Its been a few months since I posted an update to the Boston 2024 Olympics bid.
In May 2015, Boston 2024 made a change in its leadership with a nudge by the USOC and low poll ratings. John Fish stepped down as Boston 2024 Chairman and stepped into a Vice Chair position while Boston Celtics co-owner Steve Pagliuca is now Boston 2024 CEO.
Over the past two months Boston 2024 has had several meetings across Boston and the discourse has intensified. While the opposition has grown louder so has intimidation from Boston 2024 supporters. At a Boston 2024 Dorchester meeting last month, a supporter of Boston 2024 shouted down a woman who was asking about how the games might affect poor people. Civility and tone has given way to venom and disrespect.
Also in May, a USOC board member Angela Ruggiero suggested that Boston was still being vetted and they were not guaranteed to be the USA bid city as the Sept. 15 deadline approaches. Ruggiero suggested that Los Angeles could wind up as the USA bid city instead of Boston.
The last few days of May have been damaging to Boston 2024. While they were reassuring the IOC that the bid was strong Boston Magazine and the Boston Business Journal were able to publish the complete bid book and not the redacted version used by Boston 2024. The bid reveals dependence on public money to pay for land acquisition for an Olympic stadium and infrastructure costs related to building that stadium. The public money would come in the form of city or state issued tax increment financing bonds. Also Boston 2024 would use a one billion dollar expansion of the city's convention center for Olympic events. The Governor of Massachusetts, Charlie Baker froze that expansion due to budget issues.
That same week in late May the city of Brookline, Massachusetts voted against the Boston bid because Boston 2024 did not inform the city of Brookline for use of its country club for golf.
Steve Pagliuca will present a new Boston bid (2.0) by June 30. Boston 2024 has been taking input from citizens at Boston 2024 meetings for the past few months. Speculation is that the games will spread out throughout the state of Massachusetts instead of being a compact games. This is being done to tamp down opposition in the Boston metropolitan area.
Lastly, a new poll was released this week. 39% of Massachusetts voters support the bid while 49% oppose it. The poll was conducted between June 4-6 and had 502 registered voters responding.
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