Tim Jackson
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Re: Boston College Master Plan debut
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Perspective: More thoughts on Boston College?s land grab
By Mark Trachtenberg, Political Commentary
Wed Sep 24, 2008, 08:51 AM EDT
Last week, the Allston-Brighton TAB asked all parties concerned to show more civility in the debate over Boston College?s expansion plan. It seems there?s been a lot of yelling and screaming and red-hot accusations at some of the recent neighborhood meetings on the issue, and quite a few people who have been heavily involved in this controversy want to find a way to cool the tempers so that Boston College and its neighbors can find a way to work together.
Well, yelling and screaming are generally not my style ? I greatly prefer crunching numbers and cracking jokes ? so I think I can help. However, I respectfully disagree with at least some of the mostly well-intentioned efforts to broker a compromise that are under way right now, so I don?t expect to be nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize for my work on this issue.
What I?ve always believed about public service is that it?s better to be a good technician than a good politician, and now the time for the Boston Redevelopment Authority to show everybody its technical capabilities, instead of trying to make a political deal by moving forward with the ?less controversial? aspects of the BC plan. My fellow BAIA board of directors member, Abigail Furey, and I had the same reaction to the notion that there are ?less controversial? elements in BC?s expansion plan ? ?like what??
Surely they?re not talking about BC?s attempt to close St. Thomas More Drive so that its professors can save 30 seconds ? or a minute at most ? on their drive to work: a commute that many more of them can make by MBTA and possibly grade papers on the way, which they can?t do behind the wheel of a moving car. Is the proposed baseball stadium ?less controversial?? Only in the sense that former City Council candidate Alex Selvig thinks a deal is worth proposing on it.
Selvig suggests cutting the allowed seating capacity of the proposed BC baseball stadium from 1,500 to 1,000 and allowing it to go forward, primarily as a ?goodwill gesture? on the community?s part, but also in exchange for stopping the construction of new dorms on the land that was purchased from the Archdiocese of Boston. It may come as a great surprise to a lot of people that Alex Selvig the crusader has suddenly turned into Alex Selvig the dealmaker, especially since he has no formal power to make such a deal.
However well intentioned, it?s not a deal that I?d like to offer myself. How do we know that the noise reduction will be enough to allow my Orthodox Jewish friends to continue to observe the Jewish Sabbath? We simply don?t know unless the city of Boston environmental engineers do a lot of careful accoustical testing first ? which, it turns out, they are quite capable of doing.
The way to bring more civility and rationality into the Boston College expansion issue is not to try to impose some political deal that a large portion of the neighborhood will wind up feeling cheated by anyway. The way to bring more civility and rationality into the process is to allow the city of Boston?s technicians, engineers and scientists to test every claim that Boston College is making. If somebody wants me to hold a decibel meter, I?ll volunteer right now.
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