Boston Mayor Wu moves on city planning department, BPDA restructuring - Boston Herald

Boston Mayor Michelle Wu is seeking City Council approval to create the city’s first planning department in nearly seven decades.

The ordinance filed by the mayor on Monday would move Boston Planning and Development Agency staff and functions to a new planning department within City Hall, thereby building on Wu’s longstanding efforts to first abolish, and now restructure the BPDA.

It will be considered by the City Council on Wednesday.

“For decades, and in contrast to nearly all other major cities, the City of Boston has not had a city planning department,” Wu wrote in a letter to councilors. “This ordinance will restore planning as a core city function with the same accountability and oversight as all other city departments, by codifying the transition of former Boston Planning and Development Agency staff to a new city planning department.”

Wu wrote that the language of the ordinance “also sets the parameters for an effective and sustainable, budget-neutral transition that ensures continuity for critical aspects of staff members’ employment benefits.”

It would establish a new department with four divisions: planning, design, development review and real estate, the ordinance states. Staff changes would take effect in the next fiscal year, on July 1.

The BPDA board, in its current form, will continue to act as the Planning Board and approval authority for Article 80 projects, completed plans with zoning language to be further approved by the Boston Zoning Commission, and other land use actions, the mayor wrote.

“This ordinance is one piece of our administration’s plan to implement reforms that chart the course for comprehensive planning, updated zoning, integrated urban design, and predictable development,” Wu said, which is geared toward meeting the city’s goals of creating “much-needed housing” and a strong regional economy.

The new measure follows testimony Wu gave last week on Beacon Hill, where she petitioned lawmakers to move forward with a home rule petition she got through the City Council last spring, that would legally restructure the BPDA.

According to Wu’s letter, the petition would end urban renewal, abolish outdated structures, and modernize the focus of the Authority “away from targeting so-called blight and urban decay and instead to enacting affordability, equity and resiliency citywide.”

Addressing the community pushback the petition received at last week’s legislative hearing on WBUR’s Radio Boston Monday, Wu said that “anytime there are changes, I know it always comes with a little bit of anxiety of, what will be the unintended consequences.”

“This is not a new issue that we are talking about today,” Wu said. “Decades back, people have been saying power was consolidated in the BRA, now called BPDA. And it was not accountable, because unlike every other city department where they had to go through a full vetting for their budget through the City Council and the administration with other standard procedures, they are off the books of the city.”

Changing that structure was something Wu said she targeted through a mayoral campaign promise, where she first called for abolishing the agency, and then later pared it down to a reorganization.

“We need to have that same level of coordination, transparency and accountability for this major set of functions that define land use and the built environment in Boston,” Wu said, while insisting that will be accomplished by moving BPDA staff and functions within City Hall.

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