu told reporters. She said the leadership of the agency, which operates semi-independently from the city though Walsh made Golden a cabinet member, too will be charged with keeping the projects currently in the pipeline moving while also making organizational transformation happen.

The BPDA announced Goldens upcoming departure last week and then Jemisons appointment earlier this week. Wu had been vague on whether or not it was still her intention to abolish the organization which would require council and state approval and presumably replace it with something else.

Back in the halcyon pre-pandemic era of fall 2019, Wu, already generating buzz about a likely mayoral run two years later, put out a 54-page report calling to Abolish the BPDA, a slogan that her office mocked up on posters.

The document, called Fixing Bostons Broken Development Process: Why & How to Abolish the BPDA, also lived online at AbolishtheBPDA.com but youre not going to be able to find it there anymore, as it appears Team Wu didnt keep control of the domain. Now its Arabic-language blog posts about current events and travel in the Middle East, according to the Google Translated version of the site.

The BPDA has been a Boston bogeyman for decades, ever since its neighborhood-raising days of the 50s and 60s, when it was known as the Boston Redevelopment Authority, or BRA. Every election cycle, it seems, some mayoral candidate or another is vowing to do away with the agency, going back to former mayors Kevin White and Ray Flynn. Walsh himself ran against the BRA, and then he and Golden oversaw the rebranding away from that older name of ill repute.

Under Golden, the agency modernized significantly, but critics still say its too opaque and not responsive enough.

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Michelle Wu says she still intends to abolish the BPDA - Boston Herald