Following Tuesday’s meeting by the Greenway Conservancy with their 5-year plan, State Representative Peter Durant (R-Spencer) issued the following letter to their regulator and landowner, Mass. Department of Transportation. MassDOT Secretary Richard Davey has stated his intention to wean the Conservancy from public funding within five years. The associated press release, shown below, notes the establishment of a “Friends of the North End Parks” group that was also announced at Tuesday’s meeting. (See Greenway Conservancy: “State Support Cannot Go To Zero” [Meeting Video].)
On a related note, the Boston Herald reports that the Conservancy spent $37,500 on consultants to create the 5-year plan presented, not including the internal staff and volunteer board efforts.
Thursday, July 26, 2012
For Immediate Release
Contact: Joseph McKenna, 617-722-2060
Less State ‘Green’ for the Greenway Conservancy
Durant Urges Davey to Reduce State’s Funding
Boston, MA – State Representative Peter Durant (R-Spencer) today authored a letter to the Richard Davey, Secretary of the Mass Department of Transportation, again asking him to remain steadfast in his demand that the Rose Kennedy Greenway Conservancy wean itself from State funding within the next five years.
Following a public meeting on Tuesday in which the Conservancy unveiled a five year business plan that merely reduced the state’s contribution in their revenue projections, Durant wrote a letter to Davey urging him to again consider a proposal that he has put forth in the legislature.
House Docket 4350 outlines a tested and viable plan for operation and maintenance of the Greenway Parks. The plan will require little to no additional public funds and includes a built in revenue stream for the park’s maintenance coming from the Conservancy’s current endowment. The bill additionally forms an appointed, unpaid, oversight board along with a partnership with an already established “Friends of the North End Parks” group to accomplish the same maintenance and programming goals as the current conservancy.
“The time is now to take bold steps and rethink the structure and management of the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway.” Durant said. “The Conservancy’s history of disproportionate salaries and spending goes to the very culture of excess and abuse that many feel is indicative of the way state government runs. Furthermore, it is clear that the cooperation needed for a successful public-private partnership has been broken by the Conservancy’s unwillingness to work towards independence and we must send a clear message that we expect more from those we partner with.”
# # #
This is clearly the right proposal. It really should be implemented immediately, but, for political reasons, it seems that it may have to wait (while more state money is wasted) until the Michlewitz transparency bill bring us the data we need from the Conservancy to fathom its expenditures. We should know by now that the Conservancy is determined to avoid public accountability, and to extract from the taxpayers every possible dollar despite their founding promise to pay for everything privately. Why they are allowed to continue is a mystery.