Faith Trumps Reason.
By Jim Conley • Nov 29th, 2007 • Email This Post to a Friend •
Print This Post
• Email this author
The TAB’s Jessica Scarpati reports on Tuesday’s Brookline Selectmen’s meeting that sees the Brookline Assessor’s Office pegging local residential property values as down by three percent for the year.
But during the same meeting, and while approving an extension on the $6 million in gifts loans to the Boston Archdiocese for its St. Aidan’s project, the selectmen relied upon an assurance from planning department Director Jeff Levine that property values are up by 35 percent over the past two years (but flat for the last six months).
It has to be divine will.
I mean, why else would a board keep on extending the note on a project that, after 7 years, has nothing to show for it? Why else would they neglect a deteriorating housing market and not try to recover some of the investment in that project?
It seems to me that the St. Aidan’s project (if you’ll excuse the mixed religious metaphor) is an endless Mormon testimony meeting, where all involved profess their faith against reason. This first came to mind when I saw former Brookline Zoning Board of Appeals Chair Diane Gordon say this (below) in the official hearing transcript on the project’s comprehensive permit:
“Selectman [Robert] Allen keeps telling m that this project is doable, and I’m becoming a convert.”
Folks, there are lots of things you can take on faith. But the word of Robert “The Mensch” Allen is not one of them. Unless, of course, you think it’s no big deal to throw away $6 million in public funds used for affordable housing.
Jim Conley is publisher of On Brookline.
Email this author | All posts by Jim Conley
If one becomes a “convert” does this mean an acceptance of accountability? Was Gordon’s conversion based upon facts and law (as required by her oath) or the Gospel of Bobby Allen?
On the matter of the market for the St. Aidan’s project, it should be kept in mind that Brookline Zoning Bylaw provision requiring certain projects to address affordable units permits developers to make in lieu payments rather than provide the affordable units on site. Most developers opt out with in lieu payments. Why? Perhaps because the developers are concerned with the pricing for market rate units, that high-end condo purchasers may not be attracted to pay big bucks in a complex with even a small percentage of affordable units (e.g., 15%). But St. Aidan’s project would have a much, much higher percentage of affordable units than zoning provides for 40A development. So a fortiori, potential high-end market rate purchasers of St. Aidan’s market rate units just might be reluctant to come up with the big bucks anticipated by the developer, Jeff and the Town.
So Selectman Bobby Allen and ZBA chairman Diane Gordon were conducting town business in secret.
There are also rules prohbiting selectmen from exerting pressure on ZBA members, but those rules appear to have been disregarded too.