The week kicked off with a milestone at Boston Metropolis Corridor, the place the mayor marked the primary official day of the town’s first planning division in 70 years.
The brand new division was created by a mayoral ordinance that was permitted by the Metropolis Council in late March, however the modifications — shifting workers and capabilities together with some land and cash from the Boston Planning and Growth Company — didn’t take impact till Monday, the beginning of fiscal 12 months 2025.
Mayor Michelle Wu has touted the institution of the brand new division, which restores planning as a core operate of metropolis authorities for the primary time in seven many years, as a “major” step in her plans to reshape growth in Boston.
“Our goal to make Boston a green and growing city depends on planning together for our brightest future,” Wu stated in an announcement. “With our new planning department, we will be able to unlock a future for our city that truly centers Bostonians’ needs and brings communities together in making Boston a home for generations to come.”
Many of the BPDA’s workers have transitioned into jobs with the Metropolis of Boston and are thought of to be staff of the brand new Planning Division, which shall be overseen by Chief of Planning Arthur Jemison.
Transferring planning below the purview of Metropolis Corridor makes the brand new division topic to the identical budgetary assessment accountability as different metropolis departments, one of many modifications that the mayor says drove her proposal.
The Planning Division is budgeted at roughly $32 million within the metropolis’s FY25 working funds, contributing considerably to this 12 months’s 8% spending enhance.
Its 4 divisions of planning and zoning, growth assessment, city design and actual property shall be tasked with reshaping planning and growth within the metropolis. That features fixing the town’s antiquated zoning code and guaranteeing growth is aware of the group’s wants, the mayor’s workplace stated.
The impartial BPDA board will stay the town’s planning board, reviewing growth tasks, planning and zoning initiatives, and land acquisitions and tendencies.
Holding the planning board impartial was seized upon by critics, who bashed the mayor’s ordinance for veering “far from” the roadmap she established for abolishing the BPDA when she was a metropolis councilor in 2019.
The mayor and her supporters have pointed to the ordinance’s creation of the brand new planning division as a key part of her plans to legally restructure the BPDA, which is what she has proposed to do by way of a house rule petition she bought by way of the Metropolis Council in spring 2023.
The pending laws on Beacon Hill would finish city renewal, Wu’s workplace stated, however just like the ordinance it has confronted important pushback.
