On Brookline

There’s an often-used saying in business planning that goes, “The definition of insanity is continuing to do the same thing, but expecting different results.” And it appears that the Brookline Selectmen are about to prove the maxim correct by gifting $1.5 million in public funds to the Boston Archdiocese’s St. Aidan’s project.

This is insane. Public funds to a Church? In “Progressive Brookline?” I suppose if Pat Robertson set up a non-profit development arm to build affordable housing in Brookline we’d be giving over funds with equal abandon. Or would we?

Last night’s public hearing on the Archdiocese’s request for additional funds was catastrophic decision-making writ small. Here came the same cast of characters arguing points that are in happy oblivion to the circumstances that surround them. I don’t know of any other enterprise - other than a government ruled by the self-interested - that would throw $6 million at a project that hasn’t produced any indication of success in more than 5 years.

But the real insanity comes from the safeguards the Town proposes before gifting the money to the Archdiocese. It’s going to be up to Brookline’s Planning Director Jeff Levine to certify the project’s feasibility before the so-called loan is closed. Hey now, that’s a great idea. Let’s take the project’s chief (departmental) proponents in town government and have them serve as the circuit breaker to a bad loan.

Where I come from, that’s called putting the cat in charge of the bait pail.

It seems to me that the only person who has his head screwed on straight (when it comes to St. Aidan’s) is Selectmen’s Chairman Gil Hoy. Hoy is on record as saying he would vote against more funds for this project. And last night he resisted the idea that Levine should be “The Decider” on whether to close a loan with the Archdiocese.

And here’s a news flash. The ever-vacuous Selectman Nancy Daly is “leaning towards granting the funding request.” This, based on her forecast of future woe [see previous post]. I’ve long thought that a useful approach to decision-making would be to determine what Daly thinks ought to be done on an issue, and then do the opposite. Positive results guaranteed.

An aside: The Archdiocese has produced a letter from the lead plaintiff’s in the lawsuit over the project as an indication of support. Not quite. Here’s a copy of the settlement from July of 2006. “Exhibit N” is the letter to which the plaintiff’s agreed; and I wouldn’t call it a letter of support. And what an odd coincidence that the letter is being made public at a time when $1.5 million is on the table.